Kayla Webster
Kayla Webster reports on how corporate power, money, and policy shape everyday work. At Inc., she covers the world of work with a focus on HR strategy, employee benefits, and the financial and reputational consequences of leadership decisions. Her stories track what happens to workers and careers when companies change the rules.
Corporate Decisions, Reputational Risk, and Jobs
Webster’s reporting often starts where high-level decisions collide with individual livelihoods.
In her coverage of a viral Knicks celebration that led to a senior financial executive losing her job, she dissects how off-the-clock behavior, social media visibility, and reputational risk now factor into employment in the finance sector. She looks at what boards, compliance teams, and HR leaders read into public moments, and how quickly a personal misstep can turn into a career-ending incident. Across finance and corporate stories, she connects the dots between brand protection, internal policy, and who ultimately pays the price.
HR Policy, Benefits, and the Cost of Work
On the HR beat, Webster zeroes in on the tangible benefits and protections that define the modern employment deal. Her reporting on a company pausing its 401(k) match to fund AI training examines how employers reallocate resources between long-term financial security and near-term innovation, and what that trade-off means for thousands of workers losing retirement contributions. In her piece on anti-nepotism policies following the Hunter Biden pardon, she explores how hiring practices, DEI programs, and internal controls interact, grounding the story in data on how common favoritism is and practical guidance on policy design.
She consistently frames HR changes in terms of real costs and gains for employees, not just headline strategy for leadership.
Hybrid Work, Mandates, and the Future of Office Jobs
Webster is a regular voice on the evolving rules of where and how people work. Her coverage of Fidelity’s decision to end hybrid work for a large segment of its workforce tracks the shift back to five-day in-office mandates, positioning it as a potential inflection point rather than an isolated move. She examines how return-to-office orders land with workers who built their lives around flexibility, and how conflicting messages from employers fuel confusion and mistrust. In related work on AI hiring amid layoff fears, she tests the narrative that automation is only a threat, highlighting companies actively expanding headcount around AI skills and tools. Across these pieces, she treats hybrid work, automation, and policy changes as connected forces reshaping office jobs rather than separate trends.
Entrepreneurship, Financial Wellness, and Career Narratives
Alongside corporate and HR coverage, Webster regularly spotlights entrepreneurs and unconventional career arcs. Her profile of Empify’s founder centers on rebuilding after financial loss and turning personal setbacks into a financial wellness platform, detailing how everyday investors use the company’s tools to build wealth.
In her breakdown of Reese Witherspoon’s blunt advice to Gen Z - “don’t follow your dreams” - she uses a celebrity soundbite to examine burnout, layoff anxiety, and the pressure on young workers to find a perfect path, translating a viral moment into a broader conversation about career strategy. Her piece on Starbucks’ new “coffeehouse coach” role looks at frontline leadership, culture, and customer experience, showing how one job title encapsulates a wider rethink of service work.
Taken together, these stories show an interest in the stories people tell themselves about work and money, and how those narratives either align with or challenge the realities inside companies.
Editing, Contributions, and the Workplace Lens
Webster’s role at Inc. extends beyond her own bylines. She edits guest contributions on workplace topics, shaping coverage that ranges from HR best practices to leadership and employee experience.
Before joining the magazine, she spent years reporting for business and trade publications focused on employee benefits, financial services, and organizational strategy, as well as community and campus newsrooms. That background shows in her Inc. work: she blends beat expertise with accessible storytelling, moving between C-suite decisions, HR mechanics, and the lived experience of workers without losing clarity or detail.
4 more finance journalists.
Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
Adekunle Agbetiloye
Adekunle Agbetiloye is a senior reporter who connects capital flows, hard numbers and energy transition to the wider African economy. He works at Business Insider Africa, covering how money, technology and energy reshape economic growth, jobs and living conditions. His beat spans the African economy, technology, energy transition, climate change, startups and critical minerals, with a focus on concrete deals and data-led stories. He reports on African startup funding cycles, sovereign wealth funds, billionaire investors, multilateral and private investment programs, energy and power markets, Bitcoin mining, and economic policy choices. His work follows how governments finance spending, manage debt and respond to social pressure, and how sector snapshots and health and development metrics reveal links between macro indicators, corporate strategy and everyday costs.
Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.