Nobody is safe. Many stats about severe maternal morbidity and mortality are unsurprising, in that rates are worse for those who are poor, underserved, and living in remote locations (not to mention in states with abortion bans). At the same time, wealthy, well-resourced, urban Black folks die, too. 

Tori Bowie represents everything the American public might expect of a healthy, young mother. At 32, shed achieved an elite athletic career. She worked her way out of Rankin County, Mississippi to attend university on a full athletic scholarship, later earning gold medals in the 2016 Olympic Games and 2017 World Championships. 

For Black moms, it doesnt matter how much money, education, or access to care we have. When we enter the hospital, we are simply just another Black body, subject to racism, misogyny, biases, and outdated medical practices.

An acute crisis

U.S. maternal deaths have nearly doubled in just three years, from 2018 to 2021. A horrific situation is rapidly getting worse. This must not be normalized.

As founder and CEO of a womens and maternal health-tech company, Im furious. I feel called to disrupt the mainstream dialogue with refrains about doing better that do nothing. The Momnibus Act, which has been on the House floor for almost three years, still has not become law.

We cant wait any longer. Its time to correct the alarming rate of maternal deaths and invest in research and resources.  Community-based organizations, grassroots initiatives, and small-but-mighty companies instill hopebut they are systematically underfunded. 

I run a virtual clinic for prenatal and postpartum patients. We work every day to create hope amidst this crisisproviding critical services otherwise too expensive or inaccessible. Our patients range from tech executives to moms on Medicaid who utilize our wraparound care that supplements the OB/GYN. They look to us for life-saving support from doulas, lactation consultants, pelvic floor specialists, and C-section recovery experts. 

As often the only truly listening ear, our providers fill in the many care gaps experienced by birthing people. We hear what doctors dontand see what hospitals might miss. 

We recognize that the maternal health machine of America is running on empty. Since COVID-19, OBGYNs have been burnt out. Nurses are understaffed, overworked, and underpaid. Midwives are in steep shortage. Since 2014, some 18 labor and delivery units are closing each year. And Doulas are rarely paid a living wageunless they work for Hollywood. 

My experience building hospital pilots confirms this trend. While we try to increase access to doulas in at-risk populations, potential risks trigger hospital lawyers and prevent swift action. Doulas improve maternal health outcomes, but nobody wants to pay for them. Healthcare payer systems in the U.S. work against care that is human-centered and long-term. 

More deaths are coming

Normally in healthcare, we follow the value chain. The largest insurance companies, hospitals, and governments are relied upon for change. Like all giants, theyre slow. Those powers enabled this mess in the first place. Theyre reactive, not preventive. We cannot expect the legacy giants of health care to fix a giant legacy problem. 

Even well-intentioned policies have failed. For instance, a $32 million federal program created to improve rural maternity care intended to serve Black mothers missed them. Zero sites funded by the agency actually serve mothers in the Southeast, the most concentrated area of predominantly Black rural communities, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

As it is Pride month, we must remember queer pioneers like Marsha P. Johnson, Phill Wilson, and Barbara Smith, who used grassroots action to solve problems affecting the queer community. The Stonewall Riots in New York City likely did more for LGBTQ+ rights in America than any prior efforts at legislation. 

If we want to solve this health crisis, if we value parents and children in America, we will go bottom up, not top down. More deaths are coming. We must stop relying on slow-moving large corporations and governments and bank on smaller, more nimble organizations, investors, high net-worth individuals, and guerilla-style public health campaigns.

Such a movement can only succeed if key players from the top break out of their massive institutions to lend knowledge, funding, and a hand. We urgently need investment from more foundations, angel investors, venture capitalists, system-minded federal grantmakers, and for-profit entities with the power to pilot change.

Most importantly, we must organize as a nation to show our government leaders, hospitals, and insurance companies that enough truly is enough. This is not a call to action, but a cry for help.

We cant lose one more Tori or Baby Bowie. We cant leave one more family, like Kira Johnsons or Jenny Eggers, without a heartbeat.

America has failed to act soundly on the current awful and declining pregnancy outcomes. This maternal health crisis demands action now. We need research, private (not just public or payer-driven) funding, direct action, and storytelling about maternal and Black maternal health. 

Not one more mother.

Alison Greenberg is the CEO and co-founder of Ruth Health. Alison is a three-time tech founder, healthcare and A.I. strategy expert, and health and maternal health justice advocate.

Raye Parris, RN, CBS, Certified Holistic Doula, is a maternal-child health advocate dedicated to improving outcomes and equity in maternal and infant care. She is committed to empowering families and communities through evidence-based education and compassionate support.

Grace Wickerson is the health equity policy manager at the Federation of American Scientists where they work on embedding equity in health policies, with an eye toward leveraging data and technology as key tools for accelerating change.

Andrea Palmer is passionate about mental health, accessibility, and health equity. She is the CEO and co-founder of Awake Labs, which develops enabling technology to enhance everyday well-being for people with cognitive disabilities.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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Chief executive officers who assembled for a Fortune virtual conversation that centered on building resilience in an uncertain labor market spent a large portion of the discussion focused on hybrid work and how they are aiming to coax their colleaguesyet again after many failed attemptsto come into the office more regularly.

At pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, the challenge has been how the company can create a sense of fairness when expectations vary so greatly across the company. Workers in China and Japan go into the office every day, as there isnt much of a work-from-home culture in those countries, but workers in the Bay Area arent so keen to go to the office. Shift workers in manufacturing may have different expectations versus employees in the lab.

There is quite a bit of tension in having different rules for different people, said Eli Lilly chair and CEO David Ricks. People start seeing each other not based on output, but based on when they are there.

Doris Meister, CEO and chairman of Wilmington Trust, said she sees a generational split in the desire to return to the office. Younger workers are more likely to want to come to the office, to learn how to handle clients and pick up other critical career skills from more senior colleagues. But employees who are parents prize flexibility over career advancement, especially in homes where both parents work.

We really pay attention to subpopulations and try, whenever possible, to balance flexibility and the need to be in the office, said Meister. Wilmington Trust operates on a hybrid model of office work three days a week.

Meister expressed some concern about studies that show that health outcomes have dipped since the pandemic. In May, the surgeon general raised the alarm about an increased sense of loneliness in the population, which affects mental, physical, and societal health.

I believe companies play a role here in being a community that draws people out of isolation, said Meister. Being very purpose led, and very focused on the greater good, is what we are working toward.

Unlike most, Judy Marks, CEO and president of Otis Worldwide, hasnt had much of an issue getting workers back to the office. The elevator and escalator manufacturers team has a lot of frontline essential workers who remained active throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Fewer than 500 of the companys 69,000-person workforce is remote. 

Because we are so much of a service business, we had to keep the hospitals running, all the condos and apartments and their elevators running, said Marks. And workers dont seem to mind, as the companys attrition rate is in the mid-single digits. 

The delicate dance of knowing how far to push colleagues to return to work reflects research that shows that after compensation, work flexibility is the second-most important priority for workers. And in a tight labor market with the unemployment rate hovering just a sliver above the lowest it has been since 1969, employers dont want to scare off talent by being too restrictive. 

Tech firms, in particular, have a delicate dance as the industry continues to prize flexibility and the war for talent is fierce because of the high salaries offered by giants like Apple and Google. 

A tool I have is, we are hybrid, and I push the decision making down to the management level, said Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson. If the manager says, I need five people in every day, then thats the team you join and thats what you sign up to.

Technology and IT consulting services provider Wipro has added a net 100,000 new people over the last 10 quarters, but to get people back in the office, the company started by asking the top 5,000 leaders to come back. 

In technology, there is no doubt that talent is a currency and that talent is going to be something that companies fight for, said Wipro CEO Thierry Delaporte.

Sharon Marcil, a managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, said employers are dealing with a labor market that is really mixed and really dynamic. The consultants research shows that 60% of employees leave their companies because they dont see career opportunities, and only 10% of open roles in the U.S. are filled by internal candidates. Last year, over 50 million people quit their job in the U.S.a new record.

Marcil said employers have ways to combat attribution. For frontline workers, they can create better shift designs so that workers that are compensation motivated can pick the hours that work best for them, while parents can prioritize flexibility. Marcil advocates employers should focus more on the skills that candidates have for certain roles, rather than just looking at their degrees. 

At IBM, what they saw was you can get great talent if you [look at] skills first, and that talent did very, very well and that talent was more loyal, said Marcil, who spoke favorably of former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty.

Along with pay and workplace flexibility, ADP president and CEO Maria Black said workplace culture and career growth are key expectations for todays worker. Black said employers should think not only about the beginning and end of an employee life cycle, from entry-level hiring to retirement, but also the middle portion, which she called inspire.

The piece in the middle has become more fundamental, said Black.

Now, the pro-skills contingent has a new proponent in the storied halls of one of the nations most selective institutions: Former national security advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who told Fortune on Wednesday that shes very much in favor of skills-based hiring.

That means something coming from Rice, a lifelong academic who boasts a mile-long CV of accolades. She graduated college Phi Beta Kappa (Americas oldest academic honor society), went on to earn a masters degree in political science, and at age 25, earned her Ph.D. in the same subject. Rice currently directs the Hoover Institution, the public policy research initiative at Stanford University, where shes been on faculty since 1981. She holds at least 14 honorary doctorates. Plus, she knows a thing or two about non-academic skills. Rice is an accomplished pianist who performed Mozarts Piano Concerto in D minor with the Denver Symphony Orchestra at age 15, and knows enough about the NFL to have been reportedly considered for a head coaching role.

Despite her numerous degrees, she doesnt think those without one should be overlooked on the job market. The U.S. needs to make a lot more use of programs that enable people without four-year degrees to attain quality, high-paying jobs, Rice told Fortune.

She said many people are better off, for a wide range of reasons, earning a two-year associates degree followed by on-the-job training at a company that will ensure a role after completion. That could prevent many people from joining the $1.78 trillion in student loan debt pile American borrowers owe. Its also a mutually beneficial arrangement. Migrating away from compulsory degree requirements would help companies expand their potential applicant pools, which helps untraditional candidates and would be sorely needed to combat a talent shortage. 

Alongside options for non-degree holders to advance in their careers, Rice added, workers should also have the ability to decide, after some time on a job, that theyd benefit from returning to school and earning their degreeon a full- or part-time basis.

With the possibilities for remote learning, I think thats a big opportunity as well, Rice said. We just need to rethink the whole scope of possibilities.

Why skills will keep winning

Rices support of skills-based hiring, particularly given her appointments at Stanford and deep ties with the government, adds legitimacy to what has been a long-burgeoning trend among some of the nations most powerful executives. 

Non-degree-holding hires performed just as well at IBM as did those with Ph.D.s., former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty previously told Fortune. And General Motors removed degree requirements from many of its listings because, as Telva McGruder, its chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, told Fortune, degrees arent necessarily the be-all, end-all indicator of someones potential. 

Adopting a skills-first mentality is bosses only hope of surviving a shaky economy, Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn, has said: If we had just taken a view on what are the skills necessary; who has those skills; how can we help them acquire a couple of skills to help them become employed; we would have found ourselves in a much more efficient labor market. 

It hasnt taken long for support of new collar jobs (as IBM coined them in 2016) to make its way out of the private sector. Earlier this year, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro joined the trend with his first executive order, in which he nixed degree requirements from 92%, or 65,000, Commonwealth jobs.

There are many different pathways to success, whether its through on the job training, an apprenticeship, vocational education, or college, Shapiro said in his inaugural address.

But thats not to say having a bachelors degree is no longer an unreplicable asset.  A recent analysis from Georgetown Universitys Center on Education and the Workforce that looked at government data found that a bachelors degree is still the most impactful way to snag a good job. 

It could also be an indicator, though, that while skills-based hiring is gaining traction, its still a long way off from being the norm. And perhaps thats why Rice still advocates for finishing up a degree while still making an income.

She encourages new workforce entrantsparticularly young workersto seek out opportunities for networking and improving networking skills, and pounce on them. 

Being proactive is key. It isnt a matter of sitting back and waiting for [opportunities] to come to you; you have to go and get them, Rice said. There are fewer barriers today than there have ever been, but there are still barriers. You have to find a way to get over them, around them, or through them, and dont let them stop you.

Were probably living in the loneliest time in human history, Chesky said during an interview on Thursday at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco. In cities around the world, he said, we need to rebuild physical community.

He noted how people no longer gather as much as they used to, for instance by working remotely instead of in the office, by shopping on Amazon instead of in a mall, and by watching movies on Netflix instead of in theaters. Places like churches and bowling alleys are no longer what they were in terms of gathering, but we still need community, he said. We need to be physically together.

Part of the solution involves breaking old habits, Chesky suggested. We have a long history in cities of dividing up zoning: This is a commercial district, this is a retail district, this is a residential district. He said there could be a potentially massive opportunity to rezone the commercial spaces to be residential or mixed use.

Commercial real estate is struggling in the U.S., with the amount of troubled assets climbing to nearly $64 billion in the first quarter, according to a recent report from MSCI Real Assets. Nearly $155 billion of commercial property assets are potentially troubled, the report stated, with officeshit by remote work and large layoffs in tech in particularaccounting for nearly $43 billion of potential distress, the most of any sector.

The average occupancy of U.S. offices is at just under 50%, according to data from security provider Kastle. 

Shark Tank star and real estate veteran Barbara Corcoran noted the low confidence in commercial real estate on Fox Business earlier this month, commenting, No one really believes its going to turn the corner. People are staying home.

The research firm Capital Economics said in a report released Thursday that the 35% plunge in office values were forecasting by end-2025 is unlikely to be recovered even by 2040, likening the demand reduction to the experience of malls over the past six years as consumers leaned into online shopping.

But out of crisis is opportunity, Chesky said, and when somebody moves out, somebody can move in.

The first step to fixing the problem is to turn more commercial real estate into residential real estate, he said. High-rise towers, he argued, are better for living than working, noting that many people today want big window views and open floor plans. If we made rezoning a little bit easier and really created incentives for people, that could be really interesting, he added.

Second, cities should use rezoning to allow for more multi-use real estate. I think a very vibrant community is a multi-zone community, so its not quiet during the day or quiet at nightthis is where people live and this is where people work, he said.

Third, cities should encourage more community spaces, he said, giving the example of coworking spaces that allow remote workers to feel some connection.

Chesky isnt the only tech luminary to comment on the increasing levels of loneliness and the opportunities to reconnect people. Last year, well-known venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said that remote work has detonated the way we connect in American society, with people neither gathering in offices nor feeling much connection in apartments with other residents, leading to more feelings of alienation and loneliness. His firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has invested in Flow, a startup that aims to give renters a better sense of ownership and community.

But Chesky, for one, isnt mandating a return to the office at his own company, even as many other CEOs increasingly insist upon it. A year ago, Airbnb announced a Live and Work Anywhere policy for employees, which lets them not only choose whether to work at home or in the office, but also allows them to work up to 90 days in other countries.

As Airbnb CFO Dave Stephensonalso head of employee experiencerecently told Fortune, We are not remote-first. We think working in person is incredibly importantWe just think that you should be intentional about when you gather for work.