Good morning, Broadsheet readers! OpenAI appoints Sarah Friar chief financial officer, a Japanese business lobby wants women to keep their surnames after marriage, and WeightWatchers’ CEO reckons with the company’s past before she can map out its future. Have a lovely Tuesday.
– Hard conversations. Sima Sistani didn’t think running WeightWatchers would be this hard. When she started as WeightWatchers’ CEO in March 2022, GLP-1 medications were in use but the word “Ozempic” wasn’t yet universally known. And Sistani had had a positive experience with WeightWatchers; she joined the program in 2013 after her pregnancy and had heard stories from others about how the platform helped them lose weight when they wanted to.
But last month, Sistani ended up onstage with Oprah Winfrey and a group of experts and influencers across medicine and culture for a frank, livestreamed conversation about diet culture and WeightWatchers’ role in it. Winfrey, a longtime WeightWatchers board member and spokesperson, announced her exit from the company’s board in late February. Then the idea for a convening came after Sistani’s public interaction with Katie Sturino, a body-positive influencer and the cofounder of the personal care brand Megababe, who shared stories about how WeightWatchers had harmed women and girls who felt shamed about their bodies and pressured to lose weight. “It wasn’t until you’re here and you start acknowledging these other stories that you’re like, ‘There’s a much bigger tension and a harder conversation for us to have,'” Sistani told me of the difference between her expectations for and the reality of her job.
Onstage last month, Winfrey asked Sistani: “Why do we still need WeightWatchers?” Sistani has had time to reflect on her answer to that question—one that’s critical to her job as CEO. “We have to be able to hold [multiple] truths, and one is people need a healthy way to lose weight,” she says. The other is that people should not be judged for their size, she adds.
Before WeightWatchers could have this conversation, Sistani needed to get the business in order. She shut down a $60 million ecommerce unit selling Weight Watchers-branded snacks, which didn’t align with her vision for the company as a health business. Still, the closure hit topline revenue. And WeightWatchers got into the GLP-1 business through its own clinic—a high-profile decision amid the weight-loss drug revolution. Sistani argues the clinic represents a small portion of the business; it has 87,000 members compared to WeightWatchers’ 4 million overall. Winfrey’s exit from the board dented WeightWatchers’ stock price, but not the business, Sistani argues.
The key difference now is that WeightWatchers will operate from a “product lens” rather than a marketing lens, the CEO says.
Sistani continues to execute her strategy to evolve WeightWatchers into a true digital health business that can operate as an insurance-covered benefit, but she still must contend with the company’s historical legacy.
“There was an overwhelming tension of us as a purveyor of diet culture…And that was challenging—it continues to be challenging,” she says. “Because we’re in this culture too. We’re mostly women in this company, and that’s not who we are. That’s not what we want to be known as.”
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Friar the first. OpenAI named former Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar its first chief financial officer on Monday. The company said Friar will help the AI leader expand its global business and support ongoing AI research. Reuters
- Deals galore. The Wall Street Journal reported that former media executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. Is interested in acquiring National Amusements, the Shari Redstone-led parent company of Paramount, in a deal valued between $2 billion and $2.5 billion. News of the potential offer comes as Redstone drags her feet on a separate proposal to purchase Paramount.
- Sir-name. A business lobby in Japan wants the government to introduce legislation allowing women to keep their surnames when they get married. The group says that forcing women to change their names could present business risks with more women in leadership positions. Bloomberg
- On track. British driver Katherine Legge sported Elf Beauty branding on her car, helmet, and suit last month during the Indianapolis 500 as more beauty companies support women in the male-dominated racing world. Cosmetics brand Charlotte Tilbury announced a partnership with the all-women Formula One Academy in February and Hero Cosmetics, a sponsor of the WNBA, is supporting women influencers in the sport. Vogue
- A generational voice. Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) Invited actress Scarlett Johansson to testify before Congress about her deepfake-related feud with OpenAI. The congresswomen says Johansson, who called out the AI company for launching an AI voice reminiscent of hers, could “inform the broader public debate concerning deepfakes.” Axios
ON MY RADAR
What makes Katie Ledecky swim? New York Times
First female leader in centuries returns a tribal nation to its roots New York Times
‘Up for grabs’: the Nikki Haley voters who could decide the U.S. Election Financial Times
PARTING WORDS
“Let’s take back our power and make sure that future generations know that ‘girl talk’ is defined by the things that matter to us most like our day-to-day lives: feelings, careers, hopes, dreams—and money.”
— Wells Fargo Executive Vice President Krista Phillips in a Coins2Day essay analyzing gendered differences when talking about money
