Pawlek keeps that positive outlook through all aspects of managing the 800-employee operation. One secret to keeping a positive morale: lots of dad jokes.

With economic pressures, a deeper awareness of mental health issues and trends like Dry January and Sober October, Millennials and Gen Z are driving the “sober curious” movement, rethinking their relationship with alcohol to make healthier, more intentional choices. 

For agencies that provide emergency medical services, every single drug must be accounted for. But during Clive Savacool’s time as a firefighter in the Bay Area, drugs went missing from a fire station.

Nearly 2,000 miles northwest of Sacramento, Matthew Perkins rode a boat out into the Gulf of Alaska and saw nothing but endless potential for growth. “It’s kind of overwhelming how much opportunity there is,” he says. “You’re on the water, snow-capped mountains in the backdrop, you look down and see this incredible biomass growing. It’s literally the bounty of nature.”

In 2022, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the TransMedics Organ Care System, or OCS device. Known as the “heart in a box,” this device uses normothermic perfusion to pump blood through a removed heart and preserve it for longer periods until it can be transplanted into a new person.

Within minutes, the words he wanted to speak appeared on a monitor and were spoken aloud by a computer in a voice resembling his own using recordings from videos made before his diagnosis. It brought everyone in the room to tears. “On day two of this use by Casey, he was talking to his daughter for the first time in her memory. That was so gratifying,” says UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab co-director Sergey Stavisky.