Navigating the Gray AREA

                     Facing a big decision is often a very emotional experience. The reason: Our big decisions have big consequences. But for many of us, those emotions are uncomfortable, and, instead of sitting in discomfort, we react to them either by trying to push them aside or instead allowing them to drive...

The truth is stranger than fiction. Lord Byron wrote those words in 1823 in a poem called “Don Juan,” which satirized the legendary real-life womanizer. His words are still true today, perhaps even more so as our country shudders from a combustible mix of global pandemic, a chaotic election and episodes of racial injustice. Faced with so much uncertainty and...

Have you been talking with your children about the new school year? Many schools are starting the year fully remote; some, including New York City’s public school system, are vowing to provide in-person learning; some colleges and universities are staggering their calendars and only allowing select classes of students or majors to return to in-person learning. Many schools and colleges...

Ali Khaloo is a first-time founder and CEO of Aren, a company that uses artificial intelligence to inspect and analyze infrastructure assets, such as bridges, dams and tunnels, to assess their structural integrity. He gravitated toward AREA in part because despite developing a new technology, he needed to both figure out how to commercialize and monetize it and how to...

Amid the long and difficult unfolding of the Covid-19 crisis, we are all getting a crash course in how uncomfortable it is to be ruled by uncertainty and scarcity. We took for granted the basic freedoms of our society and its abundance. No one thought life could shrink for all of us so quickly and so completely. We didn’t expect...

In 2010 serial entrepreneur Jeff Wald co-founded Work Market, a software platform that enables companies to efficiently and compliantly organize, manage and pay freelancers. Eight years later, in 2018, he sold the company to payroll services giant ADP, staying on as an ADP executive. Since then he wrote and published a book chronicling the rise of the gig economy and...

So you might expect that an educator would be in favor of more education, right? Well, not for Emma, a former Teach for America teacher who went into nonprofit education and wanted to decide what kind of graduate school program would best help her become an expert educator. Listen to the latest version of the Problem Solved Podcast and hear...

Eric Dawson founded Peace First in 2009 to empower young people to work toward a more just and peaceful world. He began in Boston and over time grew his nonprofit and its powerful movement into 140 countries. A small grant from the Gates Foundation allowed Peace First to explore expanding into the Mideast and North Africa, the so-called MENA region,…

What do you do when everything becomes unknown? So much of our daily lives now seems to fall into the “unknown” category: Is it safe to go to work? Should you cancel your family plans for vacation? What about going out for a slice of pizza? Yes or no? Usually, we differentiate between big and small decisions but in today’s...