Latest news with #Federici
USA Today
03-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Iowa football director of operations Paul Federici announces retirement
With the 2025 Iowa football season just under two months away, the Hawkeyes will have a new Director of Operations as 21-year tenured Paul Federici announced his retirement on Tuesday after 21 years with the program. Federici spent the past 16 years as director of football operations, which followed a five-year tenure as director of athletic training services for the Hawkeyes. 'Paul has been an invaluable member of our program for more than 20 years,' head coach Kirk Ferentz said. 'He joined the team as an athletic trainer and rapidly became known for his skills, focus and commitment to the players. Several years later, Paul moved into the role of Director of Football Operations, which he has held for the past 16 years.' Among his duties as Director of Operations, Federici assisted with the planning, coordination, and implementation of Iowa's daily operation and travel plans beginning with the 2009 football season. Federici also served as a championship team operations liaison at the College Football Playoff National Championship games from 2015-19, served on the Rose Bowl Game Advisory Committee, and was the Big Ten representative on the National Football Operations Committee. 'It is incredibly challenging to manage all the details surrounding every facet of a football program — from logistics, to travel, to managing staff and player needs — and Paul has made it look effortless,' Ferentz added. 'We wish him well in retirement and thank him for making our program better.' In a statement of his own, Federici made sure to thank everyone he encountered during his 21 seasons with the program and share his appreciation for the knowledge he gained. "It has been an honor to contribute to the academic, athletic, and social experiences of the hundreds of players, 60+ football student managers, football staff, and extended student staff since 2004. Working with young people every day was beyond rewarding," said Federici. "It was a special privilege to learn from John Streif, Norm Parker, Ben Hansen, Andy Piro, Ken O'Keefe, Reese Morgan, and Dr. Ned Amendola,' added Federici. "Each provided unique personal and professional perspectives for which I will always be grateful. Coach Ferentz's leadership and consistent messaging to staff and players on skills focused on lifelong success is the fundamental cause of Iowa Football's sustained athletic and academic success." During his time on staff, the Hawkeyes won 172 games, had 18 winning seasons, shared two Big Ten Championships, won three Big Ten West Division titles, finished in the Big Ten's first division 19 times and appeared in 19 bowl games (including the 2020 Music City Bowl, which was canceled due to COVID). Before joining the Iowa program in 2004, Federici served as an assistant athletic trainer at Vanderbilt from 1987-93, where he later became the head athletic trainer for the Commodores from 1994-99. Between 1999 and 2004, he served as the head athletic trainer for the Seattle Seahawks for five seasons. Contact/Follow us @HawkeyesWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Iowa news, notes and opinions. Follow Scout on X: @SpringgateNews
Herald Sun
23-06-2025
- Herald Sun
US bombs Iran: Fears for Aussies stranded in Middle East
Don't miss out on the headlines from Middle East. Followed categories will be added to My News. While many businesses, schools and kindergartens are shut across Israel and residents are staying at home, more than 3800 Australians are unable to leave both Israel and Iran and they have no idea when they will be able to return home. Israel's air space remains closed following the US strike on Iran's nuclear facilities on Sunday which has left many people stranded in the Middle East for the foreseeable future. DFAT had buses and Royal Australian Air Force flights organised to get Australians out of the war zone, but these have now been put on hold as Israel's airspace remains closed and buses services cancelled. A group of Australians travelling together had their return flights booked on June 13 to return from a four-week holiday back to Australia but their plans were derailed when the latest conflict between Israel and Iran broke out. Liz Sveticic, 63, from Epping, who works as a personal carer, said she was all 'packed and ready to go on June 13' until 'all hell broke loose' between the two warring countries. 'We contacted all the authorities, the consular, the travel agents, everything possible and from my understanding we've been told to keep safe and keep where we are,' she told News Corp while on holiday in Tel Aviv. 'It's our risk if we want to go to Jordan, which is a very high risk which I'm not prepared to do. 'We have to sit and wait'. Ms Sveticic said she's being inundated by calls and messages from family and friends in Australia concerned for her safety but said many people at home are more stressed than she is while being stuck in the middle of a war zone. 'They (Australians) don't understand because of course everyone is ringing in panic and they are panicking more than we are panicking, they don't get it,' she said. 'Realistically I would love to go home, my granddaughter turned one yesterday, it's heartbreaking'. Sam Federici, 72, from Caulfield South, is also on holiday in Israel with his wife Liora, 74, and said they arrived in Israel on May 22 but are now trapped in Israel for the foreseeable future. Sitting in a cafe in Dizengoff Street – one of Tel Aviv's most popular food and fashion hubs – he said his family has been moving hotels as their stay keeps getting extended. Just hours after learning that America had destroyed three of Iran's nuclear plants he said hearing the news was 'unbelievable'. 'I think he's achieved in one fell blow what nobody could do for the last 20 years or 30 years,' Mr Federici said. 'Hopefully it's a chance for peace'. But Mr Federici said he was 'very disappointed' with the Australian government and its treatment of the Jewish community. 'I'm disappointed with Albanese, I'm disappointed with Penny Wong, I hate to say her name, I'm just disappointed with the way the ALP have treated Jewish people in Australia, as if they don't exist,' he said. 'What 120,000 Jews in Australia have achieved, no-one can come anywhere near it and the government is treating them as if they don't matter and as if they don't exist'. Originally published as US bombs Iran: Fears for Aussies stranded in Middle East
Time Magazine
10-06-2025
- General
- Time Magazine
Adam Smith, The Inventor of Capitalism Lived With His Mother. Here's Why That Matters
The man largely credited with inventing marketplace capitalism, Adam Smith, lived at home with his mother. While he wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776, she cooked and cleaned for him. This juicy morsel of history makes for such perfect satire, I can hardly stand it. How magnificent that the person responsible for defining what capitalism needed in order to function had unpaid help at home making his paid work possible! Notably, the necessity and value of domestic labor was absent from his reflections on men acting in their own self-interest. These were the real 'invisible hands' in Smith's accounting of the market, and their conspicuous exclusion is hardly surprising. It was a foregone conclusion that a woman's biologically predetermined role was to be the de facto caretaker of society. In the United States in 2025, not much has changed. Women are still more likely than men in heterosexual couples to do the work that never ends—the work that must be re-completed every single day, as Silvia Federici writes, a feminist who founded the Wages for Housework movement in the 1970s. A 2021 profile of Federici summarized the message of her life's work: Unpaid domestic work is a form of gendered economic oppression, and in some ways, the core exploitation upon which all of modern capitalism is built. In her 1975 book Wages Against Housework, Federici wrote, 'We have cooked, smiled, f-cked throughout the years not because it was easier for us than for anybody else, but because we did not have any other choice . . . we want to call work what is work, so that eventually we might rediscover what is love.' She rejected the idea that a 'labor of love' existed, or that any person in society was preordained to be more naturally subservient. For all our progress, women continue to consistently shoulder more than their fair share of the load. An aggregation of years of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Time Use Studies found that when both parents work for pay (whether part-time or full-time), the average employed man spends fifty-seven more minutes per day doing paid work than the average employed woman—but the average employed woman performs about one hour and ten minutes more unpaid household and caretaking labor per day. If you want to know why a woman might be spending less time and energy doing paid labor, the answer is: She's doing unpaid labor. As one way to measure the financial consequences of these differences, consider that women today retire with approximately 22% less Social Security income than their male counterparts, and about 57% as much retirement income overall. Worse yet, going years (or even decades) without any 'real' work while you're taking care of family members translates to zeroes in the Social Security work records, which means forfeiting access to Social Security payments of your own. Approximately one in five divorced women ends up in poverty, a rate 56% higher than that of divorced men. Sixty-one percent of women report that they left paid work for 'family responsibilities,' compared to 37% of men. These statistical disparities are often painted as gendered inevitabilities. When cultural attitudes dictate that women are society's 'natural' primary caregivers, not only is their paid labor valued less, but the attitude directly enables a complete dearth of support for families from the government—why do you need childcare or paid family leave if a woman's natural role is 'full-time mother'? As such, the universal logistical and financial burden of childcare falls on individual parents, with the lower-earning partner, often the mother, more likely to downshift their career to accommodate their family's needs, thereby all but guaranteeing a lifetime of financial disparity. Navigating our current paradigm requires a huge expense and serious sacrifice, and the majority of U.S. households find life without two incomes to be too precarious. Seventy percent of families are dual income, meaning both adults work for pay and need assistance from someone else to care for other family members while they not just that more families have two earners now: Of these dual-income households, women earn as much or more than men in 55% of them. Despite women's workplace gains, Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin found in her research that one adult often leans into their career and keeps the 'greedy' job, as she calls it, which may be more demanding and higher-paying. The other adult typically downshifts, and while they may stay employed in some capacity, they tend to be the one who's on call to leave work to pick up a sick kid from school, take care of the laundry duty, coordinate the goodie bags for the class party, and—ultimately—defer the type of paid work that would lead to the accumulation of resources. Goldin theorizes this is the primary reason the wage gap widens as women age and their familial responsibilities increase; that it's the reason why more men end up in leadership positions, and why men are far more likely to earn the high incomes necessary to build wealth be high earners than women. Being financially prepared for these circumstances can provide more optionality when you face them. There's a practical, mundane reason why many women in the U.S. today find themselves in a position where they must downshift or leave work altogether to raise children. It's as boring as it is disheartening: the absurdly high expense of childcare. Taking your unpaid domestic labor and transforming it into someone else's paid labor costs money, and many couples look at their respective salaries and choose to forfeit or deprioritize the lower paycheck so one parent can save the family the cost of care by performing it for free. (Some people prefer this arrangement and choose it regardless of the availability of another choice. Others feel it's their only rational choice.) This state of affairs disadvantages women across the socioeconomic spectrum—it's not just those who must find space in their budgets to pay for care work, but those providing it. Right now, this work is almost always low-wage, which means these jobs are often worked by women, too: 94% of childcare workers and 97% of prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers are women. Black and Latina women are disproportionately represented in this group, comprising shares of the early childcare sector that are nearly twice as high as their shares in the overall workforce. This work is undeniably valuable—but it's not currently valued, and it won't be until we begin paying fair wages for the labor that allows the rest of society to function. Understanding how to save and pay for childcare before you ever need it such that you're not automatically and singularly faced with this career-versus-family dichotomy is just about the only practical option families have to prevent women from being sidelined in the workforce as a gendered default. The U.S. leaves families with few other 'choices' if they want to have kids, which is why the conversation about a mother's 'choice' to stay home often rings so hollow: How can one make fully autonomous choices in a system that structurally incentivizes one path over another?This is not a discussion about our choices. It's an examination of which real options are available to us in the first place. Our true goal is not a superficial 'choice,' but liberation from the systems that limit which paths we feel we can choose. In the meantime, in America's version of Adam Smith's capitalism, diligently saving ahead of time is the best choice we have.
Forbes
09-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
This Hair Care Entrepreneur Doubled Her Fortune, And Plans To Do It Again
After selling her first company, John Frieda Professional Hair Care, in 2002, Gail Federici thought she was done with hair forever. She'd spent the prior 13 years growing John Frieda, a partnership with the legendary British hair stylist of the same name which she cofounded in 1989, and made an estimated $170 million fortune from its sale to Japanese giant Kao Corporation. 'I felt like we'd been there, done it,' the 76-year-old Federici tells Forbes in a phone call from her home in Wilton, Connecticut. 'I'm always interested in learning new things and I thought, 'I don't want to do the same thing all over again.'' For the next five years, Federici made a massive career pivot. Inspired by her husband James Smith, who is a musician, and two teenage daughters' interest in singing, she launched her own music label in London, Hometown Entertainment, signing several artists including a U.K. band called GX and the English rapper Taio Cruz, who would later release such hits as 'Dynamite' and 'Break Your Heart' under a different label. This detour didn't last long. By 2013, Federici had retreated from her fledgling music career and launched Color Wow, a hair care line she says was inspired by her sister's graying roots. Her first product: an eyeshadow-like root cover up product that lasts until the user's next hair wash. Color Wow has since released over 60 products combating everything from frizz to dryness. 'They're solving everyday problems,' explains Susan Anderson, a senior analyst at New York investment bank Canaccord Genuity covering beauty. This niche has proved highly lucrative for Color Wow. Jennifer Lopez used its products during her 2020 Super Bowl performance and the brand's $28 anti-frizz 'Dream Coat Spray' treatment is one of Sephora's best-selling hair products. The Wilton, CT-based company says it recorded some $300 million in revenue last year. Federici, Color Wow's sole owner, has done it all without bringing in outside investors. Forbes estimates the brand's value to be about half a billion, though the growing value of her Color Wow stake, which is now worth more than double what she got from John Frieda, has helped propel her net worth to an estimated $600 million. She ranked No. 61 spot on Forbes' 2025 list of America's Richest Self-Made Women, published in June. 'I always say to everybody here, "When you make something that matters, you make money." It's not about making money first, it's about making something that matters to people and then you'll be successful,' says Federici. Jamel Toppin for Forbes Hair care wasn't Federici's first passion. Growing up in Connecticut, where she watched her father ditch his law degree to be a computer software developer, she admits she had no real plan other than to live an 'adventurous life.' She studied English and Art History at the University of Connecticut, and then, after graduating in 1970, followed in the footsteps of two of her three siblings who studied law and enrolled in the University of Bridgeport Law School (now known as Quinnipiac University School of Law). While in night school at Bridgeport, she got a job as an assistant at Zotos, a hair care brand headquartered in Darien, Connecticut. Federici worked her way up the ranks at Zotos, quit law school during her last year and eventually became vice president of corporate communications, where she helped develop the ideas behind popular products of brands like Bain de Terre and Acclaim. Her first love, she says, was not her career but traveling. At 27, she enrolled at the University of Paris to study French; at 28, she started taking drum lessons and singing in a band at night; and by 29, she was in law school at night. 'I was definitely all over the place!," admits Federici, who says 'The only clear vision I had was that I wanted a life where I could work between the U.S. and the U.K.' It was during her time at Zotos that she met London-based John Frieda at a hair care industry convention in London in 1988. He had a small product line and was looking for guidance on how to take it further. Meanwhile, Federici had been considering striking out on her own and launching an ad agency, in part because one of her twin daughters was born with a congenital heart disease, putting a new strain on her family's finances. In 1989, she became his business partner and moved to London. A year later they launched their Frizz-Ease serum, one of the first ever products to target frizz; it was an instant hit. Later came popular brands Sheer Blonde and Beach Blonde. All of this caught the attention of Japan-based Kao Corp., which offered the partners $450 million in cash to buy them out in 2002 to gain access to the growing hair care market. It was an amount that Federici now describes as 'irresponsible to refuse,' though she admits 'I did feel quite lost after [the sale] because it happened so quickly and it was our life.' With Color Wow, Federici was able to get back to the roots of what made John Frieda a hit. Before launching the company in 2013, she brought back Dr. Joe Cincotta, a chemist she first met at Zotos and later recruited to John Frieda. It's Cincotta who helped come up with the root cover-up, which is one of Color Wow's top-selling products. Color Wow does about half its sales through its website and the rest through around 4,500 brick-and-mortar locations including Sephora, Ulta Beauty and independent hair salons. It's also grown its reach through celebrity marketing. Early on, the company forged a partnership with hair stylist to the stars Chris Appleton, who used Color Wow's products on his clients including Jennifer Lopez, the Kardashians and Ariana Grande. In February 2021, Color Wow launched the 'Money Masque' with Appleton, a $45 hair treatment for 'super glossy, expensive-looking hair.' A number of Color Wow's other products were inspired by Federici's personal hair struggles. The 'Dream Coat Spray' came about after the hair care mogul attended an Aerosmith concert at Jones Beach. 'I remember I blew out my hair perfectly, which would take me a long time… and went to the ladies' room halfway through, looked in the mirror and was appalled,' she recalls. 'It was a massive, and I mean massive, head of frizz.' John Frieda and Gail Federici At John Frieda, Federici had helped develop Frizz-Ease, which made it easier to blow dry frizzy hair into smooth locks. But the products didn't stand up to humidity. She and Cincotta got to work. Formulas may go back to the lab 50 times before they get the green light, says Federici. After many tries, Cincotta arrived at Federici's office with a demonstration: two swatches of hair, one treated and one untreated. He used a water dropper on both. The untreated hair absorbed the droplets instantly, while the ones on the treated swatch beaded up on top. By 2023, according to Color Wow, it was selling one bottle nearly every 4 seconds in the U.S. and the U.K.; that's more than 21,500 bottles per day and over 151,000 bottles in just one week. 'Corporate mentality is just come out with a gel, come out with this, they don't think inspirational,' says Cincotta, who notes that he and Federici avoid hitching themselves to trends and instead look for new raw materials that may help them do 'the impossible.' According to Federici, she and Cincotta keep a list of all the products they hope to develop one day, which used to include Dream Coat. Some are still scientifically impossible, she says, but others may be only months away. If all testing goes well, Color Wow is hoping to launch a 'pretty major product' next summer. Photos, From Left: Daniela Amodei, Selena Gomez, Gwynne Shotwell. Illustration by Ben Kirchner for Forbes The beauty industry isn't looking quite as attractive as it was a few years ago. Multiple brands acquired in the period leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic or during it have since seen their valuations sink. One prominent example: Olaplex Holdings, a hair brand developed by two chemists that advertises itself around strengthening technologies, debuted on the Nasdaq with a valuation of $15.9 billion in 2021. Today, the company is worth just $900 million. By focusing on solving specific issues, starting with frizz and graying roots, Color Wow has tapped into a lucrative trend, explains Dan Su, a beauty analyst at Morningstar. 'Consumers are depending more on specific products for different hair types,' she notes. One report published by consulting firm McKinsey last September went so far as to predict the 'skinification of hair,' describing how the elaborate routines and specialized products once associated with skin care are moving into the hair category, helping propel its compound annual growth rate to 5% through 2028. At the same time, there are a number of brands vying for a share of this growing market. There's Ouai, launched by Kim Kardashian's hair stylist and friend Jen Atkins in 2016, and K18, founded in 2020, which gained a cult following online thanks to its molecular repair mask targeting chemically treated hair — not to mention new entries from global giants like L'Oréal. 'The prestige haircare area has gotten a lot more competitive,' says Anderson. Two or three decades ago, 'if you had frizzy hair or if you wanted to treat your hair after coloring, there were probably not a whole lot of options out there compared to today,' adds Su. Despite the increased competition and downturn, there are some blockbuster beauty deals still breaking through. In May, publicly traded e.l.f. announced that it was acquiring Hailey Bieber's skincare and makeup company Rhode in a deal that is potentially worth $1 billion, though around $200 million of that is tied up in the company meeting certain benchmarks post-acquisition. 'I think there's definitely still appetite from large consumer product companies,' Anderson says of the M&A environment in beauty. 'We've seen a lot of them get bought by Unilever and stuff like that… There's still appetite for a good brand.' In April, Reuters reported Color Wow was exploring a sale at a $1 billion valuation. Federici confirms she's been approached by potential buyers for five years. 'The timing has just not been right for us,' she says, adding that they're 'talking and seeing what makes sense.' If she were to sell, Federici recognizes she might end up in a similar position as after the John Frieda sale. 'I can't imagine not doing anything,' she says. But at the same time, she seems to be feeling a familiar limitation with her own industry. 'Every single formula of ours is completely different because it's a different issue that we're addressing. But at the end of the day, it's still hair care products. I think at some point I would like to figure out some way to make a difference in another way.'
Reuters
01-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Color Wow's owner explores $1 billion sale of haircare brand, sources say
NEW YORK, April 1 (Reuters) - Gail Federici, the owner of Color Wow, is looking to find a buyer for the popular haircare brand that she founded over a decade ago, in a deal that could value the company at about $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Federici, a serial entrepreneur and a 35-year veteran of the haircare industry, tapped boutique investment bank Houlihan Lokey (HLI.N), opens new tab to evaluate takeover interest, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the deliberations are confidential. The talks are at an advanced stage, the sources added. Potential acquirers include consumer products makers and private equity firms, the sources said. Federici and Color Wow did not respond to requests for comment. Houlihan Lokey declined to comment. Federici is a veteran in the haircare industry, having previously co-founded John Frieda Professional Hair Care with John Frieda. The duo sold the company in 2002 to Japan's Kao Corporation for $450 million. Color Wow, launched by Federici in 2013, is known for its products for colored hair like Root Cover Up and Dream Coat. The brand generates around $300 million of annual revenue, one of the sources said. Federici's twin daughters, Alex and Brit Smith, also have roles at the company.
