Design Observer

If you spend enough time on voting rights work, you become more fluent than you ever thought you’d be in legal history, court cases, maps, and the enormously creative, and pretty ugly, ways some people have used to keep others from casting their ballot.

Instead of hanging at a cookout, a determined group of Black women convened during Essence Fest on July 4 to do something even more American: demand more from their democracy. In this special reporter’s notebook episode, we are presenting an all-star panel as they “spill the tea” about the redistricting fight, the Callais decision, and what it means for Louisiana — and the rest of us. Stay tuned to the end for a special message on what to do if you have any questions about voting.

Eric Ries would like to apologize. In 2011 he published a book called The Lean Startup. Most of you have probably heard of it. It sold over one million copies and became something of a Bible for the Silicon Valley set. And Eric himself became something of a prophet. The Lean Startup gave a generation of founders a methodology to build quickly, scale quickly, and build value quickly. He encouraged his readers to build businesses to change the world… He forgot to say for the better.

Dave Fleet sees more corporate crises in a month than many executives see in their entire career. He is the Managing Director and the Head of Global Crisis at Edelman, meaning he helps companies prepare for, and manage through, crises.

Steve Goldbach leads Deloitte’s Sustainability and Infrastructure practice. He believes today’s leaders face an emerging new design challenge: figuring out how the next generation will build real judgment and taste when AI is taking over so much of the work that used to teach it. He’s the co-author, along with his longtime collaborator Geoff Tuff, of three best-selling books on leadership and innovation. His latest is called Hone: How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift.

Linda Hill has been a professor at Harvard Business School for 40 years. Let me say that again… Linda Hill has been a professor at Harvard Business School for FOUR decades. Her specific title is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration and Faculty Chair of the Leadership Initiative. Oh, and she’s also founded two companies.

Erika James became the Dean of the Wharton School on July 1, 2020. You remember that summer… we were deep into the pandemic and amidst one of the largest social reckonings in American history. So I guess you could say Dean James knows how to lead during a crisis. She even wrote a book about it. Erika and her co-author Lynn Perry Wooten published The Prepared Leader in the fall of 2022.

Chris Hyams spent 15 years at the job search platform Indeed, becoming its CEO in 2019. When he stepped down in 2025, more than 300 million jobseekers visited Indeed’s site every month. He also 200x’d the company’s revenue. So why would a guy who is so good at what he does step down? According to him, he had a higher calling. Chris believes that AI is the single greatest civil rights issue of our time and he’s appalled it isn’t better regulated. And he’s taking action.

Rachael Dietkus’s long and winding list of professional experiences have led her to a clear path: she knows how we can make the world better. She began as an art and design student, and then pivoted to social work. She’s also taken on multiple advocacy and human rights positions, including joining an effort to abolish the death penalty in Illinois and serving as an NGO delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The image is arresting: a small Black boy, tossed aloft by his father on a perfect Chicago summer beach day. The photo is black and white; the warmth of the other sun wraps them both. The boy is frozen in time, serenely suspended in midair, and the man’s strong hands wait to catch him. Stephen Marc, Untitled, from Changing Chicago, 1988. Gift of Jack A. Jaffe, Focus/Infinity Fund. It’s not a picture of Emmett Till, but it could have been. If only he’d made it home.