• A Swiss International Air Lines flight made an emergency landing last month.
• The Airbus A220's cabin was filled with smoke after encountering an engine problem.
• An autopsy said a flight attendant died due to hypoxic brain damage, Blick reported.

A 23-year-old Swiss International Air Lines flight attendant died due to a "severe lack of oxygen to the brain," according to an autopsy reported by Blick, Switzerland's largest newspaper.

It comes after an incident on December 23, when Swiss Flight 1885 encountered engine problems, and the cabin was filled with smoke.

The Airbus A220 was flying from Bucharest, Romania, to Zurich when it made an emergency landing in Graz, Austria.

All 74 passengers and five crew members were evacuated, 17 of whom required medical attention, the airline said.

A week later, Swiss announced that one of the flight's cabin crew members died in the hospital in Graz.

"We are devastated at our dear colleague's death," said CEO Jens Fehlinger. "His loss has left us all in the deepest shock and grief. Our thoughts are with his family, whose pain we cannot imagine."

Blick reported that the public prosecutor's office in Graz has launched an investigation into the flight attendant's death.

A spokesperson told the newspaper that a Friday autopsy found the provisional cause of death to be hypoxic brain damage and cerebral edema, meaning brain swelling.

"The brain was massively damaged by a severe lack of oxygen, and the young flight attendant died of it in the intensive care unit," the spokesperson told Blick.

"We are also looking into the role played by the respiratory mask that the flight attendant was wearing," he added.

The Graz public prosecutor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.

Swiss said the investigation's initial findings point to a problem in one of the plane's Pratt & Whitney engines.

"We have no indication that the safety of the aircraft type is in question," it added.

• Hertz is asking some people renting Teslas and other EVs if they want to buy their vehicles.
• The rental company said last year it would sell 30,000 EVs amid a slowdown in demand.
• Hertz is offering used Teslas for sale for as little as about $18,000.

Hertz is continuing to reduce the number of EVs in its fleet by offering customers renting an electric car the opportunity to buy it at a bargain price.

The rental company said last year it would sell 30,000 EVs including Tesla, Polestar, and Volvo cars, due to the cost of repairs and maintenance.

The fire sale means Teslas are being listed at discounted prices on Hertz's website, and now the company appears to be asking some renters if they'd like to buy their EV.

One Hertz customer was offered a 2023 Tesla Model 3 — which sells new for $35,000 after federal incentives — for $17,913, according to an email posted on Reddit that called the move an opportunity "to think of this rental as a test drive!"

Other renters said they'd been offered similar deals for Polestar and Chevy electric cars.

A Hertz spokesperson told Business Insider the emails were part of an effort to give all customers the chance to buy either an EV or combustion-engine car that will soon be put up for sale by the company. Rental companies usually sell cars after they have been driven a certain number of miles.

Hertz's decision to buy 100,000 Teslas for $4.2 billion in 2021 was hailed as a turning point for the EV industry, but the rental company's electric shift hasn't gone to plan.

Its EV fleet, which also includes cars from General Motors and Polestar, has been hit by higher-than-expected repair costs and low resale values as demand for EVs has slowed over the past year.

Hertz's EV fire sale means buyers can pick up a used Tesla Model 3 or Model Y for as little as $17,900 and $27,700.

The flu-like virus can lead to serious illness among vulnerable groups, such as young children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.

Having a big baby can do a number on your body, and I was no exception.

The Ukrainian president said he could not come during the war "unless President Trump invites me personally."

The South Korean military said the weapon may have been a variant capable of carrying a hypersonic payload.

Ian Bremmer, in his closely watched annual risk forecast, warns that the world has entered "a uniquely dangerous period of world history, on par with only the 1930s and the early Cold War."

The big picture: "People everywhere are facing heightened geopolitical instability driven by a lack of global leadership," writes Bremmer, the president and founder of Eurasia Group, in its "Top Risks 2025" report.

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• "We are heading back to the law of the jungle, where the strongest do what they can, while the weakest are condemned to suffer what they must."

Zoom in: Topping the list out Monday is the arrival of GZERO — the global order "slipping away."

• "No single power or group of powers is willing or able to set a global agenda. It's a world of many pretenders, but no leaders."

The report's other top risks are:

2. The Rule of Don

3. U.S.-China breakdown

4. Trumponomics

5. Russia still rogue

6. Beggar thy world

7. Iran on the ropes

8. Mexican standoff

9. Ungoverned spaces

10. AI unbound

Flashback: Bremmer's group ranked "The United States vs. itself" as the No. 1 risk heading into last year, a nod to the high stakes 2024 election.

• When my husband was diagnosed with cancer, I was shell-shocked.
• My routines were upended at the same time I became his caregiver.
• I reached out to family and other caregivers for support.

People often remark on how healthy my husband is. At 82, Barry scampers up and down hills like a mountain goat and out-paddles many members of his kayak group. So it came as a shock in September when we discovered he had stage 2 lymphoma. Cancer? Unbelievable.

I was amazed by Barry's reaction to his cancer diagnosis. He didn't ruminate endlessly over what he could have done to prevent it, as I might have. A science journalist, he has researched and written a great deal about cancer. "Some cells mutate when they divide," he said to me. "If they didn't, we wouldn't be here. It's part of evolution."

His diagnosis changed our plans — and our routines

Not only did we cancel an international trip when we found out, but in spectacularly bad timing, the routines that anchored my life also came to an abrupt stop. Both my yoga teachers stopped teaching, my weekly walking partner left town for the season, and as a freelance writer, I had few assignments.

In the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, I'm known as a "J," a person who needs structure. The prospect of several empty, shapeless months was deeply discouraging for me.

It took time to adapt to being a caregiver

Because Barry's treatment plan involved no radiation and only one chemo infusion every three weeks, we joked that he was experiencing 'cancer lite.' But his energy level dipped precipitously, and sometimes, I felt as though I had chemo fatigue, too. Our home situation reminded me of the beginning of the pandemic, except everything stopped for us while the rest of the world carried on.

The uncertainty was the worst part. After the oncologist and nurses repeated the mantra "only three chemo treatments" several times, we optimistically penciled in the date when we hoped to fly to Mexico, where we spend part of the year. Then one week, during an appointment, our oncologist offhandedly said, "Could be five, maybe six treatments."

What? I fumbled for Barry's hand under the table. "I thought you said three," I said, trying to sound neutral.

He shrugged. "We don't know for sure."

I was furious at him for messing with our plans. How dare he? Of course, I was ignoring the fact that despite all the advances in the field, cancer is still an unpredictable science.

I reached out to family and other caregivers for support

As Barry's caregiver, I felt a responsibility to be resilient, but didn't always feel that way. My sister helped. "Call me anytime," she said. She sent Barry homemade oatmeal cookies with a note that said, "The way I'm supporting you is by supporting Louisa."

Through the internet, I found an online support group for caregivers sponsored by the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. It was only once a month — not enough for me — but I appreciated hearing from other caregivers about their cancer situations. We shared stories about feeling overlooked and neglected at times. Listening to them, I felt grateful that Barry's case was relatively mild. We weren't living through grinding years of cancer, and he wasn't going to die (not yet, anyway!).

I also reached out to other family members. My brother-in-law, who lives with depression, told me that accompanying my sister to chemo appointments during her breast cancer a few years earlier had given him a sense of purpose and direction. Unlike me, he wasn't perturbed at not having much of an independent life.

Barry, on the other hand, thrived on his solo time at the infusion center, chatting with the other patients. He joked that it was like flying Business Class, with reclining seats and gracious nurses attending to his every whim. Although he enjoyed introducing me to his new-found friends, he didn't want me there all six hours, and I, too, enjoyed my "day off."

He's cancer-free now, but we're still getting through it

It's now been four months since Barry's diagnosis, and I am indeed writing this from sunny Mexico. Barry's latest scan showed him free of cancer, and his energy is gradually returning. And I'm back into yoga.

But I don't have the pillowy confidence I once had, and maybe that's a good thing. I used to brag about my health — how fit I was, how I'd live to 100 or more. Now, I'm more humble. I feel for people with cancer, and especially for their caregivers. I know cancer never happens in a vacuum. It's a family disease, where everyone is affected, and no one is spared.

The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings from Kansas and Missouri all the way to New Jersey.

The raw ground beef "may be contaminated with foreign material, specifically hard plastic and metal," according to the USDA.

The president-elect is not expected to receive a custodial sentence for his hush money conviction.

Keir Starmer has responded to Elon Musk over comments the world's richest man made against him regarding the Rotherham grooming scandal.

The Old Testament verse posted by the former vice president appeared to be inspired by the anniversary of the Capitol riot.

"Is it realistic to deport everybody? I mean, there are a lot of people in this country who are here illegally," John Thune said.

Iran's recent nuclear advances give President-elect Trump a crucial decision to make in his first months in office: Try to neutralize the threat through negotiations and pressure, or order a military strike.

Why it matters: Trump's decision in 2018 to withdraw from an Obama-era nuclear deal prompted Tehran to accelerate its nuclear program, such that it's now a de facto "nuclear threshold state." Officials and diplomats from the U.S., EU and Israel all told Axios they expect Trump to face an Iran crisis in 2025.

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State of play: Trump and his advisers are planning to quickly return to the "maximum pressure" campaign they conducted against Iran between 2018 and 2020.

Behind the scenes: Several Trump advisers privately concede Iran's program is now so far along that the strategy might not be effective. That makes a military option a real possibility.

• After Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer met Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November, Dermer came away thinking there was a high likelihood Trump would either support an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities — something the Israelis are seriously considering — or even order a U.S. strike, two sources who spoke with Dermer after the meeting tell Axios.
• Some top advisers to President Biden have privately argued in recent weeks for striking Iran's nuclear sites before Trump takes office, with Iran and its proxies so badly weakened by their war with Israel, sources familiar with those discussions told Axios.
• With Biden now down to his final two weeks, there are no active discussions about bombing Iran.

The flipside: Others close to Trump expect that he'll seek a deal before considering a strike.

• Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with Chinese TV last week that Iran is ready to resume negotiations with the U.S. and other world powers to get a new nuclear deal.
• Both sides would have to overcome years of animosity to work toward an agreement. For one thing, U.S. prosecutors accused Tehran of attempting to have Trump killed last year.

What they're saying: "Anything can happen," Trump told Time in November, when asked about the possibility of war with Iran. "It's a very volatile situation."

• "2025 will be an important year regarding Iran's nuclear issue," Araghchi said last week in Beijing.

Driving the news: Despite all of the crises on the global agenda, a senior diplomat who attended a virtual meeting of the G7 countries two weeks ago tells Axios it ended with the conclusion that Iran would be the primary issue to contend with in 2025.

• "Everyone agreed that we will have to do something or there will be a huge crisis," the diplomat said.
• That's not only because Iran has shrunk its nuclear breakout time down to a matter of days, but also because the ability of the Western powers to "snap back" crippling nuclear sanctions on Iran under the 2015 nuclear deal will expire in October.
• That means the U.S. and its European allies would lose much of their economic leverage over Iran, adding urgency to diplomatic efforts in the first half of the year.

Zoom in: Senior diplomats from the E3 (France, Germany and the U.K.) and Iran met in Geneva in late November to discuss the possibility of resuming nuclear negotiations.

• The European diplomats made clear the 2015 nuclear deal is null and void and a new deal would have to address the current status of Iran's nuclear program, a European diplomat and two other sources with knowledge of the meeting tell Axios.
• They also warned they would trigger "snapback" sanctions if a deal isn't reached by summer.
• The Iranians said that in such a scenario, Iran would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and end all UN inspections and monitoring of its nuclear facilities.

What's next: Another E3-Iran meeting is scheduled for Jan. 13.

What they're saying: "2025 will be an important year regarding Iran's nuclear issue," Araghchi said last week.

The bottom line: Trump will take office with fewer options to contain or destroy Iran's program than he had in 2017, and less time to decide.

• One of the most common job interview questions can also seem like one of the hardest to answer.
• The simply phrased "Tell me about yourself," can lead to sprawling answers.
• An ex-MBA admissions director shared a common mistake people make — and how they should answer instead.

For as common an interview question as it is, it can still trip up a lot of job candidates.

"Tell me about yourself."

One of recruiters' favorite questions, the simple prompt can be daunting because many candidates may try to squeeze too much of their professional experience and qualifications into their answers.

Thomas Caleel, former director of MBA admissions and financial aid at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told Business Insider there is an effective approach to framing your answer to the question in both an academic or job interview context.

"Being able to clarify a question and re-frame it in a way that is respectful to the interviewer and shows that you can think and act under pressure, is, to me at least, a valuable skill in both the academic and corporate worlds," Caleel told BI.

Caleel talked more about the open-ended question on a recent episode of his "Admittedly" podcast.

"Most people when you ask them tell me about yourself, they will start to talk, and they will ramble and ramble and ramble," he said. "What happens is you lose your interviewer, like 30 seconds into that interview response, the interviewer's eyes glaze over, they kind of look at you and they're like, 'Oh my gosh.'"

So how exactly should you tackle the question?

Caleel recommends breaking your answer down into parts and posing a question back to the interviewer.

"What I say to do and what I think you should do instead is say 'Love to tell you about myself. There are three main areas that I'm involved in: academics, extracurricular activities, and sports (or volunteering.) Which one would you like to start with first?'" he told the podcast.

Compared to the common mistake candidates make of talking at their interviewer, this approach gets the interviewer's attention by making them "an active participant" in the conversation, Caleel said.

"By involving the interviewer in the conversation, you draw them in, you invest them in your answers instead of boring them with just a torrent of words," he added.

As a former admissions director, Caleel's advice is geared toward students applying to colleges — job candidates probably won't be talking much about academics or extracurriculars. However, for those applying to jobs, you might use as categories leadership, teamwork, and directly relevant experience, he told BI.

Regardless of the type of interview, his key point is "to try to engage the interviewer and set a more dynamic tone," he added.

Career experts also suggest highlighting some career accomplishments and focusing on the parallels and transferrable skills between your past experience and the position at stake when answering "Tell me about yourself." They say to try not to spend too long on this one question and aim to cap your response at around a minute.

"In my experience, candidates who can think on their feet, who are not cowed by the process and can remain genuine and engaged with the interviewer, usually fare well," Caleel told BI.

• Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI will likely play out in 2025.
• Musk says OpenAI has lost sight of its mission to develop AI safety, prioritizing profits instead.
• Here's what you need to know about a battle that could impact the future of artificial intelligence.

Two of the most powerful forces in the AI industry are set to collide this year: xAI's Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman.

Musk was one of 11 cofounders, including Altman and President Greg Brockman, who established OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 with the mission to "advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return."

Musk left in 2018 — a year before OpenAI added a for-profit arm — citing a conflict of interest with his work at Tesla, though his lawyers say that he contributed to the company until mid-2020.

Since then, he's become a vocal skeptic of OpenAI's commitment to prioritizing transparency and safety over profit.

The feud between the founders escalated in August when Musk filed a lawsuit against Altman, OpenAI, and Microsoft, the company's biggest investor. Musk accused them of deception, prioritizing profits despite its stated mission.

That lawsuit will likely play out this year — a major battle that could impact the future of artificial intelligence. Here's what to expect.

Musk's legal challenges against OpenAI

Musk first filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in a California state court in February 2024, accusing OpenAI of violating its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft. Musk withdrew that suit in June.

He filed a new lawsuit in August 2024, this time in a federal court, accusing OpenAI of a bait-and-switch deception that violates RICO laws — anti-racketeering laws first designed to target organized crime families.

Musk's lawyers say in the lawsuit that Musk "lent his name to the venture, invested significant time and millions of dollars in seed capital, and recruited top AI scientists for the company," all with the understanding that OpenAI would remain a nonprofit and prioritize developing the technology safely.

Musk's lawyers say OpenAI "betrayed" its mission when it added a for-profit arm in 2019 and deepened its partnership with Microsoft in 2023.

"Musk and the nonprofit's namesake objective were betrayed by Altman and his accomplices," the lawsuit reads. "The perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions."

In mid-November, Musk's lawyers expanded their complaint to include accusations that OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust laws by asking the company's investors not to back competitors in the generative AI space, like Musk's own xAI, which he launched in 2023.

In his latest move, Musk — also in November — asked a federal judge to stop OpenAI from converting into a fully for-profit corporate entity.

OpenAI has denied the claims. A representative for the company directed Business Insider to a post it published on December 13 responding to Musk's allegations.

"Now that OpenAI is the leading AI research lab and Elon runs a competing AI company, he's asking the court to stop us from effectively pursuing our mission," OpenAI wrote. "You can't sue your way to AGI. We have great respect for Elon's accomplishments and gratitude for his early contributions to OpenAI, but he should be competing in the marketplace rather than the courtroom."

Resolving the lawsuit could take months or even years. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is overseeing the case in the San Francisco federal court, hasn't yet set a trial date.

Rogers will begin hearing arguments on January 14 on whether she should issue the preliminary injunction to prevent OpenAI from converting into a nonprofit until the rest of the case is resolved.

In weighing whether to issue the injunction, Rogers is supposed to consider the "likelihood of success" that Musk will win the case. Her decision would strongly indicate how the rest of the case might play out.

Why OpenAI's corporate structure matters

In a blog entry posted to its website on December 27, OpenAI explained why it needed to evolve its corporate structure.

The company said it wants to transition its for-profit arm into a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation⁠ — which, unlike a traditional company, prioritizes social good alongside profit — to prepare for a more capital-intensive future.

OpenAI said the structural change would enable it to "raise the necessary capital" to pursue its mission of developing artificial general intelligence and to give it more leeway to consider the interests of its backers.

The company said it would still run a nonprofit on the side focused more narrowly on charitable initiatives in healthcare, education, and science.

Rose Chan Loui, a nonprofit legal expert at UCLA, said OpenAI's current nonprofit status grants it significant control over technological development.

"What we lose in this conversion is a nonprofit with the unique ability to control AI development activities — to be a watchdog from the inside, making sure that AI is being developed safely and for the benefit of humanity. From that perspective, it seems to me that the nonprofit's current control position is priceless," she wrote to Business Insider in an email.

If the conversion to a for-profit public benefit corporation goes through, OpenAI would need to ensure that the nonprofit retains assets worth as much as what it's giving up, including a significant premium for its control. That could be in the form of cash or stock that it can sell for cash.

Still, "what seems to be envisioned is a grant-making foundation that can do good but will have a very reduced, if any, impact on the development of AI," Chan Loui said.

Former employees have also raised concerns that the nonprofit would have a reduced role in public safety.

Miles Brundage, OpenAI's former head of AGI Readiness, who left in October, responded to OpenAI's December post, saying on X that "a well-capitalized nonprofit on the side is no substitute for PBC product decisions (e.g. on pricing + safety mitigations) being aligned to the original nonprofit's mission."

He added that much of OpenAI's rationale for conversion makes sense. However, there are still "red flags," including a lack of details about its new governance structure and guardrails around the technology.

Other individuals and organizations have filed amicus briefs to the federal court where Musk filed his suit. These briefs are meant to inform the court and help it make a decision.

Kathleen Jennings, the attorney general for Delaware, where OpenAI is incorporated, filed one last week. She detailed her role in protecting the public interest if OpenAI becomes a for-profit public benefit corporation.

Chan Loui said Jennings's brief is a hopeful sign that, no matter what happens, public interest will ultimately win.

"It is encouraging that the Delaware AG has stated her commitment to protecting the public interest, including seeking an injunction if she determines that the conversion is inconsistent with OpenAI's mission and its obligations to the public, that OpenAI's board members are not fulfilling their fiduciary duties, or if the value of the conversion or the process for arriving at it is not 'entirely fair.'"

Lawyers for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Storm Blair has caused travel disruption in several states.
• More than half of flights were canceled at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Monday.
• 94% of flights were canceled in Kansas City, Missouri, on Sunday.

More than half of flights were canceled at Washington, DC's Reagan National Airport on Monday, according to data from FlightAware, as Storm Blair brought snow and ice to a large part of the country.

The National Weather Service warned that the DC area could face between 5 and 10 inches of snow, with a winter storm warning in effect until 1 a.m. ET Tuesday.

FlightAware data showed that, as of 5 a.m. ET, 227 flights had been canceled at Reagan National Airport, equivalent to 57% of all flights scheduled there for Monday.

Nearby Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport was also heavily affected. A total of 106 flights, or 38% of those scheduled Monday, were canceled, per FlightAware.

Around a quarter of Monday's flights were canceled at Washington Dulles International Airpor, the data showed.

In Cincinnati, where the National Weather Service predicts up to four inches of snow, one-third of Monday's scheduled flights were canceled, the data showed.

Heavy snowfall was also seen in Kansas City, Missouri, where local media reported 10 inches of snow Sunday night. According to FlightAware, 94% of flights were canceled there on Sunday.

Airports in Indianapolis and Kentucky also saw rates of cancellation above 20%.

When Avenues: The World School opened in 2012 in Chelsea, it was supposed to revolutionize education. The for-profit school had a 215,000-square-foot, tech-heavy campus, and students partook in a dual-language curriculum with their choice of Spanish or Mandarin.

Founding families weighed in on everything from what language STEAM subjects should be taught in to whether the cafeteria pasta should be gluten-free. One mom who enrolled her 4-year-old that first year was floored when her son asked for water in Mandarin. And how many preschoolers could come back from a school visit to Chuck Close's gallery and talk about the artist's face blindness?

When one family rejected an admission offer, an Avenues cofounder, Alan Greenberg, wrote a letter urging them to reconsider. Greenberg wrote that Avenues would be "the most important new school ever opened."

"I don't in any way mean this to be demeaning," he added in an excerpt of the letter that was published in The New York Times. "But I would not be forthcoming or truthful if I did not say there is absolutely no comparison."

Thirteen years later, Avenues has had seven different heads of school, including one whose tenure lasted two months. After once talking of building 20 campuses around the world, it ended up with three. In November 2023, the school's two profitable campuses, Manhattan and São Paulo, were sold to Nord Anglia Education, a private-equity-backed chain of for-profit international boarding schools. It was the third time the school had been sold.

While some parents sang Avenues' praises, many told Business Insider they'd been disappointed by what they had come to view as essentially an educational experiment gone awry. They said the focus on dual-language learning came at the expense of core subjects. Parents of older students lamented what they viewed as a lack of structure and said kids weren't penalized for not doing their homework.

"Your kids are kind of like the guinea pigs for this growth model," said one mom who enrolled her 2-year-old son at Avenues before the pandemic. In 2023, after four years at the school, she pulled him out. Having him learn Mandarin without a native-speaking nanny or heavy tutoring was increasingly unfeasible, she said.

This year, close to 2,000 students are enrolled at Avenues' Chelsea campus, where tuition for nursery school starts at $68,850 — among the highest in the city.

Avenues' head of school, Todd Shy, told BI in a statement: "We have thousands of happy, satisfied families and thriving students. Avenues is an innovative school that achieves exceptional student outcomes using research-backed practices." An Avenues spokesperson added that in the school's annual "voice of the community" survey, 90% of parents "agreed that Avenues is an enjoyable school for their family" and more than 90% were happy with the college their child ultimately attended.

Chris Whittle, an Avenues cofounder and former CEO, told BI he was "really proud of how the school has done." But some people said Avenues had failed to achieve an impossible vision.

"A for-profit school with great tech support and dual-language programs seems pretty sexy," Wendy Levey, an admissions consultant, said. "But if people are going to spend that kind of money, they want faculty that have been in place for a long time, a curriculum that has been proven to work, alumni who are attached to the school. They want the whole nine yards."

In short, they want to be part of the "club" — the loosely affiliated network of girls, boys, and co-ed schools that make up the city's educational elite. "Even now," Levey added, "Avenues is not part of that club."

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If you're a New York City parent in a certain income bracket who has deemed public school a nonstarter, chances are you're familiar with the hellscape that is trying to get your kid into private school. The search for a competitive preschool often starts when your child is just a year old. By the time you get to primary school, it seems as though all but one open spot is reserved for siblings and legacies.

If you do manage to land at Horace Mann, Spence, or one of the other elite nonprofit private schools that some admissions professionals call the "big 20," you're so grateful that you tolerate the incessant fundraising emails for the early-learning center that won't be built until your child is too old to use it. You tell yourself that the dingy basement where you deposit your toddler each morning is quaint, cozy, and traditional.

In an increasingly high-end city, private school remains a remarkably spartan affair. If there are elevators on campus, students are often forbidden to use them until senior year. Children served by macrobiotic chefs at their Hamptons summer homes push beat-up plastic trays down a poorly lit cafeteria line.

It was amid this landscape that Avenues burst onto the scene. Whittle, a former Esquire publisher who'd turned — somewhat controversially — to for-profit education, imagined a sleek, newfangled school with a global mindset. Graduates would be "artists no matter their field," "at ease beyond borders," and "architects of lives that ascend the ordinary," Avenues' mission statement said.

Whittle and his two cofounders — Benno Schmidt, a former Yale president, and Greenberg, who used to be the publisher of Esquire — spent a lot of time and money selling their idea. Avenues hired a marketing team that included an MTV animator and Ken Segall, who conceived of Apple's famous "Think Different" campaign. They sent a direct-mailer brick to 1,000 New York City parents and threw swanky cocktail parties at the Crosby Street Hotel.

Even parents who snickered at the school's tactics showed up to see what all the fuss was about. "The idea was, let's make it feel like we've been there forever and you just found out about us," the former Avenues global creative director Andy Clayman said.

Whittle had made a career commoditizing education. In the 1990s, he conceived of The Edison Project, a network of commercial private schools that eventually transitioned into managing low-income public schools in cities such as Baltimore and Philadelphia. In 2003, Liberty Partners bought The Edison Project for $174 million. A decade later, Liberty sold the company, reportedly taking an 85% loss.

Avenues embodied the same premise as Edison: namely, that innovative business people could educate students better than traditional nonprofit schools. At the time, this was a welcome philosophy in New York City. During Mike Bloomberg's 12 years as mayor, nearly 200 "low-performing" public schools were closed, replaced by 150 privately operated, publicly funded charter schools. As much as 40% of the city was rezoned to accommodate mixed-use development, paving the way for Avenues' flagship campus in a converted industrial building sandwiched between public housing and the High Line, the elevated park that runs through Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.

Avenues' for-profit status was appealing to what one Avenues parent, Euan Rellie, called a "certain kind of Bloombergian New Yorker." "You can imagine if you're an entrepreneur or private-equity guy, you might say, good, there's less bullshit," said Rellie, who cofounded the private-equity firm BDA Partners. "This is just a straightforward service provider."

If you're an entrepreneur or private-equity guy, you might say, good ... This is just a straightforward service provider. Euan Rellie, an Avenues parent

Sejal Shah enrolled both her daughters after touring the school in 2012. "It seemed like a place to move and grow versus being stagnant in one way of thinking and one way of doing things," she said.

Avenues' timing couldn't have been better. From 2006 to 2011, the number of kids younger than 5 in Manhattan had increased by 32%, Whittle told The New York Times, while only about 400 spots at top independent schools had emerged over the past decade. According to the Times, by June 2011, 1,200 families had applied for early admission to Avenues, even though just eight of 180 teachers had been hired, the building was a construction site, and the curriculum was still a giant question mark.

Avenues hired academic heavy hitters like Nancy Schulman, the former director of the 92nd Street Y preschool, one of the city's most prestigious private-school feeders, as well as a former Dalton headmaster, Gardner P. Dunnan. Still, Whittle made clear that he had no interest in being another Dalton. "To me, the biggest risk is that we are just another fine school," he told The New York Observer in 2012. "If that's all we are, this was a waste of time."

Whittle's run at Avenues was relatively short-lived. In 2013, John Fisher — the conservative Gap Inc. heir whose family gave The Edison Project $25 million and who was an early minority investor in Avenues — bought out one of the school's two main backers. "It was a hostile takeover in that I fought it, and I lost," said Whittle, who also placed a bid at the time.

Fisher tapped Jeff Clark as the new president of Avenues in November 2013, the change briefly mentioned at the end of Whittle's annual newsletter. The Avenues spokesperson said the school didn't make a big deal about the appointment to parents because it "in no way impacted day-to-day operations."

That same year, the school's parent company, Avenues Global Holdings, loaned Whittle almost $11 million that a 2018 legal document said was meant to "ameliorate his dire personal financial situation so he could focus on his work for Avenues." (A person close to the company said the loans had nothing to do with purported financial struggles.) Whittle got an additional $1 million in 2014, but he ultimately failed to pay back the entirety of the loan.

In February 2015, Whittle left the school. Two years later, the parent company sued him and foreclosed on his Hamptons home. In 2018, Fisher bought out the last minority investor, gaining full control of Avenues.

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The typical New York City private school grows incrementally. Nightingale, Spence, and Chapin began in Manhattan brownstones and expanded over decades, one capital campaign and Ivy League acceptance at a time. Whittle, on the other hand, raised $75 million to renovate Avenues' Chelsea campus in just three years.

The facility embodied Whittle's idea of education as a luxury good. The cafeteria is named "FOOD" after the SoHo restaurant founded by the artist Gordon Matta-Clark, and Avenues students in first through fifth grade receive iPads to do their schoolwork. There is no central library; Whittle told New York magazine in 2012 that his eventual goal was to have a paperless campus.

Many parents were drawn to Avenues' modern approach to elite academia. Instead of the pinafores and khakis favored by private institutions like Brearley or Collegiate, students wear a mix of gray, black, or white solids. There's an emphasis on boardroom-style presentations and group projects, rather than teacher-led lectures, essays, or written exams.

"If you attended the first year, you drank the Kool-Aid," said a mother who enrolled her 4-year-old son at Avenues in 2012. "Why would you choose an unknown entity for top dollar with no proven track record? You had to believe in something bigger." Another mother, who transferred her daughter out of Avenues in 2023 after her freshman year, called the early years there "magical," adding, "These kids would run with smiles into school."

The school's biggest academic selling point has always been its language immersion program. Originally, 2-year-olds at Avenues were taught in a combination of English, Spanish, and Mandarin. When students entered the threes program, they chose Mandarin or Spanish as their target language and spent half their time learning in that language. For instance, after a bilingual morning meeting, students might do a small-group reading in Mandarin, followed by another learning period in English. Science would then be in English, with music and art taught in Mandarin. (Beginning next year, based on parent feedback, kids will choose a target language at age 1, the Avenues spokesperson said.)

Why would you choose an unknown entity for top dollar with no proven track record? You had to believe in something bigger. A former Avenues mother

In first through fifth grades, subjects like language arts and math switch between English and Spanish or Mandarin on alternating days. By sixth grade, the dual-language component tapers off because, in theory, students are highly proficient.

For some, the bilingual program turned out to be more than they'd bargained for. One mother told BI that by the end of her son's first year in Avenues' twos program in 2019, she began receiving feedback from the school that he needed additional support to learn Mandarin. "They were telling us to get him a tutor and potentially a Mandarin-speaking babysitter," she said. "We started realizing that it's not practically possible."

At one point, the mother said, Avenues suggested that she take her son to occupational therapy for behavioral issues that she felt stemmed from the immersion program's rigor. "It just felt like we had to outsource everything," she said. Last year, she transferred her son to a traditional nonprofit school for first grade where she said he's thriving.

The Avenues spokesperson said that "while some families may choose additional support outside of school, this is not required nor expected at Avenues" and is discouraged in early years.

The mother who enrolled her 4-year-old son at Avenues the year it opened said she started noticing in elementary school that her son's basic reading and writing skills paled in comparison with his Mandarin. She also became exceedingly frustrated that he completed assignments mainly on his school-provided iPad.

For all the hype around Avenues, "I was just not impressed with it as an academic institution," the mom said. She decided to transfer her son out for eighth grade.

The Avenues spokesperson said that learning in two languages "does not detract from what children need developmentally" and that the school's language immersion program had "been designed to maintain literacy development." The spokesperson separately said that Avenues graduates were "thriving at leading colleges and universities." From 2016 to 2024, four went on to attend Harvard, four went to Yale, and one student attended Princeton, according to Avenues' website.

Not all parents or even teachers are convinced of the efficacy of Avenues' methods. One teacher who worked at the Chelsea school for a year prior to COVID said she noticed a skills gap between her Avenues lower-school students and those at the nonprofit private school where she now teaches. She believed Avenues students' writing suffered because they learned in English only half the time. The Avenues spokesperson said they did not recognize the teacher's characterization.

Multiple former Avenues parents also told BI that while they bought into the school's modernistic approach to education, they grew concerned that it was becoming too loose. One mother said that when her daughter entered middle school in 2019, Avenues "tried to teach math three different ways at one time," confusing her preteen, who didn't know which method to use.

The mother who transferred her daughter out of Avenues during high school expressed similar reservations. She told BI that in middle school, her daughter was surprised to learn from a friend at an uptown private school that they got in trouble for not doing their homework. There was so little communication between parents and teachers, the mother said, that one year she didn't learn her daughter was struggling academically until January. (The spokesperson said that if a student doesn't complete their homework, a teacher might pull them aside to "talk about the importance of personal accountability." The spokesperson added that "student progress is carefully monitored through regular formal and informal assessments" that are reported to and discussed with parents.)

No school, no matter how lauded, can be perfect for every student. One mother recently transferred her daughter from Avenues to a more traditional private school for sixth grade. While at Avenues, she'd suspected her daughter might be behind her peers at other private schools, but she was willing to make the trade-off for a kid who was fluent in Spanish, tech-savvy, and a confident public speaker. "Then I came here, and she was literally almost three years behind in math," the mom said. "In English, she was getting tested on adverbs and pronouns, and she knew none of them."

Avenues "really honed in on skills that you need for the future," the mother said, "but not the basics of education. But who knows if the basics of education are even necessary 10 years from now."

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Avenues had always planned to build a global network of schools, a former administrator told BI, pointing to its robust research and development team, which totaled 30 full- and part-time staffers by 2019. But in the end, Avenues ended up with only three campuses: in Shenzhen, China; Sao Pãolo, Brazil; and New York City. A temporary Silicon Valley location served 70 students during the 2022-2023 school year.

When Fisher decided to sell the business, the goal was to find a buyer to purchase the whole thing. "And that didn't happen," the former administrator said. "Did they make mistakes? Hell yeah," and "their mistakes cost them their vision," she added.

While the former administrator called the dissolution of that vision "heartbreaking," she believes the new ownership will bring "real stability." A Nord Anglia spokesperson said the group chose to purchase Avenues' Chelsea and São Paulo campuses in part because of a "close cultural fit between us as educators." Plans to build a permanent Silicon Valley location were scrapped after the Nord Anglia acquisition, and Avenues Shenzhen is now independently owned and operated by a local partner in China, which licenses the Avenues brand.

"I did have some parents reach out to me after the sale," Whittle said. "And I think overall, it is going to be quite good for Avenues. They're a capable, thoughtful group. They have global reach, which I think is important to the student body."

In October, Nord Anglia itself was sold to a new ownership group, which could theoretically shift things at Avenues again. Avenues' spokesperson said that, despite the changes, "our focus has been — and always will be — on our students and providing a world-class education."

Meanwhile, the school has taken steps to appeal to a broader swath of families. In the early days, students hoping to transfer into Avenues from first to fifth grade had to pass a Spanish or Mandarin competency exam. But in 2017, Avenues launched a pilot English-only program for incoming fifth graders that gradually expanded to include the third and fourth grades. This past school year, 33 students enrolled at Avenues were non-immersion, the spokesperson said, adding that the school would be willing to add more English-only lower-school spots if parents asked.

Some parents see Avenues' flexibility as a plus. "If you don't like change, Avenues is not the right place for you," said Lynn Berney, who has two children in high school and one who recently graduated. "But I do think that they're constantly improving themselves."

Rellie's younger son, who's now a senior, is staying put. "Being the parent of a teenager is such an effing roller coaster," he said, that "you tend to muddle through until there's a crisis."

Avenues says its enrollment has remained consistent. The spokesperson told BI that applications to its New York campus increased by 50% from September 2018 to September 2023, while the acceptance rate fell by 18%. They added that 2024's admissions rate was about 5% lower than 2023's, "which indicates continued strong demand for limited seats."

Avenues may not have become exactly what Whittle imagined. Depending on whom you ask, it might not even be a particularly successful academic institution. "It's a consultant-created conceit," said the mother whose son struggled to keep up with the Mandarin component. "The shots are called at corporate."

But the school succeeded in at least one way. "We did the impossible thing: We were profitable," said Clayman, the former Avenues global creative director. "This is why we were bought."

• Sam Altman wrote a blog post about his experience running OpenAI on Sunday.
• Altman said OpenAI would have fallen apart in 2023 without Ron Conway's and Brian Chesky's help.
• That was the year Altman was briefly ousted and then reinstated as OpenAI's CEO.

OpenAI would have fallen apart back in 2023 without venture capitalist Ron Conway and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Sam Altman wrote in a blog post on Sunday.

Altman expressed his gratitude to Conway and Chesky in a blog post titled "Reflections," which detailed his brief ouster from OpenAI. Altman said the post was inspired by a recent interview he gave to Bloomberg, which was published on Sunday as well.

"Ron Conway and Brian Chesky went so far above and beyond the call of duty that I'm not even sure how to describe it," Altman wrote.

Altman was fired as OpenAI's CEO on November 17, 2023. The company's board said in a statement that it was removing Altman because he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board" but did not elaborate further.

Altman returned as CEO on November 22, 2023, after nearly all of OpenAI's staff threatened to quit if he wasn't reinstated.

In his blog post, Altman said "there were a lot of people who did incredible and gigantic amounts of work" to help him and OpenAI when he was ousted, but Conway and Chesky "stood out from all others."

"I've of course heard stories about Ron's ability and tenaciousness for years and I've spent a lot of time with Brian over the past couple of years getting a huge amount of help and advice," Altman wrote.

"But there's nothing quite like being in the foxhole with people to see what they can really do," he continued. "I am reasonably confident OpenAI would have fallen apart without their help; they worked around the clock for days until things were done."

Conway and Chesky, Altman wrote, gave him "great advice" and "stopped me from making several mistakes." The pair also tapped on their vast networks to assist him, Altman added.

"I thought I knew what it looked like to support a founder and a company, and in some small sense I did," Altman wrote. "But I have never before seen, or even heard of, anything like what these guys did, and now I get more fully why they have the legendary status they do."

Representatives for Conway and Chesky did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Conway and Chesky are longtime friends of Altman and were one of the first people he called after OpenAI fired him.

Conway was also one of Altman's guest speakers when the latter taught a class on startups at Stanford University in 2014.

Altman and Chesky's friendship, meanwhile, goes back more than a decade. Altman mentored Chesky when Airbnb was a part of Y Combinator, a startup accelerator.

When Altman was fired from OpenAI, he briefly considered launching another AI startup but was discouraged by Conway and Chesky, The New York Times reported in December 2023.

"You should be willing to fight back at least a little more," Chesky told Altman, per The Times.

OpenAI's board, Conway later told Time magazine, had fired Altman for "nitpicky, unfireable, not even close to fireable offenses."

The billionaire venture capitalist had spoken to the magazine as part of a profile on Altman that was published in December 2023.

"It is reckless and irresponsible for a board to fire a founder over emotional reasons," Conway told the outlet.