C3.ai, the software maker founded by former Oracle executive Tom Siebel, filed Friday for an initial public offering.

The company in its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission listed the size of the IPO as $100 million, a placeholder that will likely change.

C3.ai last month formed a partnership with Microsoft and Adobe for a new customer-relationship management software seeking to combat Salesforce.com.

Siebel founded Siebel Systems, which was acquired by Oracle in 2006. He then held executive roles at Oracle. Siebel and the private equity firm TPG are the biggest owners of C3.ai, according to its prospectus.

C3.ai reported a net loss of $69 million for the year ended in April 30, compared with $33 million the previous year. It said its revenue rose about 71% over the same period.

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are leading the offering. C3.ai is planning to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AI.

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• He’s worried A.I. may destroy humanity. Just don’t confuse him with Elon Musk

Billionaire businessman and Republican political mega-donor Charles Koch has regrets. 

Charles and his late brother, David, used their collective wealth and connections to wield incredible political influence over the past few decades, donating hundreds of millions of dollars to reshape the American political landscape, push the Republican agenda towards their Libreterian, free-market bend, and give rise to the Tea Party movement. Together, the brothers founded the conservative powerhouse Americans for Prosperity in 2004.

“Boy, did we screw up!,” wrote Koch, now 85, in his new book, Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World. “What a mess!” 

Koch and his brother were also largely involved in shaping the country’s response to climate change. Through Americans for Prosperity, they got over 400 members of Congress to sign a pledge to vote against climate change legislation that does not include equivalent tax cuts. In California, they were influential in rolling back emission regulations, and between 1997 and 2018 they spent $145,555,197 financing nearly 100 groups that attacked climate change science.

Following the 2011 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, the Kochs spent nearly $200 million to elect Republicans who said that they would not pass any new environmental regulations.

“We did not create the tea party. We shared their concern about unsustainable government spending, and we supported some tea-party groups on that issue,” Koch wrote in an email to Wall Street Journal reporter Douglas Belkin on Friday. “But it seems to me the tea party was largely unsuccessful long-term, given that we’re coming off a Republican administration with the largest government spending in history.”

He also congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris and said he’d like to collaborate with the new White House on “finding ways to work with them to break down the barriers holding people back.” Those barriers, he said, include criminal justice and immigration reform. 

“At the same time,” Koch wrote in his email, “I hope we all use this post-election period to find a better way forward. Because of partisanship, we’ve come to expect too much of politics and too little of ourselves and one another.”

Though the Kochs did not support Trump, they poured about $750 million into the 2016 election. In 2018, they pledged to spend another $400 million to back conservative candidates.

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Conservative social media service Parler has become a haven for hate groups, extremists, and conspiracy theorists, anti-racism watchdog Anti-Defamation League warned on Friday.

The site, which has gained a large following in recent months, partly because of its free-speech ethos, is increasingly home to Holocaust denial, antisemitism, and racism, the ADL said.

High-profile Parler users include former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Alex Jones’ conspiracy website Infowars, and anti-immigration site VDARE.

“These are the kinds of individuals and organizations whose toxicity is well-known and whose racism and anti-Semitism isn’t very well disguised,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s CEO. 

Parler did not respond to a request by Fortune for comment.

While giving a home to extremism isn’t Parler deliberate strategy, the ADL said, its lax policing gives a megaphone to extremists to spew hate without consequence. That commentary exacerbates the nation’s already existing political polarization.

Amid that tumult, Parler has become one of the most downloaded apps for mobile devices. Many users have flocked to the service because of what they consider to be unfair crackdowns by Facebook and Twitter over hate speech and misinformation.

Following the presidential election, Twitter and Facebook slapped warning labels on some of President Trump’s posts that included unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. As a result, Republican heavyweights like Sen. Ted Cruz, Fox News political commentator Sean Hannity, and Trump’s son, Eric, have encouraged their social media followers to join Parler. 

Because Parler relies on users to police its service, Greenblatt is worried about unchecked hate speech. The ADL cited a recent post on Parler by fringe website BiChute that called the Holocaust gassings a “profitable hoax.” Already, conservatives and extremists are using Parler to promote pro-Trump events like the Million MAGA March and #StopTheSteal rallies.

For years, the ADL has worked with Twitter and Facebook to help them better understand how their services contribute to hate. The ADL contacted Parler’s chief policy officer, Amy Peikoff, on Wednesday, bitt it did not receive a response, the organization said.

In the meantime, the ADL said it would continue to monitor Parler and will “call out hate when we see it.”

“Ultimately, that’s the goal—to make sure these digital spaces are safe and secure,” Greenblatt said. The services should “allow for diversity of ideas but that they don’t do it while degrading Jews, African-Americans, or other minorities—that they don’t demonize people for how they pray or who they love.”

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• Hackers are trying to disrupt and steal COVID-19 vaccine research
• Here’s how President-elect Biden plans to tackle online abuse
• What’s in a name? For Tesla’s Full Self Driving, it may be danger
• What my day on conservative social network Parler was like
• He’s worried A.I. may destroy humanity. Just don’t confuse him with Elon Musk

RaceAhead is back after a brief hiatus and will return to a normal schedule next week. But first, here’s your post-U.S. Election week in review, in Haiku.

If votes fall softly
one by one, like trees in the
woods, do you still win?

Do years of effort
to persuade, inspire, teach
pay off over time?

When the voices of 
The marginalized are heard, 
what song will they sing?

If politics is
power, division, and pain,
what is governing?

If needs are ignored
one by one and pushed aside
Will we know justice?

Have a safe and joyful weekend. Get outside if you can. Maybe even sing!

Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com

Online media is ablaze with criticism—even denunciation—of the polling industry, with Trump having more success in the 2020 election than most pollsters predicted. By some accounts, it’s the second consecutive presidential election flubbed by election forecasters who used polling data, which has sowed frustration and distrust among the general public, journalists, and politicians alike.

In many respects, the limits of polling are shining through. But what is often overlooked is why. By not taking a healthy look at the limits of polling and the reasons behind them, and discussing ways to address the issue, critics risk delegitimizing an entire field that provides immense value to our country and world at large.

Survey research across the board has been plagued by declining response rates over the past two decades. This means that researchers trying to get accurate and important data on health, economic conditions, and, yes, political views too often encounter important groups of individuals unwilling to participate in the survey process, which cannot always be fixed with statistical modeling. 

One explanation for polls underestimating support for Donald Trump in 2016 is that state-level polls did not include enough white voters without college degrees, who overwhelmingly supported Trump. Some survey experts suggest that state-level polls in 2020 might have suffered from similar nonresponse bias, again leading to forecasts that underestimated the likelihood of a Republican victory.

This can become a vicious cycle of inaccuracy and distrust. Nonresponse bias makes it harder for survey researchers to get accurate data, and when researchers—or pollsters—fail, the trust in the process dwindles, exacerbating levels of nonresponse. 

When trust in survey research wavers, it can have detrimental impacts on society that go far beyond election forecasts. 

When most people think of surveys, they think of political polls that ask respondents which candidate they will vote for. But survey research spans a wide range of topics and generates useful applications that can’t afford to lose public confidence. The General Social Survey, ongoing since 1972, has helped generate over 27,000 scholarly publications. The monthly Current Population Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has measured unemployment and earnings since 1940. Policy-makers use these statistics when they decide on stimulus packages to help people and businesses during a recession and interest rates that affect how much interest we pay on our credit cards and mortgages. 

The U.S. Census could be viewed as a large-scale survey of every person in the country to determine their basic demographic information. Census data is used to apportion congressional seats and allocate government spending on schools, hospitals, roads, and other public works and programs. 

Unfortunately, these surveys are also facing declining response rates. Survey data quality suffers when people are systematically undercounted. 

The Pew Research Center found that typical telephone survey response rates fell to 7% and 6% in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Low response rates are not necessarily a problem if nonresponse is uncorrelated to the data that surveys are trying to measure. But in many cases, such as in the 2016 election polls, nonresponse matters. Weighting surveys to be representative of the target population could improve accuracy, but picking which weights depends on assumptions that don’t always hold. 

If it’s not properly addressed, systemic nonresponse could have harmful policy implications. For instance, consider how undercounting in the 2020 U.S. Census can disproportionately impact marginalized communities. Underfunding of the Census Bureau, the controversy around a proposed question about citizenship, and the early end to the Census—combined with the difficulty of conducting a census during a pandemic—will likely result in undercounting of Black, Latinx, and Asian people. This would mean less political representation and fewer government resources going to communities of color.

Collapsing trust in survey research and researchers certainly does not improve response rates. The polling industry, election forecasters, and the media should reflect on their contribution in driving the distrust. Research has shown that election forecasts that show the probability of a candidate winning increase certainty about an election’s outcome, confuse many voters, and decrease turnout. When these forecasts turn out to be inaccurate, many turn against survey researchers, as we’ve recently seen. 

Given the harms that election forecasts can cause, the media should stop emphasizing these forecasts in their election coverage and giving outsize influence to the data scientists making these predictions. Meanwhile, those measuring outcomes that help guide policy-making should communicate how their work benefits the general public. At the same time, pollsters should recognize the limitations of their method and recognize the usefulness of other research methods.

In the 1948 U.S. presidential election, the Chicago Daily Tribune printed the incorrect headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” thanks to a nonrepresentative poll. Indeed, the failure of election forecasts in 2020 may seem like another “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment. 

But polling did not die off after that spectacular failure in 1948. Instead, researchers improved polling methods by introducing random sampling. Likewise, in 2020, survey research shouldn’t be “canceled” given its importance in guiding evidence-based decision-making. Instead, researchers should work to rebuild trust in the public and improve response rates. 

Baobao Zhang is a political scientist at Cornell University.

More opinion from Fortune:

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Ford, playing catch-up to Tesla in electric cars, is rolling out a battery-powered cargo van to lay claim to a new segment of the commercial fleet market that its gas-powered vehicles dominate.

CEO Jim Farley on Thursday unveiled an electric version of its Transit model, the ubiquitous airport shuttle, delivery and service van that is the top seller of its kind in the U.S. and Europe. It will face off against Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz EQV battery-powered van sold in Europe and electric vans made by startups such Amazon.com-backed Rivian Automotive, in which Ford also is an investor.

Ford is aiming for commercial-vehicle leadership in EVs with the combination of the E-Transit coming late next year and a battery-powered F-150 pickup debuting in 2022. Farley, the former Toyota Motor executive who became CEO last month, sees a vast profit opportunity in boosting sales of mundane models that haul people, packages and payloads. The company said it expects industrywide electric-van sales to reach 1.1 million units globally by the end of the decade.

“We think there will be a boom in electric over many locations because we see so much inbound demand and interest in buying,” Ted Cannis, general manager of Ford’s North American commercial business, said in an interview. “Growth is definitely in the plan.”

With regulators worldwide mandating zero-emission vehicles — especially in polluted urban centers — Ford sees big potential for electrified versions of its trucks and vans. Ford also views the election of Joe Biden — who has pledged to expand a nationwide network of charging stations — as another possible boost for plug-in vehicles.

“We are looking forward to working with President-elect Biden and his transition team,” Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s president of the Americas and international markets, said in an interview with Bloomberg Televison. “I expect there will be more emphasis on electrification.”

Driverless delivery also is viewed as a logical first use of EV technology. Ford last year formed an alliance with Volkswagen to develop commercial, electric and self-driving vehicles, though the E-Transit isn’t part of that deal.

With a driving range of about 126 miles and a price starting around $45,000 — roughly $10,000 more than a gasoline version — Ford is pitching fleet buyers on a lower “total cost of ownership” because fuel and maintenance costs are about 40% less than traditional vans, Cannis said. The E-Transit will come in eight variations, including three heights and three lengths, and the automaker will work with modification companies to customize vehicles for each buyer.

Ford also is offering an array of services to monitor and maintain the van, using data coming from built-in modems, which help maximize hours in service, Cannis said. It represents “a big new revenue stream that we didn’t have before.”

More expensive

This will help offset the cost of the electric drivetrain, which is more expensive than traditional internal-combustion engines because of the battery and electric motors, Galhotra said.

“That cost of the battery electric is higher,” he said. “But we believe by offering a more holistic solution to our customers with these vehicles we can make a very substantial business case, especially in commercial.”

Farley is trying to shift Ford’s focus from the single transaction of selling a car to providing continuous transportation services.

“Our growth as a company will come from not the four walls of the product,” Farley said in an September interview. “It will come from services.”

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Brazil reversed its decision to suspend trials of a coronavirus vaccine from Chinese developer Sinovac Biotech Ltd., allowing tests to resume less than 48 hours after being halted amid criticism the initial pause was politically motivated.

In a statement posted on its website Wednesday, health agency Anvisa said it initially got “precarious data” on a “grave” event, which led it to suspend the study late Monday. The agency added that it reversed its previous ruling after receiving new information, and that it will keep monitoring the case.

On Tuesday, Sao Paulo’s Instituto Butantan, which partnered with Sinovac to produce the vaccine locally, criticized the suspension, saying it was not warned of the move and that the reported death of a volunteer was not related to the shot.

Sinovac’s vaccine has become the focus of an escalating feud in Brazil. President Jair Bolsonaro stepped up criticism of CoronaVac last month, saying China lacks credibility to come up with solutions for the coronavirus crisis and that people wouldn’t feel safe with the shot “due to its origin.”

Chinese vaccine developers have been compelled to find countries where the coronavirus is still spreading to host their final-stage trials, since the Asian nation’s domestic outbreak has been largely contained. Geopolitical tensions have affected the development process due to growing hostility toward Beijing from some countries over a range of issues like trade and the pandemic’s origins.

After the trial was paused, Bolsonaro on his Facebook account responded to a supporter and appeared to celebrate the decision, writing, “another win for Bolsonaro.” He has not commented on the resumption of the trial.

The Butantan researchers have suggested the participant could have died in a traffic accident, while Anvisa said earlier it had no information about the potential cause of death being suicide as reported by local media.

“The decision to interrupt without having all the details seems premature,” said Juarez Cunha, head of the Brazilian Immunization Society. “Given Butantan’s credibility, I am sure if there was any suspicion of a related grave adverse event, the researchers themselves would have called attention to it and suggested the suspension.”

Sinovac said in a statement on its website earlier this week that it’s confident in the safety of its vaccine.

Halts to investigate serious adverse events are not uncommon in large-scale drug trials and two western developers — AstraZeneca Plc and Johnson & Johnson — paused their vaccine trials in recent months due to such incidents, only to re-start them after investigation.

Chinese vaccine developers have been at the forefront of the global race to create an effective immunization against the virus. The push has taken on vital importance as countries look to move beyond COVID-19 and more definitively re-open their economies.

Unlike American pharmaceutical firm Pfizer Inc., which this week revealed “extraordinary” positive preliminary data from final-stage trials of its candidate developed with BioNTech, no Chinese developer has yet publicized data on the efficacy of their shots.

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Just over a week since the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s stunning suspension of Ant Group Co.’s blockbuster listing, its rival in Shenzhen turned down another hopeful for the first time since new rules were adopted to quicken the share sale process.

Jiangsu Netin Technologies Co. Ltd., a software developer, had its initial public offering request denied on Wednesday, according to a filing from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. It’s the first ChiNext application to be rejected since the bourse introduced new rules in June to give firms an easier path under so-called registration-based initial public offerings.

Coming days after Ant Group had its IPO abruptly halted, the move has “sounded the alarm” for other prospects looking to list their companies on ChiNext, said Manran Ma, general manager at Beijing Mamanran Asset Management Ltd. “The listing suspension of Ant Group could also be seen as a signal that the recent regulatory environment may [be] relatively tougher than the past,” he said.

Shenzhen’s ChiNext board said that it rejected Jiangsu Netin’s application because it failed to meet all requirements, citing inadequate information disclosure regarding stake transfers among shareholders and tax payments. The company can ask for a review of the rejection within five working days, it added. According to its IPO application dated June 29, the firm had planned to raise 460 million yuan ($69 million).

Shenzhen’s ChiNext board implemented new IPO rules over the summer, which lowered the financial requirements for companies to list and accelerated review periods. The new registration system has accepted a total of 433 IPO applications so far, according to the exchange’s website.

China’s ambitions to clamp down on its powerful private-sector were on full display this week after Beijing issued its broadest attempt yet to rein in firms by issuing new guidelines on anti-monopoly regulations. On Tuesday, the China Securities Regulatory Commission also pledged to improve corporate governance and enhance scrutiny of initial public offerings, according to a statement on its website.

The stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen rank among the world’s top 10 operators and have for years rivaled to claim the top spot. Together they make up the world’s second-most valuable national equity market globally after the U.S.

More must-read international coverage from Fortune:

• Denmark is culling millions of furry minks to extinguish a worrying COVID-19 outbreak
• China is ramping up its other big trade war
• The world’s largest surveillance system is growing—and so is the backlash
• Who won the election? Putin and Xi, experts say
• COVID-19 resurgence sets back Europe’s economic recovery hopes

We’ve finally completed a contentious election that took place amid widespread societal unrest and mass deaths. It brought out the worst in many of us, including Christians. It’s hard not to have strong feelings about our nation and its direction right now.

But those fierce convictions do not give us permission to villainize people of the opposing side or otherwise be a jerk. We must be careful not to dehumanize those we disagree with. In our self-righteousness, we can become the very things we criticize in others and not even know it.

Now that all the votes have been cast, it is time for our country to begin finding a way to come back together. Christians can move forward to help heal our nation by seeking a balance of political engagement and faithful discipleship.

We have to begin with prayer and Spirit-led reflection that allows us to accept the outcome. No matter who won or lost, we have nothing to fear as long as we put our faith in Jesus Christ. In Jeremiah 29:11 God says, “For I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Our ultimate trust is in God and not ourselves, our heroes or villains, or politics or politicians. Let’s keep things in perspective.

Second, we should talk to each other. We have become a society and a nation of echo chambers, where we gather with fellow like-minded people while making assumptions and hurling insults at “others.” In personal conversation, we should not blame, or guilt, or shame—but ask questions without assuming what the other person will answer. The only path to understanding is through conversation. 

There is something undeniably Christian about trying to better understand other people, even those with whom we might disagree. The Bible is clear that God calls on us to love our neighbors, regardless of whether they look like us, think like us, feel like us, worship like us—or vote like us. We can’t “love our neighbors” if we don’t know our neighbors, and we can’t know our neighbors if we don’t listen to our neighbors.

Yet sometimes personal conversation isn’t possible. For a societal conversation, peaceful protests can be the best way to communicate when one side refuses to engage in good faith. But it is important to remember that peaceful protests are more clearly communicative than undirected violence.

In the end, what we all have in common is that we all seek the possibility of flourishing—the opportunity to provide a life of flourishing for our families and those we love. It takes more than just the people who look the way I look or who voted the way I voted to structure a nation in which building a good life for my family and your family is possible. We must seek the “peace and prosperity” of our cities together, as in Jeremiah 29:7. 

Our civic engagement can’t be reduced to one vote every four years. If so, we’re actually part of the problem. We must learn to listen, engage, and love our neighbors every day, so that we can build this better nation together.

May we do our part. Vote. Pray. Protest. March. Seek the peace of the city. Seek justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly. Love your neighbors. Do all of these things—and ultimately, place your trust in God.

To be a Christ follower is to be faithful amid tension. To have integrity. To keep fighting for the vulnerable. To stay engaged, to remain hopeful, to love anyway.

Don’t forget this. Don’t abandon this. Don’t lose yourself. The what matters, but the how matters, too.

Eugene Cho is a reverend, president of Bread for the World, and author of Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk: A Christian’s Guide to Engaging Politics.

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The popular video-sharing app TikTok, its future in limbo since President Donald Trump tried to shut it down earlier this fall, is asking a federal court to intervene.

TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, has until Thursday to sell off its U.S. operations under an executive order that Trump signed in August.

Trump in September gave his tentative blessing to a ByteDance proposal meant to resolve U.S. national security concerns by placing TikTok under the oversight of American companies Oracle and Walmart, each of which would also have a financial stake in the company. But TikTok said this week it’s received “no clarity” from the U.S. government about whether its proposals have been accepted.

The deal has been under a national-security review by the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which is led by the Treasury Department. The department “remains focused” on resolving the alleged national security risks posed by TikTok, a Treasury spokeswoman said in a statement Wednesday evening.

“With the November 12 CFIUS deadline imminent and without an extension in hand, we have no choice but to file a petition in court to defend our rights and those of our more than 1,500 employees in the US,” TikTok said in a written statement Tuesday.

Trump has cited concerns that the Chinese government could spy on TikTok users if the app remains under Chinese ownership. TikTok has denied it’s a security threat but said it’s still trying to work with the administration to resolve its concerns.

The legal challenge is “a protection to ensure these discussions can take place,” the company said.

The Trump administration had earlier sought to ban the app from smartphone app stores and deprive it of vital technical services, but federal judges have so far blocked those actions.

TikTok is now looking to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review Trump’s divestment order and the government’s national-security review.

More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:

• Conservative social media site Parler shoots to the top of the download charts postelection
• Here’s how President-elect Biden plans to tackle online abuse
• What’s in a name? For Tesla’s Full Self Driving, it may be danger
• “Technology is the new toilet paper” for seniors facing the pandemic
• The Facebook ad boycott ended months ago. But some big companies continue the fight

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has long been convinced that Google has a monopoly in the internet search market and said a recent U.S. antitrust case against the company validates his position.

“We’re very encouraged by that,” Stoppelman said in an interview on Bloomberg TV Wednesday. “Google has behaved illegally and has leveraged its monopoly in ways that are destructive to innovation and competition. It’s bad for consumers, bad for small business owners.”

Yelp, a local search provider that collects reviews of restaurants, shops and services, says Alphabet’s Google, which controls about 90% of the online search market, abuses its position by putting its own reviews higher in search results than those of its rivals.

“They’ve really tried to maximize the revenue and in doing so have put the consumer in the back seat,” Stoppelman said. “There’s no organic content anymore.”

Google chief legal officer Kent Walker has argued that people use Google search “because they choose to, not because they’re forced to, or because they can’t find alternatives.”

Yelp and other small businesses faced a moment of “terror” in the early months of the pandemic, Stoppelman said, as cities shut down and people stayed indoors. But by the third quarter, Yelp reported sales that beat analysts’ estimates.

“We certainly took a pretty big hit in advertising dollars that people paused,” he said. But “looking at Yelp’s performance in the third quarter, we’ve really come back, in a big way, faster than even we were hoping for.”

About 220,000 businesses that were temporarily closed had reopened, according to Stoppelman’s estimate. That’s good news heading into the holidays, he said, adding that it shows the “resilience of American entrepreneurship.”

Once a vaccine is rolled out, Stoppelman said he expects Yelp’s business to further improve. “That’s a great tailwind, but I think Yelp is on solid ground regardless of the pace of that vaccine rollout,” he said. “When we actually put out guidance for the fourth quarter, we weren’t contemplating necessarily a vaccine.” The company said it expects revenue of $220 million to $230 million in the final three months of the year.

Yelp’s shares jumped 19% on Monday after news that a vaccine in development by Pfizer Inc. and German biotechnology firm BioNTech SE appears to be more than 90% effective, giving hope for economic recovery to small businesses.

More must-read tech coverage from Fortune:

• Conservative social media site Parler shoots to the top of the download charts postelection
• Here’s how President-elect Biden plans to tackle online abuse
• What’s in a name? For Tesla’s Full Self Driving, it may be danger
• “Technology is the new toilet paper” for seniors facing the pandemic
• The Facebook ad boycott ended months ago. But some big companies continue the fight

With hefty price tags and a shopping experience that’s traditionally rich with pomp and circumstance, jewelry buying has been one of slowest areas of physical retail to embrace e-commerce.

Signet Jewelers, the largest jewelry retailer in the U.S. and parent of brands including Kay, Jared, and Zales, has long fallen short on the digital front. But the pandemic, which closed its stores for weeks in the spring, has forced Signet’s hand. This year, the company has sped the adoption of options like virtual selling and curbside pickup to accommodate shoppers wary of being in close quarters with others.

Both of those capabilities will soon be put to the test in a period that sees the one-two punch of holiday shopping and “engagement season”—creating jewelry’s busiest time of year.

“Customers’ habits have forever changed,” Signet chief executive Gina Drosos tells Fortune, acknowledging that, like its jewelry peers, Signet was behind in terms of digital offerings.

Last fiscal year, 12% of Signet’s revenue came from online selling. And that includes JamesAllen, the online jeweler the company bought in 2017, which generated 4% of Signet’s total sales that year; online sales at each of its brick-and-mortar chains were lower as a percentage of the total business. (For comparison, online revenues at Tiffany, one of Signet’s largest competitors, have accounted for 7% of total sales in each of the last three pre-pandemic years.)

But in the second fiscal quarter, Signet’s online sales hit 30% of revenue. While some of that increase stemmed from the plunge in in-store sales, e-commerce revenues at the company have continued to surge, rising 65.2% in August. That trend has softened the overall sales hit the jeweler experienced in North American sales in Q2, as total revenues dropped 34%. (Signet’s problems predate the pandemic: Total sales fell five years in a row to $6.1 billion last year. Under Drosos, Signet has closed one-fifth of stores so far, making the e-commerce push even more important.)

Drosos credits Signet’s virtual selling, which consists of an employee using an iPad to give a consultation in real time, showing customers the merchandise in a real store, with mitigating the pain.

“People were more confident buying something that cost $300 online than something that costs $3,000. The ‘unlock’ for that has been virtual appointments,” says Drosos, who took the reins three years ago.

Luckily for Signet, e-commerce was already a big plank in Drosos’s three-year “Path to Brilliance” turnaround plan, now in its third year. So some of the heavy lifting had already happened when the pandemic struck in March, causing Signet, like most other retailers, to close stores and furlough workers. The company had already set up much of what it needed for online consultations, getting a tablet in the hands of every jewelry consultant. When store workers were furloughed, some 2,500 store managers filled that role, equipped with deep consumer data.

“We know who our top customers are,” Drosos says. That meant that those store managers were able to proactively contact their top-spending customers during the lockdown. Now, with stores largely reopened, some 15,000 store workers can offer some form of virtual consultations including a physical tour of the store.

The ‘unlocks’ that could change jewelry e-commerce

There have been other tech touches that have helped. Signet’s next digital tools will include the ability to customize a piece online with a sales attendant, search using a photo of a piece of jewelry a customer sees in the wild (like Shazam for earrings), and much better photography online.

For diamonds, that superior imagery means Signet must take hundreds of pictures of an item to create a 360-degree composite photo so detailed that Drosos claims a customer can see better on the screen than in person.

Fashion jewelry has been faster to move online than engagement or bridal pieces because the latter has more emotional significance, Drosos says. So the ability to consult remotely and better visualization tech are giving more shoppers the confidence they need to move online, Drosos claims.

“We’ve brought these two ‘unlocks’ for the first time to the jewelry category,” she says.

Another key piece of her digital strategy has been the ability to offer in-store or curbside pickup of online orders, features that are basic at retailers from Petco to Target to Ulta Beauty. And given many shoppers’ reluctance to return jewelry by mail, UPS,, or Fedex—and shoppers’ desire to see a piece of jewelry in person before leaving a store—they are proving key to supporting online sales.

“Jewelry is such a meaningful purchase, you want to make sure it’s right,” says Drosos.

Despite some green shoots, jewelry remains a discretionary spending category if ever there was one, especially in a tough economic slowdown. Euromonitor International is expecting total U.S. jewelry retail sales to fall 19% to $59.3 billion this year.

But Drosos think there is an opportunity to win more market share amid the carnage. The jewelry market is fragmented and made up overwhelmingly of small, independent sellers, with only a few big players like Signet, Tiffany, and Blue Nile making up 20% or so of the market. And those small players have fewer resources to build the e-commerce firepower needed to adapt.

Says Drosos: “It builds an enduring competitive advantage for us to be the strongest in e-commerce.”

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Hong Kong’s government ousted four opposition lawmakers immediately after China passed a law allowing the disqualification of officials deemed unpatriotic, prompting a pro-democracy legislator to say the others would resign en masse.

The disqualified lawmakers were Alvin Yeung, Dennis Kwok, Kwok Ka-ki and Kenneth Leung, Hong Kong’s government said in a statement. Chief Executive Carrie Lam was scheduled to brief reporters at 2:30 p.m.

The 16 remaining opposition lawmakers in the city’s 70-seat Legislative Council will quit at a press conference later Wednesday, democratic politician Fernando Cheung said via text message.

China’s top legislative body earlier passed a measure requiring Hong Kong lawmakers to be patriots, curbing debate in a democratic institution that has endured more than two decades after the former British colony’s return.

“It’d be hard for us and myself today to admit that is not the hardest or the saddest day for Hong Kong,” Kwok Ka-ki said as opposition members briefed Wednesday. “But I would urge the people of Hong Kong should not give up. We can’t give up.”

The resolution is the latest sign of China’s determination to rein in dissent in the wake of anti-government protests that rocked Hong Kong last year. Beijing bypassed the Legislative Council to impose controversial national security legislation in June, causing the Group of Seven nations to accuse China of violating the terms of its handover agreement with the U.K. and prompting the Trump administration to sanction more than a dozen senior officials who oversee the city.

A mass resignation would highlight international concerns about China’s human rights practices just as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office on a promise to defend democratic values around the world. He has vowed to “fully enforce” the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act signed by Trump last year.

The ability to purge opposition lawmakers would make it easier for Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed politicians to control the Legislative Council if they win an unprecedented majority in elections that the government has postponed — citing coronavirus concerns — over the protests of democracy advocates.

The NPC’s decision “is in the fundamental interests of all Chinese people, including Hong Kong compatriots, and is conducive to safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests,” Standing Committee Chairman Li Zhanshu said at the close of the body’s two-day meeting.

‘Rubber Stamp’

The move will raise new questions about the future of the legislature, perhaps the most high-profile platform for open debate left under Beijing’s rule. After several radical “localist” activists were among a record 29 opposition lawmakers elected in 2016, China handed down a ruling that led to the disqualification of a half dozen lawmakers.

Several remaining lawmakers are also facing criminal charges related to various protests against the government, including seven charged in recent months with participating in a May scuffle at the Legislative Council. Nick Or, an assistant professor of public policy at the CityU, warned that the Hong Kong government risked losing its legitimacy by limiting legislative debate.

“The Hong Kong government may be able to get a rubber stamp, but it is not necessarily a good thing if their proposals are unchallenged,” Or said. “It does not do any good for building up good governance in Hong Kong.”

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Chinese technology shares tumbled for a second day after Beijing clamped down on the internet industry, wiping out more than $200 billion of value.

The Hang Seng Tech Index slumped 5.3% on Wednesday in Hong Kong, taking its two-day loss to almost 10%. Shares of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tencent Holdings Ltd., JD.com Inc., Meituan and Xiaomi Corp. sank at least 8% over two days after the Communist Party unveiled regulations to root out monopolistic practices in the internet industry.

Tech is the latest sector to be targeted by Beijing after new curbs on financial firms that triggered the shock suspension of Ant Group Co.’s $35 billion stock sale last week. Xi Jinping’s government is increasingly curtailing the influence of private corporations that dominate its burgeoning internet, e-commerce and digital finance industries, pivoting away from its previously hands off approach.

“I literally gasped when I first read these guidelines,” said John Dong, securities attorney at Joint-Win Partners in Shanghai. “The timing — on the eve of Singles’ Day — the forcefulness and the resolve to remake the tech giants is startling.”

China’s antitrust watchdog is seeking feedback on rules that establish a framework for curbing anti-competitive behavior such as colluding on sharing sensitive consumer data, alliances that squeeze out smaller rivals and subsidizing services at below cost to eliminate competitors. They may also require companies that operate a so-called Variable Interest Entity — a vehicle through which virtually every major Chinese internet company attracts foreign investment and lists overseas — to apply for specific operating approval.

“Internet giants have expanded their reach into various sectors like finance and health care that are vital to the economy and that really concerns regulators,” said Shen Meng, director of Beijing-based boutique investment bank Chanson & Co. “The move could discourage firms in the tech sector to list in the near term as those impacted will need time to adjust their businesses accordingly.”

On Nov. 3, policy makers shocked the investment world by suspending an initial public offering by Ant Group, a fintech company owned by billionaire Jack Ma. The decision came just two days before shares were set to trade in a listing that attracted at least $3 trillion of orders from individual investors.

Liang Tao, vice chairman of China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said on Wednesday that the country will also strengthen its anti-monopoly examinations of the fintech sector.

The new regulations for the internet industry signal a “further tightening” of the online economy, although the real impact will depend on how the rules are enforced, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts led by Alex Yao wrote in a note.

The proposed regulations come at a bad time for tech shares, which are already under pressure from a global rotation that has sent the Nasdaq Composite Index almost 3% this week.

“Beijing’s tightening regulations, including the antitrust laws, is a heavy blow to the technology giants,” said Daniel So, Hong Kong-based strategist at CMB International Securities Ltd. “It’s an additional blow to the shares, when investors are rotating out of the sector into old-economy shares because of the vaccine boost,” he said, adding that firms such as Tencent and Alibaba will continue to face downside pressure.

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The map of battleground states was notably different this year. In particular, two reliable Republican strongholds, Texas and Arizona, were not automatically shaded red. While ultimately Texas went for Trump, Arizona went blue for the first time in 24 years. 

An essential part of this story was Hispanic voters. Although they are one of the fastest growing ethno-racial groups, Hispanics have had persistently low levels of voter turnout. Often overlooked by both political parties and susceptible to the voter suppression efforts that have increasingly become a part of the political landscape, little more than half of eligible Hispanic voters usually participate in presidential elections.

This changed in 2020. While the numbers are still coming in, all indicators point to a dramatic increase in their participation. This is a testament to concerted grass-roots organizing efforts, in which Latinas often play an important role. Also notable is the role of the Hispanic vote in Nevada, which appears to be following in the footsteps of Colorado in a shift from purple to blue.

While people are noting the significance of Hispanic voters in building support for Democrats in the Southwest, much attention has focused on Florida and the role that some Hispanic voters may have played there in securing a Trump victory. Here we see the need to treat Hispanic voters not as a monolith, but as a heterogeneous group with distinct political histories and different political preferences both across and within these communities. 

Data from the American Election Eve Poll, conducted by Latino Decisions, is instructive. According to the survey, while Mexican-Americans, the largest Hispanic group in the Southwest and across the nation, strongly supported Biden (74%) over Trump (23%), Cuban-Americans in Florida and beyond showed a preference for Trump (52%) over Biden (45%). Other Hispanic groups, such as Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, and South Americans, all tended to support Biden, but to varying degrees.

Digging in a little deeper, there are other important considerations to make regarding the level and direction of support within the various Hispanic communities. First, there was a gender gap, with 73% of Latinas reporting support for Biden versus 67% of Latinos. This gender gap varied from state to state, with the biggest gap in Texas, where 75% of Latinas reported voting for Biden versus 59% of Latinos. 

There is also an age gap. In the aggregate, older Hispanics reported stronger support for Biden, but in Florida, 64% of Hispanics between 18 and 39 supported Biden versus 54% of those 40 and above.

It’s become clear that political parties ignoring or making uninformed assumptions about Hispanic voters do so at their peril. In all 50 states, Hispanic voters have come to make up increasingly larger shares of the electorate. According to the Pew Research Center, in battleground states, Hispanics grew more than any other racial or ethnic group as a share of eligible voters between 2000 and 2018. 

While party outreach has improved somewhat in recent years, it still falls short. Hispanic communities are underrepresented both in regard to their numbers in office and attention to their needs. In the past year, Hispanics have been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, both by the virus itself and its economic ramifications. Hospitalization rates for Hispanics are 4.5 times the rate among whites, and the economic downturn has hit Hispanic workers particularly hard, with men and especially women experiencing higher levels of unemployment than does the general population.

More concerted efforts to facilitate and connect with Hispanic leadership and engaging in more meaningful outreach to local communities could go a long way toward mobilizing these voters. What happened in the Southwest and elsewhere shows that this is possible.

Celeste Montoya is an associate professor of political science and women and gender studies, and director of the Miramontes Arts & Sciences Program, at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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It’s said that success has many authors, and the encouraging data from Pfizer Inc.’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine had plenty of people in Washington lining up to take credit.

Vice President Mike Pence was among Trump administration officials saying support from the government’s Operation Warp Speed program helped accelerate the development of the vaccine, which was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections in an interim analysis.

The truth is that Pfizer didn’t receive any funding from Operation Warp Speed for the development, clinical trial and manufacturing of the vaccine. Rather, its partner, BioNTech SE, has received money — from the German government.

BioNTech is credited for contributing the messenger RNA technology, which prompts the body to make a key protein from the virus, creating an immune response. The biotechnology company already had a history of working with Pfizer on influenza vaccines, and in March they clinched a deal to co-develop a shot to prevent against COVID-19 at research sites both in the U.S. and Germany. The two companies began human testing of the vaccine in April, before the existence of Operation Warp Speed was revealed publicly.

Berlin gave the German company $445 million in an agreement in September to help accelerate the vaccine by building out manufacturing and development capacity in its home market.

What the U.S. did, meanwhile, was commit to buying hundreds of millions of vaccines in advance to ensure Americans were among the first in line if it clinches an emergency-use authorization or approval from the FDA. The Trump administration agreed in July to pay almost $2 billion for 100 million doses, with an option to acquire as many as 500 million more, once that clearance comes.

As part of that agreement, the U.S. gets to decide who gets the vaccine first, and will work with the company on logistical support. While most vaccine front-runners that have been tapped by Warp Speed will distribute their doses through a government partnership with McKesson Corp., Pfizer is handling its own delivery of its products. The company has designed reusable containers that can keep the doses at ultracold temperatures, and is organizing trucks and flights to move them.

Operation Warp Speed is credited with speeding along several other vaccine programs, including one from Moderna Inc.that uses similar technology to Pfizer’s and could produce trial data later this month. The Trump administration’s rapid-vaccine operation, led by the Health and Human Services Department, the Defense Department, and other agencies, could well prove to be the reason many Americans get a vaccine in 2021, even if it’s not made by Pfizer.

Some Republicans, including Donald Trump Jr. and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, questioned the timing of Pfizer’s release of its positive data on Monday, almost a week after the presidential election — with the implication that the information could’ve changed the outcome and tipped the scales toward President Donald Trump, who lost to former Vice President Joe Biden.

Pfizer said on Oct. 27, a week before Election Day, that it hadn’t met the threshold for positive cases that would’ve allowed it to report the data. After that, it revised its trial protocols to raise that threshold higher, after consulting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on what would be acceptable to gain approval. The FDA has been under pressure from scientists to set tough standards for a vaccine so that Americans will feel it has been rigorously vetted and is safe to use.

If Pfizer hadn’t raised its threshold in response to the FDA’s recommendations, it’s possible it could’ve hit the lower bar of 32 positive cases before the Nov. 3 election. But it’s unclear when the trial hit that number. The company didn’t find out it had surpassed the new, revised threshold of 62 positive cases until Sunday.

All along, Pfizer’s top executives have attempted to quell notions that it has been influenced by political players.

Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla has repeatedly said that the drug giant has avoided taking taxpayer dollars for research and development purposes.

“I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy,” Bourla said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sept. 16. “When you get money from someone, that always comes with strings. They want to see how we are growing to progress, what types of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn’t want to have any of that.”

“Basically I gave them an open checkbook so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else. And also, I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way,” Bourla added.

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President-elect Joe Biden is no stranger to the problems plaguing social media. Twice during his campaign, he criticized Facebook for not doing do more to fight misinformation.

After taking office in January, Biden plans to tackle another big online crisis: harassment and abuse. He says he’ll create a task force focusing on the connection between online threats and stalking, and real-world consequences like extremism and violence.

The task force is expected to be filled by state and federal leaders, law enforcement, policy advocates, and technology experts. The goal is to come up with recommendations for how governments, social media companies, schools, and other entities can address the problem. 

“Nearly half of all Internet users report experiences of harassment or abuse,” a Biden campaign statement says. “The Biden Administration will shine a light on the online harassment, stalking, and abuse that now is a too-frequent reality for Americans, particularly for young people and women.”

In recent months, members of both political parties—for different reasons—have slammed Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for how they police content on their sites. In response, regulators are reviewing whether to change or repeal a law called Section 230 that protects companies from liability for what their users post. 

Biden wants the task force to recommend a system that companies can use to publicly report harassment and the steps they took to stop it, and to come up with best practices for fixing the problem.

Twitter declined to comment to Fortune the new task force. Instead, it referred to its own policies against harassment and hate, which critics say are insufficiently enforced.

Most recently, Twitter updated its policies to limit or prevent the spread of links that promote violence or include threats. It also expanded its rules against hateful conduct to include language that dehumanizes people based on their religion, age, disability or disease. And its testing ways to warn users that they may be posting hateful content before they post. 

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment. But it, too, has recently cracked on what it considers unacceptable speech. Last month, for example, it created a new rule banning users from denying the Holocaust, but they can still deny genocides elsewhere.

In addition to creating a task force, Biden plans to fund training for law enforcement about combating online abuse. He also supports state and federal legislation that would give victims of revenge porn the ability to sue. For example, Biden supports legislation, known as the SHIELD Act, co-sponsored last year in the Senate by now Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, that criminalizes revenge porn.

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Andy Taylor has a goal both modest and ambitious: bring artificial intelligence, or A.I., to air traffic control for the first time. A career air traffic controller, Taylor was quick to see the potential benefits that advances in computer vision technology could bring to his profession. 

Example: Every time a plane clears its runway, an air traffic controller must flag it and notify the next plane that the runway is free. This simple, repetitive task takes controllers’ attention away from everything else that’s happening on the tarmac. Even short delays can add up considerably over the course of a day—especially at airports such as London’s Heathrow, where Taylor works, which has flights booked end-to-end from six in the morning till 11:30 at night.

What if an A.I. system could handle this work autonomously? Taylor now leads the groundbreaking effort by NATS, Britain’s sole air traffic control provider, to answer that question, and to bring A.I. to bear on this and related air traffic control tasks. 

His biggest obstacle to innovation? The nonexistence of A.I. safety regulations for aviation.

That a lack of regulations might obstruct innovators like Taylor might be counterintuitive to some. After all, arguments around regulation usually pit proponents of unencumbered innovation against those concerned about social harms resulting from unchecked competition. 

The Trump administration falls into the former camp, advocating that agencies adopt a light-touch approach toward new regulations, which it feels could “needlessly hamper A.I. innovation and growth.”

So do many Silicon Valley elites—an increasingly powerful political constituency with a well-documented distaste for regulation.

But while a hands-off approach might foster innovation on the Internet, in aviation and other industries it can be an obstacle to progress. In a report from UC Berkeley’s AI Security Initiative, I explain why. Part of the problem is that safety regulations for aviation are both extensive and deeply incompatible with A.I., necessitating broad revisions and additions to existing rules. 

For example, aircraft certification processes follow a logic-based approach in which every possible input and output receives attention and analysis. But this approach often doesn’t work for A.I. models, many of which react differently even to slight perturbations of input, generating a nearly infinite number of outcomes to consider.

Addressing this challenge isn’t a mere matter of modifying existing regulatory language: It requires novel technical research on building A.I. systems with predictable and explainable behavior and the development of new technical standards for benchmarking safety and other performance criteria. Until these standards and regulations are developed, firms will have to build safety cases for A.I. applications entirely from scratch—a tall order, even for pathbreaking firms like NATS. 

“It’s absolutely a challenge,” Taylor told me earlier this year, “because there’s no guidance or requirements that I can point to and say, ‘I’m using that particular requirement.’”

A further issue is that air traffic control firms, as well as manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus, know that new rules for A.I. are inevitable. While they are eager to reap the cost and safety benefits offered by A.I., most are understandably reluctant to make serious investments without confidence that the resulting product will be compatible with future regulations. 

The result could be a major slowdown in A.I. adoption: Without more resources for regulators and strong leadership from the White House, the process of setting standards and developing A.I.-appropriate regulations will take years or even decades.

The incoming Biden administration is poised to offer that leadership, striking a contrast with the Trump administration’s light-touch approach to A.I. governance. 

Business leaders and technologists have a key role to play in influencing the Biden administration’s attitude toward A.I. regulation. They might start by encouraging the administration to prioritize A.I. safety research and regulatory frameworks for A.I. that support innovation in aviation and other industries. Or they could do what they do best: develop prototype solutions in the private sector (for a great example, see OpenAI’s proposal of regulatory markets for A.I. governance).

If successful, these efforts could free up Andy Taylor and other entrepreneurs to innovate in safety-critical industries from aviation to health care to the military. If not, a handful of companies like NATS will still try to develop new A.I. applications in these industries. But it won’t be easy and could increase the risk of accidents. The potential benefits of A.I.—improved medical diagnoses, affordable urban air mobility, and much more—would remain technically feasible, but always a few years away.

Pro-innovation business leaders and technologists should therefore worry less about new regulations slowing down progress and instead work on developing the smart regulations required to speed it up.

Will Hunt is a research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a political science Ph.D. student at the University of California at Berkeley. He has coauthored commentary on technology policy in the Wall Street Journal, and he was previously a graduate researcher at the UC Berkeley AI Security Initiative.

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When Jotaka Eaddy watched Kamala Harris take the stage on Saturday night as Vice President-elect, her reaction was one of “pure joy.”

“I thought about the rich legacy of Black women that made this moment possible who are no longer with us,” says Eaddy, the founder and CEO of Full Circle Strategies. “I thought about the Black women of Delta Sigma Theta who marched for suffrage in 1913. I thought about Fannie Lou Hamer. I thought about Shirley Chisholm, and how she was mistreated. I thought about all the Black women that have been organizing together—you just are grateful to be able to witness such a moment in your lifetime.”

In winning the presidential election alongside Joe Biden, Harris marked a massive set of milestones in American politics: she will be the first woman—and notably the first Black woman and first Indian-American woman—in history to serve as Vice President in U.S. Eaddy’s response to that accomplishment marries two themes of this election. First, the resonance of Harris’s presence on the Democratic ticket. And second, the work Black women did to get her to the White House.

Eaddy is the founder of #WinWithBlackWomen, a collective that worked to elect the Biden-Harris ticket throughout this campaign. She is one of the 91% of Black women whose support proved crucial to Democrats in winning the 2020 race.

Of all demographics, Black women most consistently support Democratic candidates. Their turnout and loyalty has inspired others supportive of the Biden campaign to express public gratitude for helping Democrats defeat President Trump.

That acknowledgement comes with mixed emotions for Black women, many of whom are moved to see Harris in the nation’s second-highest office—but want more than simple praise every four years for how they vote.

“We consistently get out and recruit people to vote. But I think about Breonna Taylor—when things like that happen and it comes time to get justice, we don’t get that. But when it’s time to put democracy on our backs, people are in awe and amazed of what we as Black women do,” says Ashley Hicks, a 34-year-old Washington, D.C. resident and senior director at an education technology company. “After that wears off, we’re back to square one of being mostly ignored and not appreciated or valued for what we bring to American society.”

This time, at least, the Black women who helped the Democratic ticket win were fighting for a fellow Black woman (and for Hicks, a fellow Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sister). Among the #WinWithBlackWomen collective, the group of almost 200 influential Black female leaders urged Biden, earlier in the presidential contest, to choose a Black woman as his VP “not because we wanted a Black women on the ticket, but because we knew it was a pathway to victory,” says Eaddy.

That prediction rang true for voters like Ashley Bankhead, a 28-year-old Washington, D.C. resident and account manager. “Seeing more of these Black women in politics, it makes me more engaged,” she says. “Seeing people in political leadership roles who also look like me makes me care more, makes me want to show up and make sure I’m voting.”

The history-making nature of this electoral victory made a difference in how some Black female voters felt about their decisive influence—and emphasized how crucial it is for Black women to support each other, says Minda Harts, the author of The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table.

“This showed the collective power Black women have to help each other rise,” says Harts. “When we collaborate, we can change history.”

With Harris in the White House, some are hopeful that the gratitude for Black women may not fade for the next four years this time around. It’s a message Harris herself brought home during her acceptance speech on Saturday. “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” she said onstage, “because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”

“That message resonates with me,” says Harts. “It’s about bringing others along with you. I know that visual on that stage in Delaware will signal to CEOs, to companies, to board members, that you can sponsor women of color, you can sponsor Black women—and look how we can change history.”

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