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• Fifty-four-year-old Rich Ruohonen is a personal injury attorney based in Bloomington, Minnesota.
• He was on Team USA’s men’s curling team and is the oldest athlete to compete at the Winter Olympics 2026.
• While he’s not sure he’ll compete in the Olympics again, he still competes in curling.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rich Ruohonen. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I started curling when I was about 12 years old. My dad taught my brother and me. Curling was a demonstration sport back then. I played in college and in law school, but not at a level close to what I play now. I’ve been playing pretty competitively for the last 25 years.

I made my first men’s national championship team in 1998 and then again in 2001. I’ve been to the last 21 out of 23 national championships; I won two of them. I’ve also been in Olympic trials. But the 2026 Olympics were my first Olympics. I was the alternate on the US men’s curling team.

I am the oldest US Olympian ever to compete.

It’s unusual to have a day job as an Olympian

I’m a lawyer and a competitive curler. Most global athletes are paid by their governments to compete in curling, bobsledding, etc. Their only job is to train for the World Championships, which happen every year, and the Olympics, which occur every four years. They might get a salary, have their expenses paid, and get to keep any winnings.

Unfortunately, in the US, that’s not how it works. It’s one of the disadvantages of being a US athlete. It makes it difficult to train full-time. We do get a small stipend, but many US athletes have side jobs.

I have to work training into my day job

My schedule is complicated. On a week when I am not preparing for a competition, I’m at the gym four days a week, leaving my house at 5:15 a.m. to drive 30 miles to the training facility. I’m there at 6 a.m. and train until 7:30 a.m., then jump in the shower and rush to work. I work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., sometimes longer. I go home and sometimes work again.

I play in a Tuesday night league during the season. I also “throw rocks,” what we call practice in curling, several nights a week. I’ll often throw on Saturdays and Sundays, two to four hours a day. Every waking moment between those sessions, I’m working, including the weekends, to get caught up at my day job.

When I’m on the road, I’m still putting in 40 hours or more of work. It’s not easy. It’s not that I don’t have any fun, but it’s a lot of work. I don’t sleep a lot.

Curling at this level is a major commitment. There has been a lot of sacrifice, including from my wife, who stayed home because I wasn’t there and who had to do more of the stuff with the kids, who are 21 and 24 now.

While the Olympics might be over, I’m still curling

I’m playing in the senior World Championship in April. I am sure I am the only guy to ever go to the senior World Championship and the Olympics in the same year. We are hoping to win gold this year. I also do a lot of charity curling, such as for the Lupus Foundation. People raise money to play with me as their skip.

There’s already been some interest in me playing in the 2030 Olympics, but it’s hard to say yes. It’s been a huge commitment for 25 years. Even though I’d be in an alternate role again in 2030, I’m still required to do all the practices and attend everything. These other curlers are in their 20s; I’m twice their age. I haven’t fully decided. I’m still throwing well enough to keep playing, and I feel good about playing at this level. But it is harder to get up in the morning with my knees cracking all the time. I also think of how nice it would be to go to Mexico in the winter instead of Calgary.

• President Donald Trump ordered Homeland Security to reinstate pay for TSA officers on Friday.
• It doesn’t mean lines will get shorter — or tickets cheaper — anytime soon.
• Airlines are navigating a confluence of storms, like staffing shortages and rising jet fuel costs.

Jetsetting has gotten less glamorous — and that’s not expected to change even as President Donald Trump reinstates pay for Transportation Security Administration workers.

Trump on Friday directed Homeland Security to start paying TSA workers after Congress failed to agree on a path to end the partial government shutdown and fund the Department of Homeland Security.

The DHS said its agents could start seeing paychecks again as soon as Monday, but if you thought that would mean shorter airport security lines, you might want to pack a snack.

The airline industry is facing an assembly of problems — war, rising costs, staffing shortages, to name a few — that are making flying more expensive and stressful.

Staffing Shortages

The funding lapse had forced TSA officers, who make a starting salary of about $40,000 and often live paycheck to paycheck, to go without wages for weeks. Hundreds of them quit.

Even with the promise of full paychecks to come soon, the TSA will need to address this staffing shortfall.

Ha Nguyen McNeill, the agency’s deputy administrator, said almost 500 officers have quit since the partial shutdown began in mid-February. More than 1,000 TSA agents also quit during the 43-day government shutdown late last year.

The TSA employs about 50,000 officers, but it takes 4 to 6 months to complete training. That means those long lines might linger a while longer. It’s possible those open roles may not be filled in time for the FIFA World Cup in June.

“This is a dire situation,” McNeill told lawmakers on Wednesday. “We are facing a potential perfect storm of severe staffing shortages and an influx of millions of passengers at our airports.”

Adam Stahl, the TSA chief of staff, also addressed staffing lapses on Wednesday. He said the situation will “get worse before it gets better” despite Trump’s executive order.

“There are knock-on ramifications of attrition when the shutdown ends,” Stahl told “The Hill,” a TV news program on NewsNation.

He added that the recruiting pipeline is a “challenge.”

“Folks that are possibly in the pipeline or they’re considering going and joining the workforce will be dissuaded because of the lack of job security,” Stahl said.

Flying is getting pricier

Jet fuel costs are skyrocketing due to the US and Israel’s war on Iran, which is expected to add to the already elevated cost of flying.

Prices have surged to about nearly $200 a barrel since February, far surpassing the earlier $100 average.

As a result, some airlines are relying on consumers to cover the additional costs. Qantas Airways, Air India, Thai Air, and other airlines have already alerted flyers that they’re raising ticket prices.

The ongoing military conflict has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway near Iran’s coast through which 20% of the world’s oil supply and liquefied natural gas typically pass. Other major oil hubs, including a key port in the United Arab Emirates, have sustained damage.

The war has also forced some countries to close their airspace, forcing airlines to reroute flights and find alternative routes.

Mounting anxiety

None of this is good for the airline industry. Some Americans are increasingly anxious about air travel, which could make them think twice about purchasing costly tickets.

In an Ipsos survey conducted in February, almost half of respondents said they’re “losing confidence in the safety of air travel.” Respondents with household incomes over $125,000 had even less confidence.

“That’s likely a worrying stat for the travel industry as the high earners are much more frequent fliers,” the global market research firm wrote in its report.

Less than 30% of respondents said they felt “confident in the safety of air travel.”

The survey doesn’t specify a reason. However, there could be several factors, including the war’s impact on international travel, rising ticket prices during a time of economic anxiety, the fallout from staff shortages, or a string of recent emergencies.

In January, a passenger jet collided with a Black Hawk helicopter near the Reagan Washington National Airport. Sixty-seven people died. And this week, an Air Canada passenger plane crashed into a fire truck, killing two pilots.

• Bank of America has agreed to pay $72.5M over its banking relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
• The deal to settle claims brought by Epstein’s victims must first be approved by a judge.
• Bank of America maintains that it “did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes.”

Bank of America has agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit alleging the bank facilitated financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, according to a Manhattan federal court filing released Friday evening.

The deal, which requires sign-off from a judge, would pay “all women who were sexually abused or trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, or by any person who is connected to or otherwise associated with Jeffrey Epstein or any Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking venture, between June 30, 2008 and July 6, 2019, inclusive,” the filing said.

Lawyers have said they are aware of “at least 60 women who were victimized by Epstein” during that time period, the filing added.

US District Judge Jed Rakoff, who is overseeing the case, gave the parties a March 27 deadline to file the terms of settlement and an April 2 hearing to decide whether to approve them.

Bank of America said in a statement that the deal allows it to “put this matter behind us and provides further closure for the plaintiffs.” The bank continues to deny wrongdoing: “Bank of America did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes,” it said.

Epstein, known for rubbing elbows with titans of industry and political powerhouses, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell the morning of August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

JPMorgan agreed to pay $290 million, and Deutsche Bank agreed to a $75 million payout, to settle similar lawsuits brought by the same group of lawyers representing Epstein victims.

Rakoff previously tossed a parallel lawsuit the attorneys brought against BNY — formerly Bank of New York Mellon Corp. — but allowed portions of the case against Bank of America to move forward.

• Kimberly Storin, Zoom’s chief marketing and communications officer, was interviewed for Business Insider’s CMO Insider video series.
• Zoom’s ad campaign with former SNL star Bowen Yang was created by SNL’s Colin Jost and his production agency.
• Storin said Zoom’s AI Companion tool helps her turn her daily conversations into strategic insight.

When Kimberly Storin joined Zoom as chief marketing and communications officer in April 2025, she did her own research to learn what users thought of the brand. Storin said she discovered a strong affinity for Zoom compared to its competitors. Still, many of the platform’s features are not well known.

That insight inspired a campaign and commercial titled “Zoom Ahead,” created by Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost’s production company, and featuring former SNL cast member Bowen Yang. In the spot, Yang plays a tyrannical head of IT who is powerless to prevent employees from declaring their love of Zoom.

Zoom extended the theme of worker empowerment with an in-person activation: a Hard Stop Burger Shop pop-up in New York City on March 26-27. The idea was based on research the company conducted with Morning Consult that showed workers are skipping breaks or eating lunch at their desks.

In a video interview, Business Insider spoke with Storin about the strategy behind the campaign and why she’s such a fan of the company’s AI Companion tool.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

The biggest challenge Zoom has is that ultimately, we are a ubiquitous brand. We have 99% brand awareness, which is a bit of a double-edged sword.

What people don’t realize is the breadth and depth of our portfolio. They don’t realize we have a customer support platform, a marketing platform with events and webinars, a recruiting platform, or a sales platform.

Before I started at Zoom, I talked to about 50 of the company’s customers. Those customers told me, over and over again, about their affinity for the platform.

Then I went down this rabbit hole of Reddit and social media, and I kept seeing this theme in the conversations I didn’t see with any of our competitors — it was really anchored in this preference for the Zoom platform, the simplicity, the ease of use, the fact that Zoom just works.

That was the genesis, the nugget that really inspired our campaign. We wanted to start a revolution.

I had a chief information officer ask me, “Are you trying to encourage shadow IT?” And I said, “No, we’re actually trying to do the opposite.” We’re trying to encourage people to come out of the shadows and share their love for the platform in the ways that they’re sharing it on Reddit, social media, and in our customer satisfaction scores — and we want them to tell you.

Colin Jost was able to find the right humorous tone for the ad

Humor is hard for a brand. And to get humor right really requires people who understand comedy, who understand how humor can play a role in communication, and who can explain something in a way that a straight-faced ad really can’t. And so, of course, we wanted to tap into the best of the best.

Colin Jost really reflects the cultural zeitgeist in a lot of ways. Every single week, he’s writing comedy that resonates and stands up to the news of the week. We felt that with Zoom being such a cultural brand and part of so many people’s cultural experience, having somebody who understands humor in that way would really help elevate us.

So we brought in Colin and his team from his agency called No Notes Productions. They helped us understand a lot of different ways that we could leverage humor and heart to bring this product to life. Some of it was outrageous. Some of it was formulaic in terms of leveraging a celebrity.

Where we ended up landing, and what ended up testing really well with our customers, was this idea that we call “Dead Poets Society” meets “Severance.” It just really worked.

The AI Companion helps connect daily conversations to strategy

I don’t know how many folks are familiar with our AI Companion, but that is absolutely my favorite tool. The reason I love it so much is because I believe that so much of the data and the information that matters to us as executives happens in those conversations.

Unlike a traditional LLM like ChatGPT or Claude, which is really focused on external data, the beauty of Zoom AI Companion is that you can pull in all your meetings.

At the click of a button, you can build an agent that effectively taps into all of the conversations that you’ve had and is able to leverage those conversations to help you build a strategy or to help you build messaging.

Now that we have automated gestures, I often give a thumbs up at very inappropriate times because I’m a very hand-gesturing person. Sometimes I’ll do a hand gesture, and the next thing you know, I’ve got a thumbs up flying across the screen. So that’s my typical go-to embarrassing moment.

• It was an ordinary morning at the school I was teaching at, until it wasn’t.
• Losing a student instantly shifted my perspective on parenting.
• Now, ordinary moments matter more, and I’m trying to pay attention to them.

It was an ordinary day. Until it wasn’t. The school day hadn’t even started yet.

Students were gathered in the auditorium the way they did every morning — the early arrivals waiting for the first bell. Some were half-asleep. Others were talking with friends, scrolling their phones, or finishing homework. It was the quiet, in-between time before the day officially began.

Then suddenly, everything changed. One of my students collapsed right in front of me.

For a moment, there was confusion. I was the first to reach her. Other teachers and staff rushed forward while the room filled with that strange, suspended silence that happens when people realize something is terribly wrong but don’t yet understand what’s happening.

Emergency responders arrived. Students were ushered out. Adults moved quickly, trying to manage the situation while shielding hundreds of teenagers from a moment no one should have to witness.

But eventually, the school day started anyway.

That’s one of the unspoken expectations of teaching: the day keeps moving. Classes begin. Lessons continue. Students still need structure, routine, and stability — even when the adults in the room are struggling to process what just happened.

In the days that followed, I stood in front of my classroom and did what teachers do. I taught lessons. I answered questions. I graded assignments.

From the outside, it probably looked like things had returned to normal. Inside, something had shifted.

Everything changed for me that day

Before that day, I carried the quiet assumption that many adults do — the belief that if you work hard, plan carefully, and follow the rules, life will mostly stay within the lines you’ve drawn.

Losing a student shattered that belief.

It forced me to confront a difficult truth, especially for parents, that’s hard to sit with: control is mostly an illusion. You can supervise, plan, protect, and prepare. You can do everything right. And still, life can change in an instant.

When I went home to my own children after that experience, I noticed the shift almost immediately. The ordinary moments felt different. Bedtime routines lasted a little longer. I lingered a little more when my kids wrapped their arms around me before running off to school. Conversations in the car suddenly felt more important than finishing one more chore when we got home.

Achievement started to look different

As teachers, we spend much of our professional lives measuring progress — grades, test scores, benchmarks, performance data. As parents, it’s easy to carry that same mindset home. We worry about whether our kids are ahead, behind, or doing enough to keep up.

But standing in a school auditorium after losing a student has a way of rearranging your priorities. I realized, rather suddenly, that the most important things aren’t measurable at all.

It’s the way your child tells you a long, rambling story about their day. The quick hug before they run out the door to play. The moments that feel small enough to rush past. Those are the moments that matter, and I’m paying more attention to them now.

The ordinary moments matter more

What many people don’t realize about teaching is that experiences like this don’t stay at school. Teachers carry them home. They sit quietly in the background of everyday life, shaping the way we see our own families.

For me, losing a student didn’t just change the way I see the classroom. It changed the way I see time, the way I parent, and the way I move through the world.

It reminded me that the ordinary moments we assume we’ll always have are often the most fragile — and the most important.

• The latest AI push at Meta is “AI Week,” where employees build things using Claude and other tools.
• Staff is spinning up interactive vibe coding guides, competing in hackathons, and watching demos.
• 2026 is the year AI will begin to “dramatically change the way we work,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg says.

At Meta, there’s no escaping AI.

The company has begun running intensive AI training weeks to encourage staff to experiment more with AI tools, according to Meta employees who spoke with Business Insider and public LinkedIn posts.

The weeks have involved a series of hackathons, demos, and other projects where Meta staff show off what they can build with AI, regardless of their job title or seniority. Some of the projects are built with Anthropic’s Claude Code, which the company has adopted widely internally.

This is part of Meta’s latest initiative to embrace AI across its workforce, which has included setting org targets for AI adoption and reorganizing some teams around AI-native “pods.” Similar pushes are taking place across corporate America as companies aim to become more efficient with AI. Google has told some employees their AI use will be considered in performance reviews, and JPMorgan has told software engineers it expects them to be harnessing AI to save time.

“It’s well-known that this is a priority and we’re focused on using AI to help employees with their day-to-day work,” a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider.

Internally, these sessions have been given names such as “AI Transformation Week.” During the sessions, some employees were given demos on how agents and other tools could work across their laptops and phones, an employee who attended some sessions told Business Insider.

Some of these AI weeks took place in March. One Meta employee told Business Insider that some teams held their own AI weeks at the end of last year, during which staff used vibe coding to create something valuable with no strict output requirements.

At one hackathon during Meta’s AI Transformation Week, attendees sat through demos of its own internal AI tools, Claude Code, and others, according to a LinkedIn post from an employee. AI agents are a big focus, with the aim of having employees guide autonomous systems that can handle everything from coding to compiling reports.

Design is also part of the effort. One Meta product manager touted building an interactive vibe-coding guide for designing products at Meta using Claude Code, according to her website.

Pods and goals

While some employees were brushing up on AI this week, Meta laid off several hundred employees across Reality Labs, the division overseeing its virtual reality projects, and other orgs. The company has spent billions on hiring top AI talent and building out infrastructure. However, it has yet to launch its long-awaited frontier model, internally codenamed Avocado.

While that has given Meta the perception of being behind in the AI race, a top Wall Street analyst said earlier this month that the company’s aggressive internal AI transformation could, in fact, give it “insurmountable” cost and performance advantages.

Meta has been making other changes in an effort to be what CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described as “AI native.” In a division of Reality Labs, the organization overseeing Meta’s virtual reality projects, employees were rebranded with titles like “AI builder” and were organized into AI-native “pods,” Business Insider previously reported.

The company has also set specific goals for adopting AI tools that vary across teams, according to an internal document reviewed by Business Insider.

On Tuesday, Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth said he would take leadership over the company’s efforts to adopt AI for internal use, an initiative known internally as “AI for Work,” according to a copy of the post seen by Business Insider and first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

“These tools hold the promise of giving each employee so much more power to accomplish their work,” Bosworth said in a post on X.