• 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."

---

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.

---

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."

---

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.

Ukraine's fresh offensive in Kursk comes nearly six months after Kyiv first sent troops into the western Russian region.

Protesters gathered in Montenegro to demand the resignations of senior security officials following a mass shooting earlier in the week that claimed 12 lives.

Nicole Kidman could be seen grasping Jodie Foster's arms and staring deep into her eyes during the chat, with a clip going viral.

President Joe Biden is moving to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters.

The president-elect said Republicans needed a single bill for border security, energy production and tax cuts.

• Manufacturing engineer Douglas Dorsey started working at Boeing in 1984 and retired in 2017.
• Dorsey worked on the Boeing 777 and 787 Dreamliner, where he said things began to unravel.
• He reflects on his time on the shop floor and how Boeing plans to repair its reputation.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Douglas Dorsey, from Washington, about his career as a manufacturing engineer at Boeing. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I started my career at Boeing in 1984, and I worked there for over 30 years.

I was a manufacturing engineer. My responsibilities included writing instructions and coming up with assembly sequences for aircraft.

During my career, I worked on several aircraft projects for Boeing, including the Advanced Tactical Fighter program, the Boeing 777, and the 787 Dreamliner. It was always interesting and challenging. I worked with dedicated employees and on cutting-edge programs.

I retired in 2017 feeling proud to have worked there. I was a "lifer" with Boeing blue blood running through my veins.

However, while working on the Boeing 787 program in the 2000s, I noticed that outsourcing manufacturing tasks to suppliers became a really big problem for Boeing. When I worked on the shop floor, I saw the negative impacts of outsourcing to suppliers, such as slower production and delivering incomplete parts.

Even after retiring, I've stayed up to date with Boeing. I've followed the news on malfunctions and strikes, but I think management is taking baby steps in the right direction.

I saw chaos unfold at Boeing due to mismanagement and outsourcing

During the good old days, I had a positive opinion of Boeing. In my first decade at the company, the chain of command was clear. You knew what your job responsibilities were and could count on your line managers. Most importantly, there was no drama with executives, and we had confidence in those in command.

But in 1997, upper management was thrown into chaos when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, with McDonnell Douglas executives taking top positions at Boeing. Harry Stonecipher, who was briefly Boeing's CEO, resigned in 2005 after he was found having an affair with an employee.

It was like a corporate soap opera played out in the media. As an employee, the news was distracting and felt like evidence of the level of disorder at the top of the company.

At the same time, the Boeing 787 program was underway. The 787 was launched as a complete departure from how Boeing airplanes had traditionally been constructed. To reduce the time from program launch to when the planes were in service, Boeing would have "risk-sharing partners" deliver complete aircraft sections to the final assembly site.

787 program managers and employees implicitly understood this new production method, and we cautiously believed it might work. But it began to unravel bit by bit and ended in a three-year delay.

I wondered why we were accepting substandard work on 787

I was a project manufacturing engineer for the 787, creating work instructions, and a liaison manufacturing engineer, working on the shop floor to resolve issues with existing work instructions.

At the beginning of each new airplane program, program leadership and supply chain management divided major sections of the aircraft among various subcontractors, suppliers, and risk-sharing "partners." When suppliers were late in delivering their components or delivered them incomplete, this became "traveled work," which had to be completed by Boeing employees during final assembly.

I spent much of my time on the program trying to accommodate parts that had a "non-conformance" tag on them and had to be reworked and installed into the build.

I wondered what was going on and why we were accepting substandard, incomplete work.

As an engineer, I wasn't privy to the decisions going on in the upper chambers of management, but I could see the chaos filtering down. It felt like the company wasn't listening to its mechanics about how to improve processes.

I remember group meetings where employees, including myself, questioned decisions by management and offered constructive criticism that was politely but bluntly blown off.

The 787 was sadly delayed three years.

Confusing supply chains seem to still cause problems

Earlier this year, there was an incident with a Boeing 737 Max plane, where a door plug blew out after take off.

Although I retired in 2017, I think this was caused by mismanagement of traveled repair work. The plug door was manufactured by Spirit AeroSystems, a Boeing subsidiary that was sold off in 2005.

An investigation found that because the part 737MAX9 fuselage is shipped in whole, mechanics at Boeing rarely work on the plug doors. When the plug door frame had to be repaired and the plug door replaced, two separate groups of mechanics working on the door made mistakes.

As a result, a plug door malfunctioned, and Boeing's reputation was damaged alongside it, causing the FAA to increase its oversight of 737MAX9 planes' production processes.

It's always disappointing when the company you worked for makes major news headlines for a mistake. However, it doesn't change my general opinion of Boeing. I know there are many dedicated employees who are committed to doing their jobs properly and safely.

Boeing is taking baby steps in the right direction

I still know some Boeing employees and followed the recent strike. I think employees have gotten a good package, but they didn't get a return to the legacy defined-benefit pension plan. When I retired, I still benefited from the traditional pension plan and also had a 401(k).

Back in 2014, Boeing promised employees that they'd build the 777-9 in Washington. Part of the strike package is also building the next new plane in Washington. These promises show that Boeing management is waking up to the matter of outsourcing.

Boeing is also bringing Spirit AeroSystems, which it sold in 2005, back in-house. All the workers will be merged back under one camp.

The lines of communication between two in-house teams are often simpler and more direct than with a supplier. When I was on the 777 program in the 1990s, I would call my counterparts at the Wichita site to resolve issues and exchange information. I couldn't do this with a supplier because all communication had to be through supply chain management.

I think this shows Boeing acknowledging it went down a bad path when it sold the supplier.

I see these actions as baby steps in the right direction. Kelly Ortberg, Boeing's CEO, is trying to steer the company on a new course, but I think it's going to take a long time.

Editor's note: In response to Business a request for comment from Business Insider, a Boeing spokesperson highlighted remarks by CEO Kelly Ortberg during the company's third quarter report:

"Much has been written about how we got to where we are, but most also recognize that Boeing was once a benchmark for what good culture looks like. And I believe we can return to that legacy. I know culture change starts at the top. Our leaders, from me on down, need to be closely integrated with our business and the people who are doing the design and production of our products. We need to be on the factory floors, in the back shops, and in our engineering labs. We need to know what's going on, not only with our products but with our people."

• Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski says AI can perform his job as it has reasoning capabilities.
• The buy-now, pay-later firm's cofounder said the realization made him feel "gloomy."
• Siemiatkowski previously said Klarna stopped hiring because AI "can already do all the jobs."

Sebastian Siemiatkowski has said AI is capable of performing his job as CEO of Klarna — but he's not thrilled about the prospect.

The cofounder of the buy-now, pay-later firm said in an X post on Monday, "AI is capable of doing all our jobs, my own included," because it now has reasoning capabilities.

"I am not necessarily super excited about this," he added. "On the contrary my work to me is a super important part of who I am, and realizing it might become unnecessary is gloomy."

Siemiatkowski explained that AI can already routinely solve simple problems using basic reasoning. Because complex problems can be "divided into smaller and more basic reasoning tasks that are combined," the building blocks for AI solving advanced tasks already exist, he said.

"However, how exactly we will combine those building blocks of reason and knowledge to replicate the work we do today is not yet entirely solved," Siemiatkowski said.

This isn't the first time Siemiatkowski has voiced concerns about AI's potential to disrupt traditional roles. Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg in December that he believed AI could "already do all of the jobs that we as humans do."

Klarna itself has embraced AI. In February, the Swedish company said its AI assistant was "doing the equivalent work" of 700 full-time human agents.

The Klarna chief has also been outspoken about the firm's use of AI and how it's impacted the workforce. In August, he wrote in another X post, "AI allows us to be fewer in total."

In October, Siemiatkowski appeared on the "Grit" podcast and said that Klarna "stopped hiring due to AI, so we're shrinking because we have a natural attrition rate of 20%." He later clarified that Klarna continues to hire some engineers.

Meanwhile, the fintech company has been gearing up for an IPO in the US. In November, it announced it confidentially submitted draft registration documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The following month the company told its employees it would start random drug testing for staff in Sweden from January. Its director of people and HR, Mikaela Mijatovic, told employees in a Slack post the move was "part of a larger effort to strengthen security across Klarna."

Klarna didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Do you work for Klarna? Got a tip? Contact the reporter, Jyoti Mann, via the encrypted messaging app Signal at jyotimann.11 or via email at [email protected]. Reach out through a nonwork device.

• EY, Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG make up the world's largest accounting and consulting firms — known as the Big Four.
• The sector is tackling a slowdown in demand, new regulatory pressures, and the need to adapt to AI.
• These are the four leaders that have made it to the top of the firms.

EY, Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG make up the world's largest accounting and consulting firms, known as the Big Four.

They're billion-dollar companies with a collective 1.5 million staff and influence over hundreds of industries.

In recent years, the Big Four have faced a series of challenges, including a post-pandemic downturn in demand, shifting regulatory requirements, and the need to adapt their skills and services for the emerging AI future.

Two of the firms appointed new leaders in 2024. The process varies by firm but generally includes hustings, where contenders present their vision to voters, a partner vote, and global board ratification.

These are the four people who now sit at the helm of the world's biggest professional services firms.

PwC — Mohamed Kande

In July 2024, Mohamed Kande was elected as PwC's global chair for a four-year term, becoming the first Black leader of a Big Four firm.

Kande is also the first PwC head to come from the advisory division, as opposed to the audit wing.

Kande was born and raised in the West African country of Côte d'Ivoire. When he was 16, he moved to France alone to study. He worked at a PwC subsidiary called PRTM Management Consultants, before joining the firm in 2011. He became a global advisory leader in 2019.

Kande took over leading PwC's 370,000 employees at a time when it appears to be tightening pursestrings amid the consulting slowdown. Partner payouts dropped and more PwC partners took early retirement at the end of the year. In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that the firm would make its first major layoffs since 2009 and cut 1,800 jobs.

PwC is also working to rebuild trust in the Asia-Pacific region following scandals in Australia and China.

"The need for reinvention has never been more urgent," Kande said in the firm's 2024 annual review.

In 2021, he wrote a 1,000-word essay on LinkedIn about the impact his race had on his career in professional services.

"Often, I had to work hard to be included because I was different. I have felt slight but sharp jabs about my accent and my name, accompanied by quieter, larger unspokens about my skin color," Kande wrote.

"I try to give the opportunities that others gave me. I try to bring them into the room, knowing that their diversity, their unique perspective is a strength and something to be valued."

Deloitte — Joe Ucuzoglu

Joe Ucuzoglu has been Deloitte's global CEO since January 2023.

Ucuzolgu, who grew up in Los Angeles, was CEO of Deloitte US from 2019 to 2022 before ascending to the top job. He was a college intern in 1997. He rose to become a senior advisor at the SEC before rejoining Deloitte in 2015.

Deloitte is the largest of the Big Four by both revenues and number of employees with 460,000 staff.

In March 2024, Deloitte announced a major restructuring aimed at cutting costs and repositioning it for future success. It is "modernizing and simplifying" its core offering into four categories: audit and assurance, tax and legal strategy, risk and transactions, and technology and transformation.

Ucuzoglu told the firm's partners in an email that the reorganization would reduce the firm's "complexity" and "free up" more partners for client work instead of managing staff.

Under Ucuzoglu, Deloitte has taken steps to drive investment in green hydrogen, releasing a report in 2023 estimating that the energy source could become a $1.4 trillion global market by 2050 and arguing that it "is moving into prime position as a solution for hard-to-abate sectors."

The CEO continues to engage with clients. He is also a frequent speaker at the World Economic Forum, a member of the Business Roundtable, and regularly gives interviews on issues affecting the business community.

EY — Janet Truncale

Janet Truncale was elected as EY's global chair and CEO in July 2024, making her the first woman to lead a Big Four accounting firm. She joined EY as an intern in 1991.

Prior to her election, Truncale had spent almost four years as the vice chair and regional managing partner of the Americas Financial Services Organization.

The New Jersey native now heads EY's global workforce of more than 400,000 staff.

In her first public statement as global CEO, she launched a new strategy called "All in."

"All in is not just a business strategy, it captures an attitude and way of working," Truncale said. Her focus on unity comes after EY was rocked by a failed plan to break up its consultancy and audit divisions into two units, known as Project Everest.

Truncale was named as one of the "25 Most Influential Women" of 2023 by the Financial Times, which described her as "a trust builder" and "an advocate of being down to earth."

Outside EY, she serves as board chair for Women's World Banking and is on the board of UNICEF USA and the US-China Business Council.

Truncale has a BSE from the Wharton School of UPenn and an MBA from Columbia University.

KPMG — Bill Thomas

Bill Thomas became KPMG's global chairman and CEO in October 2017. Three years later, he was unanimously re-elected to a second term.

Thomas has over a decade in executive-level leadership, and was previously chairman of KPMG's Americas region between 2014 and 2017.

The Canadian leads KPMG's 275,000 employees. The firm is the smallest of the Big Four.

Over the past seven years, Thomas has focused on overseeing the development and implementation of KPMG's global strategy. Under Thomas, KPMG has launched $5 billion digital strategy investment plan.

"Over the coming years, my focus will be on continuing to enable and empower these talented teams to achieve their full potential," he said in a statement released on his reelection in 2020.

KPMG's global annual revenues have grown by 45% since the year Thomas was appointed CEO. In its latest annual earnings, it reported annual revenue of $38.4 billion.

Thomas stays largely out of the media spotlight, giving few interviews. Before entering the business world, he studied science, which he says is "extremely relevant today as technology infuses every part of our business and the businesses of clients."

Do you work at the Big Four and have a tip or story to share? Contact this reporter in confidence at [email protected] or on Signal.

The Ukrainian president told podcaster Lex Fridman that without security guarantees for Ukraine, Putin "will destroy everything."

The pair were all smiles as they arrived at the Golden Globes, where Jolie was nominated for an award.

As cold weather approaches Florida, Newsweek has identified the cities that will be affected the most.

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The terrorist attack in New Orleans on Jan. 1—and a truck explosion in Las Vegas just a few hours later—are a reminder that extremist threats to our nation and our communities remain pressing.

President Biden is moving to block about 625 million acres of offshore areas from future oil and gas drilling, the White House announced Monday morning.

Why it matters: The sweeping actions — which drew strong criticism from the oil industry — may hinder President-elect Trump's ability to quickly deliver on plans to scale up fossil fuel production.

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• The steps rely on a provision from a 72-year-old law and affect wildlife-rich areas in the northern Bering Sea; eastern Pacific Ocean off the West Coast; the eastern Gulf of Mexico; and areas up and down the East Coast.

Driving the news: The steps, in the form of two presidential memos, are designed to permanently protect vast tracts of offshore lands to potentially benefit states dependent on fisheries and tourism.

• Withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres — equivalent in size to the states of Alaska, California and Colorado — from potential leasing may also help limit greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming.

Unlike executive orders that Trump could overturn with the stroke of a pen, Biden's actions rely on an open-ended provision in the 1953 Outer Contintental Shelf Lands Act.

• This law governs energy leasing activities for submerged lands under U.S. control that are beyond three miles from shore.
• A provision in the act allows the president to permanently take parts of the Outer Continental Shelf off the table for leasing activities, without providing a means for another president to undo the action.

What they're saying: "Congress and the incoming administration should fully leverage the nation's vast offshore resources as a critical source of affordable energy, government revenue and stability around the world," American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers said in a statement.

• "We urge policymakers to use every tool at their disposal to reverse this politically motivated decision and restore a pro-American energy approach to federal leasing."

Between the lines: Kevin Book of research firm ClearView Energy Partners told Axios in an email that congressional Republicans could include a provision reinstating some or all of the offshore areas in any filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bills.

The big picture: Biden is portraying the steps as part of his environmental legacy, which has included major climate legislation and land conservation efforts.

• "As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren," Biden said in a statement.

Yes, but: Many of the regions to be protected are locations that the oil and gas industry had either not shown strong interest in for development. Other protections would apply to places where states put up stiff resistance against drilling.

• This applies particularly to California and Florida, both of which have consistently opposed offshore drilling.
• During Trump's first term, he exempted a region from North Carolina to Florida from drilling for 10 years, given political opposition to such activities in these coastal states.
• The industry has largely backed off from expensive forays into Arctic drilling, including the Bering Sea where there are no active or pending lease sales.
• However, human-caused Arctic climate change is making the region far more accessible for development and shipping routes, and could entice companies to explore for fossil fuel resources in coming years.

Friction point: Oil and gas companies have shown interest in drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, where significant resources are thought to be accessible.

• That makes the designation of this region as off limits to be particularly notable and potentially controversial, even with Florida's opposition to offshore drilling for environmental reasons.
• The use of the law, which grants the president broad power to alter the regions subject to oil and gas leasing, is likely to be tested in court.
• One district court ruling from 2019, which involved a step taken during the Obama administration, held that only Congress could overturn a president's use of the provision within the law.

The bottom line: While Trump can still move forward with plans to boost land-based oil and gas production, he will now face new legal hurdles on offshore drilling.