Good morning! Michele Kang invests $25 million in women’s soccer, UConn wins NCAA championship, and women-led public companies are outperforming the tariff market crash—so far.

– Down but not out. On Wednesday, Hypatia Capital released an analysis of its Women CEO ETF, an investable fund made up of U.S. public companies with female CEOs, from Jane Fraser‘s Citi to Tricia Griffith‘s Progressive. Over the last two chaotic months since President Donald Trump took office, the analysis found, businesses in the WCEO ETF had outperformed the broader market. While index benchmark ETFs dropped 6.2% in March, the WCEO ETF dropped only 4.9%.

Of course, later in the day on Wednesday, Trump gave his “Liberation Day” speech announcing the full scope of his tariff plan, sending markets into freefall. Thursday and Friday turned out to be the largest two-day wipeout of shareholder value ever recorded, according to Dow Jones. In total $11 trillion in value has been erased since Trump’s inauguration, with more than half of that disappearing last week. Hypatia Capital managing partner and chief investment officer Patricia Lizarraga went back to the drawing board and shared a new analysis with Fortune of women-led businesses’ stock performance through market close Friday.

On April 3, the S&P 600 fell 7.6% while the WCEO ETF fell 6.1%. By market close Friday, the WCEO ETF outperformed its benchmark by over 100 basis points. Hypatia conducted an industry-based analysis to determine whether the industries in its fund accounted for the difference—and determined that was not the reason why women-led businesses were outperforming the market.

The fund invests in all women-led public companies in the U.S. with at least a $500 million market cap. Lisa Su‘s AMD is its top holding, followed by Jayshree Ullal’s Arista Networks and Revathi Advaithi‘s Flex.

Lizarraga believes the 1.1% delta could be due to women-led companies’ likelihood of having more defensive balance sheets, lower debt-to-equity ratios, and higher cash reserves. In 2021, an article in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance found that female CEOs’ cash ratio was 18% higher than the mean among the top 1,500 publicly traded companies in the U.S. “In a down market, when investors may punish highly leveraged companies and reward stability and larger cash reserves, these traits may become a competitive advantage,” Lizarraga says. “The WCEO ETF, which includes a diverse range of companies from small-cap to mega-cap, may be benefiting from this prudence.”

When the startup and venture capital world entered its prolonged downturn in 2022 and focus shifted from growth to profitability, female founders found themselves better prepared; with less access to capital, many had long run their businesses more responsibly. The same now seems to be holding true for the largest women-led public companies in the U.S. After this morning’s market open, we’ll see whether this competitive advantage persists.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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Good morning!

The return-to-office war wages on, as disgruntled employees head back to work and are being greeted with a host of logistical and interpersonal challenges. But one technology company chose to go against the grain by keeping—and expanding—the distributed model of work they implemented during the pandemic. 

“For us, it was never a thing [where] we will think about return to office one day when things get normal,” Avani Prabhakar, chief people officer at Atlassian, tells Fortune. 

A fully distributed work model had been in the works even prior to 2020, but efforts ramped up when lockdowns forced employees to work from home. In an effort to utilize a data-driven approach to work, Atlassian introduced a “Team Anywhere” within its people department, which included the Teamwork Lab, a group of behavioral scientists conducting research to solve problems and innovate how work gets done for both clients and the company itself.

There are four key components to the company’s remote-first model: asynchronous communication, in which teams favor written communication for collaboration, “open by default,” meaning that written materials should be available to all, connection, and time zone awareness. 

It looks like the company’s gamble on remote work has paid off: Atlassian’s workforce has tripled in size during the four and a half years that its flexible work policy has been in place, and the number of candidates who apply for open roles has more than doubled, according to the company.

Employee satisfaction is intrinsically connected to the “Team Anywhere” approach, 91% of employees say that flexibility is an important reason they stay at the company. 

You can read more about Atlassian’s WFH policy here.

Sara Braun
sara.braun@fortune.com

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Good morning. As the demand for CFOs increases, the job continues to become more complex. Finance chiefs are shaping business strategy amid volatile markets, for example.

The new economic environment rife with tariffs could remain uncertain for some time. U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs would likely push inflation higher. “It is now becoming clear that tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected, and the same is likely to be true of economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth,” Powell said in a speech Friday before business journalists in Arlington, Va. 

CFOs are looking beyond short-term concerns in a way they haven’t in previous years, and have high expectations for technology, McKinsey finds. Finance leaders are increasingly citing strategic planning and sustained resource allocation as top finance priorities, according to the firm. 

During my recent conversations with the CFOs of tech companies Workday, Toast and Adobe, I asked for their perspectives on balancing near-term operational needs with in-depth strategic planning. Here’s what they had to say.

Zane Rowe, CFO at Workday

“We’re always trying to be tactical, as well as strategic and nimble. We conduct scenario planning to understand what could be happening across the globe and put out an annual plan with targets. But we’re flexible as to how we achieve those targets—as the dynamics change, whether it’s geopolitical, foreign exchange or other variables that every business must navigate. I encourage leaders throughout the organization to be thoughtful, nimble, and continue to execute both in the short term and long term. Our mindset can’t just be around the next two, three or four years, it must be well into the future to build a durable business.”

Elena Gomez, president and CFO at Toast  

“We run a long-range plan process and manage day-to-day against key KPIs. We always scenario plan—what are the risks and opportunities in the business? And how then does that shape our decision-making? I spend time with my CEO on a regular cadence to say, ‘Here’s what I see as risks for the business, and here’s where I think the opportunities are.’ We also discuss where we can go faster now to support long-term growth. If you think about our international and retail opportunities, the investment right now feels very short-term, but they’re in service of our long-term ambitions. That’s just an example of taking an idea today that will ultimately drive revenue over time.”

Dan Durn, CFO and EVP of finance, technology, security and operations at Adobe

“I talk to my peers at other companies, and I would say the error bar on 2025 and how it plays out is greater today in the minds of my peers than it was a quarter or two ago. What that tells me is we’re just in an elevated environment of uncertainty. What I learned a long time ago is, in an uncertain environment, focus on the things you can control, stay agile and respond to the things that you can’t. Keep a long-term perspective when you make decisions. Keep a long-term perspective on driving value for your employees, customers and investors.”

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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