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A 19-year-old NBA intern bagged a private meeting with LA Clippers CEO from a cold email—she told him ‘to do work that you can do for free’

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This Gen Zer didn’t have industry connections or an NBA pedigree—just a willingness to mop floors and do laundry for his college basketball team. That grit not only landed Daniel Sung a coveted internship with one of the league’s most innovative franchises—while millions in his generation are stuck unemployed—it also put him face-to-face with LA Clippers C-suite.

While most interns were content with group “lunch and learn”, the 19-year-old marketing intern decided to shoot his shot and directly cold-emailed his division’s CEO for a private one-to-one conversation.

“I really wanted to learn from her,” Sung told Fortune. Every week, the entire cohort of interns would have weekly meet-and-greets with LA Clippers’ senior leadership team—and Sung made it his personal mission to corner every single one for a personal catch up before his internship was up. 

“I actually got in a little bit of trouble from HR,” he laughed. “But I knew I needed to talk to all of our C-suite before I left, because when else are you going to be just in that close of a proximity? It’s also hard to be more vulnerable and get really tailored advice otherwise.”

“I was very strategic, so that they could always see me passing them,” Sung said.

Anytime Gillian Zucker, Halo Sports and Entertainment CEO and president of business operations for the LA Clippers would walk on the same floor he was working on, he’d make sure to cross paths with her—just so that he could exchange a smile and maybe even niceties with the big boss. “I needed her to recognize me,” he added. That way she could put a face to a name, when he eventually plucked up the courage to shoot an email her way.

But it wasn’t easy. Zucker didn’t respond to his first email for over a month. So Sung doubled down on his efforts, sending a more urgent follow-up email and plastering LinkedIn with posts about his internship in a bid to get noticed.

“I emailed the secretary, saying I’m going to leave very soon, but I really need to talk to her.” 

Eventually, his persistence worked. Zucker’s chief of staff saw one of Sung’s LinkedIn posts titled Five Lessons I Learned in Five Weeks at the LA Clippers—a post that went viral on the platform and gained traction inside the office too. “That gave me a lot of positive attention, and really sparked the ears of a lot of the C suite executives,” Sung added. 

Soon after, her office reached out to schedule the one-on-one meeting.

Gillian Zucker’s advice for the Gen Zer

The night before sitting down with Zucker, Sung stayed up until 2 a.m. researching and then rehearsing the perfect questions to ask. But when the meeting came, nerves gave way to honesty. 

“I told her to be honest, I don’t think I really know what I want to do in life yet. I’m still 18. (I was 18 at the time) and I have so many interests,” he recalled. “I love sports, I love consulting, I love marketing, but I don’t know where all ties in. What do you think is something that I can do to really find out what I want to do?”

“And then, she asked me, ‘What would you do for free?”

He says the questions instantly brought him back to the time he was mopping floors for the Vanderbilt University basketball team; doing 40-hour weeks of unpaid work to prove his passion for the industry.

“You have to do work like that that really inspires you—you have to do work that you can do for free,” Zucker told him. “It really was the best advice. She said you have to find out your why, what you want to do, the thing that really drives you, and the thing that just by being in that environment, you’ll be happy and you’ll be able to learn from it.”

Fortune has reached out to the NBA for comment.

A single email can change your career

Job-seekers are all turning to out-of-the-box ways to advance their careers, from delivering donuts to Silicon Valley bosses, to waitressing at tech conferences to hand out CVs. But actually, simply cold emailing employers isn’t a bad way to stand out. 

Just like Sung, when Figma’s billionaire CEO Dylan Field was 19 years old and looking to get his design tool off the ground, the millennial cofounder also cold-emailed his tech “heroes” to invite them out for coffee. He also hit up the inbox of former fellow interns and peers from LinkedIn, Flipboard, and O’Reilly Media—and it worked.

Likewise, Nespresso’s U.K. CEO Anna Lundstrom got her foot through the door of the notoriously hard-to-break luxury industry thanks to a cold email to an LVMH boss—he instantly offered her an internship which snowballed into a 5 year career at the likes of Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Gucci.

Google executive Sameer Samat got his start by plucking up the courage to cold-email one of the biggest names in his industry: Google cofounder Sergey Brin.

The CMO of $7.2 billion company Squarespace even calls cold-calling employers the “life hack to avoiding long interview processes.” Years before her success in tech, Kinjil Mathur spent her summers as a college student skimming telephone books to find the contacts of businesses and professionals in her city. She would go to the company listings section, and started cold-calling businesses inquiring about internships—stating she was even willing to do without a paycheck. 

“I was willing to work for free; I was willing to work any hours they needed, even on evenings and weekends. I was not focused on traveling,” Mathur told Fortune.

Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.



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National Park Service drops free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth while adding Trump’s birthday

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The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on President Donald Trump’s birthday next year — which also happens to be Flag Day — but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

The new list of free admission days for Americans is the latest example of the Trump administration downplaying America’s civil rights history while also promoting the president’s image, name and legacy.

Last year, the list of free days included Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth — which is June 19 — but not June 14, Trump’s birthday.

The new free-admission policy takes effect Jan. 1 and was one of several changes announced by the Park Service late last month, including higher admission fees for international visitors.

The other days of free park admission in 2026 are Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27) and the anniversary of the creation of the Park Service (Aug. 25).

Eliminating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved Americans were emancipated, removes two of the nation’s most prominent civil rights holidays.

Some civil rights leaders voiced opposition to the change after news about it began spreading over the weekend.

“The raw & rank racism here stinks to high heaven,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, wrote on social media about the new policy.

Kristen Brengel, a spokesperson for the National Parks Conservation Association, said that while presidential administrations have tweaked the free days in the past, the elimination of Martin Luther King Jr. Day is particularly concerning. For one, the day has become a popular day of service for community groups that use the free day to perform volunteer projects at parks.

That will now be much more expensive, said Brengel, whose organization is a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.

“Not only does it recognize an American hero, it’s also a day when people go into parks to clean them up,” Brengel said. “Martin Luther King Jr. deserves a day of recognition … For some reason, Black history has repeatedly been targeted by this administration, and it shouldn’t be.”

Some Democratic lawmakers also weighed in to object to the new policy.

“The President didn’t just add his own birthday to the list, he removed both of these holidays that mark Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights and freedom,” said Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. “Our country deserves better.”

A spokesperson for the National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions on Saturday seeking information about the reasons behind the changes.

Since taking office, Trump has sought to eliminate programs seen as promoting diversity across the federal government, actions that have erased or downplayed America’s history of racism as well as the civil rights victories of Black Americans.

Self-promotion is an old habit of the president’s and one he has continued in his second term. He unsuccessfully put himself forwardfor the Nobel Peace Prize, renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself, sought to put his name on the planned NFL stadium in the nation’s capital and had a new children’s savings program named after him.

Some Republican lawmakers have suggested putting his visage on Mount Rushmore and the $100 bill.



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JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says Europe has a ‘real problem’

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JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called out slow bureaucracy in Europe in a warning that a “weak” continent poses a major economic risk to the US.

“Europe has a real problem,” Dimon said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “They do some wonderful things on their safety nets. But they’ve driven business out, they’ve driven investment out, they’ve driven innovation out. It’s kind of coming back.”

While he praised some European leaders who he said were aware of the issues, he cautioned politics is “really hard.” 

Dimon, leader of the biggest US bank, has long said that the risk of a fragmented Europe is among the major challenges facing the world. In his letter to shareholders released earlier this year, he said that Europe has “some serious issues to fix.”

On Saturday, he praised the creation of the euro and Europe’s push for peace. But he warned that a reduction in military efforts and challenges trying to reach agreement within the European Union are threatening the continent.

“If they fragment, then you can say that America first will not be around anymore,” Dimon said. “It will hurt us more than anybody else because they are a major ally in every single way, including common values, which are really important.”

He said the US should help.

“We need a long-term strategy to help them become strong,” Dimon said. “A weak Europe is bad for us.”

The administration of President Donald Trump issued a new national security strategy that directed US interests toward the Western Hemisphere and protection of the homeland while dismissing Europe as a continent headed toward “civilizational erasure.”

Read More: Trump’s National Security Strategy Veers Inward in Telling Shift

JPMorgan has been ramping up its push to spur more investments in the national defense sector. In October, the bank announced that it would funnel $1.5 trillion into industries that bolster US economic security and resiliency over the next 10 years — as much as $500 billion more than what it would’ve provided anyway. 

Dimon said in the statement that it’s “painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products and manufacturing.”

Investment banker Jay Horine oversees the effort, which Dimon called “100% commercial.” It will focus on four areas: supply chain and advanced manufacturing; defense and aerospace; energy independence and resilience; and frontier and strategic technologies. 

The bank will also invest as much as $10 billion of its own capital to help certain companies expand, innovate or accelerate strategic manufacturing.

Separately on Saturday, Dimon praised Trump for finding ways to roll back bureaucracy in the government.

“There is no question that this administration is trying to bring an axe to some of the bureaucracy that held back America,” Dimon said. “That is a good thing and we can do it and still keep the world safe, for safe food and safe banks and all the stuff like that.”



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Hegseth likens strikes on alleged drug boats to post-9/11 war on terror

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended strikes on alleged drug cartel boats during remarks Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, saying President Donald Trump has the power to take military action “as he sees fit” to defend the nation.

Hegseth dismissed criticism of the strikes, which have killed more than 80 people and now face intense scrutiny over concerns that they violated international law. Saying the strikes are justified to protect Americans, Hegseth likened the fight to the war on terror following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

“If you’re working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it,” Hegseth said during his keynote address at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation’s interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.”

The most recent strike brings the death toll of the campaign to at least 87 people. Lawmakers have sought more answers about the attacks and their legal justification, and whether U.S. forces were ordered to launch a follow-up strike following a September attack even after the Pentagon knew of survivors.

Though Hegseth compared the alleged drug smugglers to Al-Qaida terrorists, experts have noted significant differences between the two foes and the efforts to combat them.

Hegseth’s remarks came after the Trump administration released its new national security strategy, one that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

During the speech, Hegseth also discussed the need to check China’s rise through strength instead of conflict. He repeated Trump’s vow to resume nuclear testing on an equal basis as China and Russia — a goal that has alarmed many nuclear arms experts. China and Russia haven’t conducted explosive tests in decades, though the Kremlin said it would follow the U.S. if Trump restarted tests.

The speech was delivered at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in California, an event which brings together top national security experts from around the country. Hegseth used the visit to argue that Trump is Reagan’s “true and rightful heir” when it comes to muscular foreign policy.

By contrast, Hegseth criticized Republican leaders in the years since Reagan for supporting wars in the Middle East and democracy-building efforts that didn’t work. He also blasted those who have argued that climate change poses serious challenges to military readiness.

“The war department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building,” he said.



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