As it sought to launch an effort to advance women in the company, American Express began by asking senior employees if they considered themselves ambitious and if they had ever publicly shared their desire to grow professionally.
"Unsurprisingly, our women told us 'yes, we're ambitious,' but what really surprised us is only a third of that group of women said they had ever publicly declared that ambition," Sonia Cargan, chief inclusion and diversity officer at American Express told Cheddar on Friday.
Internally, two years after asking those questions, more than 100 women have been promoted or entered the company at the executive level or above. Globally, women at the company are paid at parity to male counterparts, according to the company.
Now, Amex and the New York Women's Foundation will launch a joint program called "The Ambition Project" on International Women's Day March 8.
Part of the project’s goal is to create conversations both inside and outside the company to help women embrace and own their career goals.
"We want women to be ambitious for themselves and ambitious for others, whether that be for their professional life, personal life, or their communities," Cargan said.
Over the next year, the Ambition Project will share and spread blog posts and videos highlighting examples of success at all levels, host leaders and influencers to discuss professional growth, expand shadowing programs within the company, and publish research on the topic.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
