Latest news with #Whalen
CNBC
30-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs starting businesses in record numbers
In the face of the anti-diversity, equity and inclusion environment, LBGTQ+ small business owners have remained resilient — and are actually starting businesses in record numbers. Some 10% of entrepreneurs who started their own businesses last year identified as LGBTQ — a "milestone" and a 50% increase from 2023, according to a recent survey from small business software company Gusto. That brings the LGBTQ entrepreneurship representation in line with the general population, the company said. "For too long, LGBTQ entrepreneurs have faced barriers to capital, visibility, and opportunity," Nich Tremper, Gusto's senior economist, said in an email. "Reaching parity in business creation shows that more LGBTQ people are not only stepping into entrepreneurship, but doing so on their own terms — building companies rooted in care, autonomy, and community." About a third of LGBTQ entrepreneurs said they started a business so they can be a positive influence on their community. For 38-year-old Lissete Briggs, who goes by Liz Whalen, opening up her hair salon Rebel Rebel in Libertyville, Illinois, was a way to give a safe space to her clients. She started her business with former co-worker Ashley Levin in 2020 after working in the industry for several years. The salon they worked for at the time was very conservative, Whalen said. "I have a lot of gender queer, non-binary and trans clients, and they definitely did not feel comfortable there, so it was not a good fit for me," she explained. "We wanted a more inclusive space." Whalen isn't feeling any of the effects of the backlash against DEI and only feels support from her clients and her community, including a local LGBTQ+ center. "They support us. We support them," Whalen said. "It's really a beautiful thing to see everybody kind of come together and support our little business." Jonathan Lovitz, senior vice president of campaigns and communications at the Human Rights Campaign, said that is emblemantic of the community across the board in the face of any anti-DEI efforts or cuts to small business funding. President Donald Trump has signed executive orders targeting DEI programs in both business and the public sector. The administration has also proposed cuts to the Small Business Administration. "LGBT business owners are extraordinarily resilient," Lovitz said. The average American small business goes under around the five-year mark, but those that are certified LBGTQ+ are, on average, 12 years or older, he noted. "They're already good at sticking it out through the tough times," Lovitz added. "The pendulum swings back and forth on government and corporate support, but these companies are thriving because they're great companies." In fact, LBGTQ-owned businesses contribute $1.7 trillion to the United States economy, according to the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Danielle Stinger, who owns Dandi Cleaning & Organizing in Atlanta, is one of those businesses. Stinger, who is 37 years old and also considers herself pansexual, started her business in 2022, after doing it as a side hustle for years. "In the political environment that we are in, especially with the last election, ... I have lost clients because of my choice in the LGBT community and good riddance," said Stringer, who is currently in a relationship with a man after an 8-year relationship with a woman. However, she's also found a lot of support. "The great thing about being your own business owner is that you're allowed to choose — you get to choose who you work with and who you don't work with," she said. Gusto's Tremper said that is a benefit that many in the community likely crave. "LGBTQ founders were 30% more likely than non-LGBTQ founders to say that they started their business in order to be their own boss," he said. "This could signal a desire for more autonomy, but for traditionally marginalized groups it's also possible that they're starting a business to avoid discrimination — either overt or more subtle — in the traditional workplace."
Elle
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Designer Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen Celebrates Witchy Women
Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen has been thinking about medieval times a lot lately. And not just because of the techno-feudalism that has taken over our world. For her fall 2025 show, she collaborated with artist Vasaris Balzekas on surreal armored plates, which served as a foil to her delicate corseted gowns. Whalen had always been averse to the motif, but, she says, 'We're living in a time now that is incredibly violent, and we're being exposed to a lot of brutality. I thought it would be a striking thing to explore visually and not shy away from commenting on the time we're living through, which is quite dark.' Held at Performance Space New York in the East Village, the candlelit show ended dramatically, with the designer herself snuffing out each flame. The Middle Ages are not the only historical period the Brooklyn-based designer has dug into in her work: Over the short history of her label, everything from Victorian petticoats and corseting to 17th-century panniers has made an appearance. She is fascinated by the different forms of body modification we have seen over the centuries, and the conundrum of how to reference them in contemporary dress. Whalen didn't always see a place for herself in fashion. Growing up in Massachusetts, she was immersed in the 'unschooling' movement, which encourages students to freely pursue their own interests. At 12, she learned to sew from a local women's sewing circle. She remembers thinking, 'I have no idea how I'm going to bridge this hippie side of me, literally climbing trees barefoot,' with the fashion industry. When she began working for the art-influenced label Eckhaus Latta, it clicked into place that she didn't need to negate that side of herself to succeed. Whalen went on to found her own label, and makes her ethereal creations from deadstock fabric, upcycled bedsheets, and found linens, among other materials. She's drawn to these sources not just because they are sustainable, but because they bring her back to an older, craft-based tradition where people held onto items for generations. 'The way I think we can create this sustainable-future proposal is not through the materiality of things, but through our emotional relationship with these pieces,' she says. 'I think that is the only way that we're going to get people to consume less.'
New Straits Times
16-06-2025
- Politics
- New Straits Times
Once known for civility, Minnesota succumbs to spread of political violence
FROM the pulpit on Sunday, Father Joe Whalen exhorted his parishioners to avoid the kind of extreme partisanship and hate that appeared to be behind the killing of one of the church's own, Democratic Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman. It was a message that Whalen felt his congregation needed to hear, even at the Catholic church where Hortman once taught Sunday school, and in a state known for the political civility of a bygone era. In his homily at the Church of St. Timothy, Whalen told his parish to adhere to the Christian message of peace and warned against responding to political discourse with unkindness or anger, especially when cloaked in anonymity online. "We can choose all that by our words, by our thoughts, by our actions or we can walk a different path, and we can invite the cycle of retribution," Whalen said. "We know what we need to do." Whalen spoke one day after a gunman killed Hortman and her husband – a crime Governor Tim Walz characterised as a "politically motivated assassination" – and shot and wounded State Senator John Hoffman and his wife. The suspect, whom police identified as 57-year-old Vance Boelter, is now in custody. The shootings come amid the most sustained period of political violence in the United States since the 1970s. Reuters has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts since supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Last summer, Trump, a Republican, survived two assassination attempts during his election campaign. In April, an assailant set fire to the official residence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. Yet the shootings outside Minneapolis seemed to deliver an outsized shock to many, arriving during a stretch of days in which protests over immigration roiled Los Angeles, a US Senator was forcibly removed from a press conference and a rare military parade rolled though the streets of Washington. Not only did the shootings serve as a stark reminder of the spread of political violence, they occurred in a state perceived by many - rightly or wrongly - to be a haven of civic-mindedness and bipartisanship, an impression captured in the cultural stereotype "Minnesota nice." While Minnesota leans blue in state-wide races, control of the legislature is evenly split between the parties, requiring lawmakers to compromise to get anything done. Both Hortman and Hoffman were known to work across the aisle. "Minnesota has a unique reputation, and I think it's somewhat merited. We have typically, at least politically, not been as excessive as other places," David Hann, former chairman of the state Republican Party, told Reuters. "But I think that has changed." Several parishioners said the racial justice protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, which were accompanied by looting and violence, had punctured any sense that their state was immune to the excesses of polarisation. "The violence is here," said Carolyn Breitbach, 81, after attending Sunday Mass. "I think people are interested in their own agenda. They want to take things into their own hands and make things right." One of Hortman's last acts as a lawmaker was in fact a compromise. Last week, she cast the lone Democratic vote for a bill that cut healthcare benefits for adult undocumented immigrants – a provision she and her party did not want – to secure a budget deal for the state. Hortman, the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, teared up as she explained her vote. Larry Kraft, a Democratic colleague of Hortman in the House, said he has seen the rhetoric coarsen in the past few years. "How can it not? The discourse everywhere is becoming harsher and more partisan," Kraft told Reuters. "That said, I think we do a reasonable job in Minnesota of bridging that. We just did with the budget that we passed." The 2024 election ratcheted up political tensions in Minnesota. Then-candidate Trump and his allies went hard after Walz, who was Vice President Kamala Harris's running mate, over Minnesota's expansions of abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Harris won the state with 50.9% of the vote to Trump's 46.7%. Trump narrowed his margin of loss from 2020, however, suggesting a shift to the right. The last time a Republican won Minnesota was Richard Nixon in 1972. Trump condemned the shootings in Minnesota, but told ABC News on Sunday that he had not called Walz, while criticising him as a "terrible governor" who was "grossly incompetent." Erin Koegel, a Democrat in the state House, pointed to those comments and said Trump was fanning political divisions. "He's the one who is lighting a fire," said Koegel, who attends St. Timothy, adding that she was disappointed that her Republican colleagues in Minnesota were not "stepping up to say that this isn't right." White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson accused Democrats of trying to exploit the "senseless tragedy" and "blame President Trump — a survivor of two assassination attempts — who is unifying the country and Making America Safe Again." Koegel pointed to Hortman as a model of how a politician should behave, recalling how Hortman made her appointment to committee leadership positions contingent upon her promising to be kind and polite to her Republican counterparts. "That was something that she always preached," Koegel said. "And even when there were really divisive issues for debate on the floor, she would always just be like let's not be angry and mean. We need to be able to debate this civilly."
CNBC
09-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Here's where to find the best income opportunities right now, according to TCW CIO
Investors looking for income in the current environment may want to turn to securitized products, according to Bryan Whalen, chief investment officer and portfolio manager at Los Angeles-based TCW. Right now investors are in "the waiting place" for the next few months as the direction of the economy gets sorted out, said Whalen. While the outcome is still uncertain, Whalen thinks the economy will likely weaken more than the market expects. Yet in many parts of the bond market, investors aren't being compensated for credit risk, he said. Key inflation data comes out this week, with the May consumer price index due on Wednesday and the producer price index released on Friday. "There's a chance everything's all right and it all works out and smooth landing and no landing and all [those] plane analogies. However, if that's the case, that seems to be already embedded in what you get paid to take risk in corporate bonds and high yield bonds and things like that," Whalen said in an interview with CNBC. "If it's not the case … it feels like there needs to be a repricing." The money manager is on a TCW team that oversees more than $170 billion in fixed income assets. While corporate credit is rich, securitized assets are relatively cheap, he said. The latter make up about two-thirds of the assets in the TCW Flexible Income ETF (FLXR), which Whalen co-manages. FLXR YTD mountain TCW Flexible Income ETF year to date The exchange-traded fund has a 5.9% 30-day SEC yield, as of May 31, and a 0.4% expense ratio. It aims to generate consistent income and deliver long-term capital appreciation, and is meant to serve as a complement to a traditional fixed-income portfolio rather than replace it, Whalen said. "We're trying to balance a total-rate-of-return mindset — which is [to] stay high quality, stay liquid, so that we can take advantage of bond market dislocation in the future — with still trying to deliver good income for our shareholders," he explained. "From our perspective, the best way to do that is high-quality securitized [debt], which is offering decent spread levels and decent compensation." Breaking down the portfolio The allocation to securitized assets is distributed between agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS), non-agency mortgages, asset-backed securities and commercial-mortgage-backed securities, Whalen said. Agency MBS, largely from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae , is essentially the highest quality asset you can buy after Treasurys, since they are seen as indirectly or directly backed by the government, he said. Those securities are expected to benefit, "in an environment where yields are still bouncing around — and you're not going to expect that to tighten in — but you are getting paid a decent income while you wait for an eventual remediation in the price and or in the spread," Whalen said. For the trade to work, you have to have a long-term view that interest rates will come down at some point and volatility will subside, he noted. "We'll get through 'the waiting place' and we'll get to a steady-state yield curve that should also bring in, maybe, buyers that have … certainly pulled back from the market in the last few years," he added. Non-agency mortgages have less interest-rate sensitivity and therefore are not as volatile, he noted. Meanwhile, asset-backed securities are essentially a compilation of many different sub-asset classes. "Asset-backed securities really allow you to tailor the specific receivable you want to have exposure to — and then you can pick which parts of the capital structure" to get paid from, Whalen said. "For us, because we're defensively leaning, we can buy good structures at the top of the capital structure, get a floating-rate coupon for anywhere between, let's call it, about 100 basis points over SOFR." The Secured Overnight Financing Rate, or SOFR, is a benchmark interest rate for bonds and loans. Within this space, Whalen likes collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), which are pools of floating-rate loans to businesses. He favors CLOs tied to single-family rental loans, data centers and assets related to the electrification of the economy. Lastly, while there is still a "fundamental dark cloud" hanging over the commercial MBS sector, partly due to the outlook for office real estate, there are still areas of opportunity, Whalen said. He specifically likes those assets that focus on a single property, rather than a pool of many properties. "When you buy these bonds, particularly at the top of the capital structure, these underlying loans don't allow a lot of prepayment risk," he said. "The prices or the spreads aren't really subject to interest rate volatility." You can also get anywhere from about 100 to 200 basis points over Treasurys for top tier portions of the capital structure, he noted.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Paige Bueckers' pro debut in Minnesota was a reflection of her roots and inspiration
MINNEAPOLIS — Ten miles southwest of where Dallas Wings rookie Paige Bueckers received a roaring ovation Wednesday night at the Target Center, she first learned how to shoot a basketball. She was just another anonymous ponytailed kid who spent her winters in the gymnasium. It's a part of the culture here, she says now with the gift of hindsight, and a credit to biting Minnesota snowstorms — basketball blessings in the form of subzero temps and bone-chilling winds. Bueckers grew up playing in gyms across the state, then the region, then the country, her name slowly gaining more recognition and acclaim with every passing season. She did so in the shadows of a basketball dynasty being born with the Minnesota Lynx on the shoulders (and passes) of another Minnesota kid — Lindsay Whalen, a point guard who grew up in an era without the WNBA. Whalen, who hailed from Hutchinson, stayed home and led the Gophers to their first Final Four appearance in 2004 before being drafted by the Connecticut Sun as the No. 4 pick. When Whalen came back to Minnesota in 2010, Bueckers was 10 years old, an avid basketball fan eager for the success Whalen and the Lynx were about to achieve. Advertisement From 2011 to 2017, the Minnesota Lynx won four WNBA titles. The core players from that run — Whalen, Maya Moore, Rebekkah Brunson, Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles — now have their numbers retired, hanging from the Target Center rafters. Bueckers vividly remembers those days of regularly attending games. She can recount the rivalry with the Los Angeles Sparks, the 2017 WNBA Finals series played at the Barn (Minnesota's home gym) while the Target Center underwent renovations, and the way Cheryl Reeve coached. 'The dynasty Cheryl created is something to admire and aspire to be,' she said. Wednesday night, five years after leaving for UConn — where Bueckers became an international basketball star; name, image and likeness darling; and finally, last month, a national champion — she was back in her home state. But this time, she was there as a visitor. Over the last few years, she's rarely made it back, typically only in August to see family and friends, soak up the last parts of summer and visit the Minnesota State Fair. Advertisement In her first appearance in Target Center as a WNBA player, she notched her first professional double-double — 12 points and 10 assists. Even with the small heroics from the No. 1 draft pick, it wasn't enough to tip the scales for the Wings, who dropped to 0-3 on the season with the 85-81 loss. Before this homecoming, Bueckers was peppered with questions about her return. What would it be like? How would she feel? What local haunts would she visit? She had prepared for it like any other game, she said — a veteran-like answer to an expected question. When Wednesday came, she really tried to approach it as she would if it were in any other venue. But this one, she acknowledges, hit differently. When she took the floor, it wasn't just any other opponent; it was the Lynx. It wasn't just any other coach; it was Reeve (with Whalen and Brunson as assistants beside her). And it wasn't just any other gym; it was the Target Center. For years, she has talked about inspiring the next generation of players. But here, those words about seeing herself in the stands were different. They weren't theoretical. Advertisement 'To see all the little girls and people in the stands and realize that was you just about 10, 15 years ago,' Bueckers said. 'You never take it for granted how blessed we are to be able to play in this league and to play at this level.' In high school, Bueckers played in the Target Center for the 2018 state title with her Hopkins team. She scored 37 points, but the rest of her team scored just 26 as it lost to Eastview. After the game, Eastview coach Molly Kasper said: 'She is going to probably be in the WNBA one day.' The breadcrumbs Bueckers left in the Target Center along the way provided even more proof. Advertisement Four years later, Bueckers was back at the Target Center with UConn as a sophomore point guard in her second consecutive Final Four appearance. She led the Huskies in scoring (14) and rebounds (six), but it wasn't enough to overcome South Carolina. Now, three years later, she was back as a WNBA rookie. So, no, Wednesday night was not just like any other night. It couldn't have been. She understands there are players not much older than she who grew up without a professional league to which they could aspire. She knows there are plenty of women who put in the time she did without knowing whether the WNBA would exist in which to play. Bueckers had a dynastic franchise in her backyard, growing up at a time in Minnesota when professional athletic excellence was synonymous only with women's professional sports. From 2011 to 2018, the Twins and Timberwolves each made the postseason only once, the Vikings made the playoffs three times and once out of the wild-card game. The Wild — the most successful major professional franchise at the time not named Lynx — got to the NHL conference quarterfinals once. Advertisement Meanwhile, the Lynx were on a historic run that set a standard for WNBA teams for years to come. And Bueckers was there to witness it all. 'They were everything I aspired to be,' Bueckers said of that dynasty. 'It gave me something to work for and admire. To be able to see what you want to be is very important. Growing up, that was a huge part of the reason why I wanted to be in this league.' Today, Bueckers is here certainly because of her own making, but also because of the people and players — many of whom wore Lynx uniforms — who showed her how it could be done. In the stands Wednesday night, hundreds could tell their own Bueckers story about how they know her or how she inspired them. In her own way, Bueckers could turn that back to them. She couldn't point out all of her family members, Hopkins and AAU teammates and friends in the arena, but she was grateful to have them there for a night that, she acknowledged, was different from all the others. 'To have them here, it means everything to me,' she said. 'Because they were a huge part of my story in getting here.' Advertisement Among that group, she includes her Wednesday night opponent: the Minnesota Lynx. This article originally appeared in The Athletic. Minnesota Lynx, Dallas Wings, WNBA 2025 The Athletic Media Company
