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We have Olympics on the brain over here at ForbesWomen, and for good reason: The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics are the most gender-balanced Winter Games since the Winter Olympics were first introduced in 1924. As Huma Abedin, Mika Brzezinski and I discussed in a segment for Know Your Value this week, women will make up 47% of all athletes in these Games and will compete in a record 50 events (out of a total of 116).
Beyond the numbers, women are driving many of the most compelling storylines of these Olympics. As I noted in the above segment, Laila Edwards and Amber Glenn are breaking barriers on the ice; Edwards as the first Black woman to compete in an Olympic tournament for U.S. hockey; Glenn as the oldest woman to make the U.S. figure skating team in nearly a century. Women are also serving as some of the most outspoken athletes onthe political turmoil happening back at home, with snowboarder Chloe Kim, alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin and figure skater Glenn using their platforms to condemn the political violence we’ve seen in Minnesota and elsewhere and to emphasize the message they hope to send as athletes representing the U.S.
“I’m really hoping to show up and represent my own values,” Shiffrin said. “Values of inclusivity and diversity and kindness and sharing. Tenacity, work ethic, showing up with my team every single day… My greatest hope for this Olympic Games is that it is a beautiful show of cooperation and of competition.”
Sending the best of luck to all Team USA athletes,
Exclusive Forbes List: America’s Top 25 Philanthropists — And Why Musk, Page And Ellison Aren’t On The List
MacKenzie Scott’s $26 billion giving sprint in seven years, including a record $7.2 billion last year, makes her the third-biggest philanthropist of all-time. She gave more in 2025 than Musk, Page, Ellison and her ex-husband Bezos have in their lifetimes combined. And in fact, according to the new Forbes list of America’s top philanthropists, the top 25 have donated $275 billion so far in their lifetimes, an uptick of $34 billion over last year. One notable fact: six of the top 25 are solo women; another 11 are husband and wife (or ex-husband and wife) teams. That’s partly because women tend to give faster and more generously.
ICYMI: News Of The Week
Billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates is one of those top 25 givers, and she agreed to answer seven questions from Forbes about her approach to philanthropy. “If you’ve benefitted from a system that allows so much wealth to be concentrated in one person’s hands, the responsible thing to do is to give back to society,” she said. “That’s what I believe, and that’s why I give. Resources are meant to be shared.”
Jody Allen could hardly contain her excitement on Sunday night, repeatedly shouting, “Let’s go!” from the on-field stage after her Seattle Seahawks had handily defeated the New England Patriots, 29-13, in Super Bowl LX. “It has truly been a magical season from the very first game to tonight here in Santa Clara,” the Seahawks’ 67-year-old chairwoman said over roars from a raucous crowd of Seattle fans at Levi’s Stadium in California. But it may be the first and only time she has an opportunity to raise the Lombardi Trophy—here’s why.
Wall Street welcomed actress Jennifer Garner’s organic children’s food brand Once Upon A Farm after the Berkeley, California-based firm went public on Friday at $18 per share with a company valuation of $724 million. “This IPO really begins to cement our legacy as we move forward and try to bring this to life,” Garner told Forbes, minutes after Once Upon A Farm started trading on the New York Stock Exchange. “To drive systemic improvement in childhood nutrition.”
We said we had Olympics on the brain, and so we’d be remiss not to share this very fun story from our colleagues on the SportsMoney desk about the cost—in both time and dollars—of those fabulous figure skating costumes you see on Alyssa Liu and her teammates. To wit: An outfit that properly balances performance and aesthetic beauty can take 150 hours to dye, paint, cut and sew, pushing prices as high as $8,000 for the athletes taking the ice in Milan.
The Checklist
1. Hire founders to your team. Minna Song, the cofounder and CEO of EliseAI, recently joined ForbesWomen Editor Maggie McGrath to discuss the meteoric rise of her $2.2 billion AI unicorn. One of her best strategies for scaling the company? Hiring employees who bring an entrepreneurial mindset to their jobs. “Founders tend to think holistically about the business. They don’t think about swim lanes or just the job that they were hired to do,” Song says.
2. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, understand your “love blindspot.” Everyone carries relational blind spots. These are habits that once served a protective purpose but can create friction in adult relationships. Read on to learn how to identify which tendencies show up most strongly in your connections and why having self-awareness about these tendencies will help your personal relationships in the long run.
3. Figure out if you’re friction-maxxing. Are you consistently choosing the path of most resistance? It might be because you don’t just tolerate intellectual challenge–you actively seek it out because you process information more thoroughly and report greater satisfaction from mentally demanding tasks.
Read the full article here
