Business

Patty Arvielo had her full-circle moment 15 years ago. At a sales meeting in Downey, California, she ran into the owner of a real estate business whose offices she used to clean. “I remember those offices,” muses Arvielo, who as a teen used to help her mother, a Mexican immigrant, with her cleaning business. Arvielo isn’t ashamed of her career history. At 60, the co-founder of New American Funding, one of the largest private mortgage lenders in the U.S., is proud of where she’s been. “I was able to tell him that I was his maid!” she says.

Oregon's glass bottle recycling rates may be some of the highest in the nation, but with the state's only glass recycling plant temporarily shuttered, where is the rest of our used glass being carted off to? And is glass recycling as green as environmentalists once thought?

After 28 years in Congress, Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) has announced he’s retiring at the end of 2024. A cycling enthusiast known for his advocacy on everything from public transportation to cannabis legalization, Blumenauer isn’t leaving the halls of Congress without a final fight. Last month, he introduced legislation that would reinvigorate bicycle manufacturing in the U.S.

In March 1974, Fortune magazine documented the country’s “Bicycle Craze,” citing homegrown manufacturers like Murray and Huffman (Ohio), Schwinn (Chicago), and AMF (Ohio, Arkansas, and Illinois). But after demand fell off in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, brands looked for ways to cut costs and ultimately shifted production to other countries, like China. In 2022, 97.8% of bikes sold in the U.S.—electric and people-powered—were imported. Blumenauer’s Domestic Bicycle Production Act aims to incentivize American companies to make bicycles again through a mix of tariff suspensions, tax credits, and loans. Fast Company spoke to Blumenauer about his first bicycle memory, how bicycles have the power to bridge the political divide, and why America can and should be a powerhouse of bicycle manufacturing once again.

One detail you may not know about tennis icon Billie Jean King: She's long been a savvy businessperson.

Before she made history more than 50 years ago for trouncing former men's tennis champion Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, King co-owned several tennis tournaments. She was then in her 20s, and her portfolio included the Oakland Pro Championships and the Billie Jean King Invitational, which was part of the all-women Virginia Slims series.

A year earlier, in 1972, King refused to play in the next year's U.S. Open unless all the women playing got paid the same as the men. However, she didn't just protest; she actively worked behind the scenes to secure a sponsor. "I did that so I could go to [tournament promoter] Billy Talbert and tell him, 'We have the money!' " says the now 80-year-old King. ­"Because money is everything in these situations." (Bristol Myers agreed to be the sole sponsor--and the U.S. Open became the first of the majors to offer equal prize money to women.)