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RESULTS OF SAINT PAUL GUARANTEED INCOME PILOT SHOW INCREASED EMPLOYMENT, IMPROVED OUTLOOK

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SAINT PAUL, Minn., Dec. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Data is in for the nation’s first mayor-led guaranteed income pilot to use public dollars, and results show positive trends in employment, physical and mental health, and other indicators of well-being and quality of life, according to Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

Mayor Melvin Carter and the City of Saint Paul launched the People’s Prosperity Pilot in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the second-ever mayor-led guaranteed income pilot, and the first to use funding from the CARES Act, along with state and private philanthropic dollars. Results of the People’s Prosperity Pilot were studied by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research (CGIR) at the University of Pennsylvania.

Researchers found that the number of people employed increased from 49% at the beginning of the pilot to 63% six months after the program ended. While actively receiving guaranteed income payments, families also maintained or improved their financial stability, allowing them to save money and smooth income volatility. There was a 7% increase in participants transitioning to better quality homes during the guaranteed income program.

Recipients showed few symptoms of anxiety or depression (measured on the Kessler scale) and had favorable levels of well-being across the three subscales of general health, physical limits, and physical functioning. When payments stopped there was a decrease in average general health. The percentage of participants reporting feelings of high hope progressively increased throughout and beyond the study from 15% at baseline to 21% at the end of the program and 22% six months after the program ended.

“A guaranteed income addresses the basic cause of poverty—a lack of money,” said Mayor Carter. “This pilot shows that a relatively small, no strings attached payment can open up a world of opportunity. Leveraging an unconditional cash benefit on a national level is an obvious tool that can dismantle generational poverty.”

Saint Paul’s pilot is also the first affiliated with Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a coalition of 125 mayors and growing, of which Mayor Carter is a proud co-chair. Building upon the early success of the People’s Prosperity Pilot, Minnesota recently passed the nation’s largest statewide expansion of the Child Tax Credit.

“The guaranteed income payments took a weight off my shoulders,” said Lucille O’Quinn, guaranteed income recipient. “It helped me go from survival mode to feeling like my family is going to be okay, no matter what. The sense of relief is real. It shows that government really can make a difference in our lives.”

The research findings from Saint Paul build upon the similar results from the first-ever mayor-led guaranteed income program in Stockton, CA, which provided 125 families with $500 per month for two years. Set up as a randomized control trial, researchers found statistically significant gains in employment, financial stability, mental health, and overall well-being.

“The results from Saint Paul’s guaranteed income program fill me with hope,” said Michael D. Tubbs, founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. “They are similar to what we saw in Stockton–people found better jobs, moved into safer housing, had more time to spend with their children, and overall felt more hopeful and less anxious about the future. It shows that guaranteed income can and does make families and communities stronger and more resilient.”

Read the full report on Saint Paul from CGIR here.

Founded in June of 2020 by former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, Mayors for a Guaranteed Income is a coalition of 125 mayors committed to advancing a federal guaranteed income – direct, recurring cash payments to middle and low-income people. Expanding to include city and county legislators in 2023 with Counties for a Guaranteed Income, the network acts as a research and resource hub for municipal pilots around the country–48 and counting. A new documentary film, It’s Basic, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2023, follows recipients and illuminates the life-changing impact of guaranteed income programs on families’ economic security and opportunity.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/results-of-saint-paul-guaranteed-income-pilot-show-increased-employment-improved-outlook-302018136.html

SOURCE Mayors for a Guaranteed Income

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Quickplay Launches Live Operations, Bringing AI-Enriched Orchestration and Operational Control to Live Broadcast Channels

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September 3, 2026

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Operators can now control distributed stations, enforce standards network-wide, transform newscasts into social and vertical content, correct station errors in real-time all via a single console

AMSTERDAM , Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Quickplay, the Content to Value Operating System for media and entertainment, today announced Live Operations, a cloud-native, centralized management control plane for managing live broadcast and OTT channels. With it, operators can now manage scheduling, signal control, ad decisioning, clip production, and monitoring and observability from one console. AI is distributed across entire live broadcast workflows, enabling newsrooms to apply intelligence in completely new ways including across editorial. Quickplay will publicly debut Live Operations at IBC 2026, Hall 5.G86.

Ideal for broadcasters and streaming operators running live-linear and FAST channels, news organizations managing distributed stations without full-time on-site engineering staff, sports rights holders with regional blackout requirements, and multi-channel operators running multiple simultaneous channels, Live Operations provides operational control at scale. At a time when broadcasters spend approximately 75% of their time on technical workflows, this capability unchains them from those responsibilities so they can focus on delivering the high-quality live programming viewers depend on.

Most operators manage live across a stack of tools that don’t share signals: scheduling in one system, signal control in another, ad break management in yet another, with clipping handled as a separate post-production workflow entirely. When something breaks, teams find out late and must work across multiple systems to fix it.

“Many broadcasters today use AI to do smart things in metadata, in packaging, in ad decisioning, each creating individual value, yet completely disconnected from the others. With live programming, the time needed to connect these dots is time operators simply don’t have. Viewers will have moved on, as will the revenue,” said Paul Pastor, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer, Quickplay. “AI at a single step creates value. But AI orchestrated across every step, across an entire broadcast network, creates compounding value. At IBC, we’re showcasing the power of this live AI workflow and highlighting the success Television New Zealand (TVNZ) and Gray Media are seeing with it.”

What Live Operations Does

Live Operations is the operator-facing control plane inside the Content to Value Operating System. From a single console, operators control:

Scheduler and EPG Management: Enables operators to manage metadata, and build and manage all content from one, centralized location including live events, VOD assets, slates, and replays. Unscheduled gaps and schedules conflicts are flagged and corrected before going live.Live Channel & Signal Control: Gives users control over what’s on air at each moment including input switching, slate insertion, fallback triggering, stream acquisition, and channel start and stop operations, all from a single dashboard.Ad Break and SCTE-35 Management: Enables users to automate ad break timing through SCTE-35 cues. Users can also view real-time metadata to improve ad decisioning, a revenue protection feature for ad-supported channels.Live Disruption and Fallback: Delivers automated and manual fallback protection for signal loss and unexpected disruptions. When the live input drops below configured health thresholds, the platform automatically routes output to a pre-configured looped VOD fallback asset without operator intervention. Fallback at any time can proactively be triggered at any time, and is local to the Quickplay platform, never dependent on an external signal source.Live-to-VOD and Clip Factory: Transforms each newscast into a catalog of distributable content automatically. AI analyzes live event recordings and packages it into a series of branded short clips, complete with new metadata, ready for verticalization and syndication, removing the burden of responsibility from producers and reporters. Monitoring & Observability: Ensures real-time visibility into every layer of the live delivery chain via a unified dashboard.

“Live has no margin for error,” said Juan Martin, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Quickplay. “Live Operations challenges today’s status quo by eliminating the need for disconnected systems so that if something breaks down during a live broadcast, teams are notified and a fix is in process in real-time. No dead air, no missed SCTE cues, no failed signals. This is AI doing what it should do, backed by the assurance of a Content to Value Operating System purpose-built to support transformation.”

Live Operations is a part of Quickplay’s Content to Value Operating System which connects every step of digital media production and monetization into one smart system, built on five engines: Stream, Enrich, Activate, Engage, and Maximize. Live Operations lives within Stream, which delivers broadcast-grade, scalable streams for live, VOD, catch-up, and virtual channels. As a part of the larger system, Live Operations is inherently connected to other engines, bringing the value of true orchestration to the entire workflow of a broadcast network.

Quickplay will showcase Live Operations at IBC 2026 in Hall 5.G86. Schedule your meeting here.

About Quickplay

Quickplay is the Content to Value Operating System for media and entertainment, connecting every stage of the content lifecycle, from creation to monetization. By applying intelligence where it drives measurable impact, Quickplay enables broadcasters, sports operators, streamers, and creators to turn their catalogs into revenue. Quickplay powers 2.5 billion streaming minutes per month, with 5 billion ad impressions served and 99.999% streaming uptime.

Quickplay was founded by four innovators with deep media and entertainment technology experience from AT&T, McKinsey and Company, The Walt Disney Company, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Headquartered in Toronto, the company has offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chennai, and throughout Europe. For more information, visit quickplay.com.

Breakaway Communications for Quickplay
QuickplayPR@breakawaycom.com
+19087054596

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/quickplay-launches-live-operations-bringing-ai-enriched-orchestration-and-operational-control-to-live-broadcast-channels-302869008.html

SOURCE Quickplay

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L.A. Works Brings Angelenos Together for Week of Service Marking 25th Anniversary of September 11

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September 3, 2026

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LOS ANGELES, Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — This month, L.A. Works will bring Angelenos together for a week of hands-on service opportunities marking the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, supported by the 2026 9/11 Day Grant Program, administered by the nonprofit 9/11 Day in collaboration with AmeriCorps.

L.A. Works joins a nationwide movement to transform the anniversary of 9/11 into America’s Day of Doing Good, reclaiming the day as an annual moment of national reflection, unity, and action. With more than 100 million Americans now having little or no personal memory of September 11, 2001, local service projects ensure future generations remember not only the tragic events of that day, but also the extraordinary compassion, courage, selflessness, and spirit of unity that emerged in its aftermath.

Through projects supporting first responders and Eaton Fire survivors, L.A. Works is giving Angelenos a tangible way to honor those who were lost and those who responded to the tragedy while fostering a stronger sense of connection and shared responsibility across our communities.

The week’s flagship events include:

September 9: Beautification at the Frank Hotchkin Memorial Training Center for emergency service heroes with fire engine restoration, painting and plantingSeptember 13: Fire mitigation at Barnsdall Art Park by clearing high risk invasive plants and disposing of brush

“September 11 was a terrible day of loss, and twenty-five years later, we have an opportunity to honor those who were lost and put in harm’s way by choosing service,” said Deborah Brutchey, Executive Director of L.A. Works. “When people come together to care for their neighbors, we strengthen the connections that hold us in community. That’s something we can choose to carry forward.”

Learn more at www.laworks.com.

ABOUT L.A. WORKS
Since 1991, L.A. Works has united Angelenos and inspired action for a more equitable LA. As the only nonprofit in Los Angeles that mobilizes tens of thousands of volunteers each year across a wide range of interconnected issues, L.A. Works organizes and recruits volunteers to directly impact vulnerable communities while strengthening the fabric of civil society. In 2025, L.A. Works volunteers gave more than 175,000 hours of service, which represents $7,024,500 in added capacity for nonprofits across Los Angeles County. More at www.laworks.com.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/la-works-brings-angelenos-together-for-week-of-service-marking-25th-anniversary-of-september-11-302868322.html

SOURCE L.A. Works

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AI Transformation Firm SoftSnow Named an OpenAI Select Partner

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27 minutes ago

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September 3, 2026

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SoftSnow, an AI transformation partner that helps mid-market organizations build AI-first operating models, today announced that it has been named an OpenAI Select Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network.

CHICAGO, Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — SoftSnow, an AI transformation partner that helps mid-market organizations build AI-first operating models, today announced that it has been named an OpenAI Select Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network.

“Being named an OpenAI Select Partner reflects the way SoftSnow already works with clients: bringing OpenAI’s frontier models to organizations and building them around how each team already works,” said Reid Valfer, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, SoftSnow.

The OpenAI Partner Network is a global program for partners to build, sell, and deliver AI solutions with OpenAI. It brings together partners with deep industry expertise, delivery capabilities, and customer relationships while equipping them with resources, enablement, and support to help enterprises adopt OpenAI frontier models and products and turn them into measurable impact.

As an OpenAI Select Partner, SoftSnow will continue working with OpenAI to help organizations build, deploy, and scale AI solutions responsibly and effectively. This work will help organizations get more useful work from every token and stronger performance per dollar with GPT‑5.6, while using ChatGPT Work to turn ambitious goals into finished work. By integrating strategic planning, precise technical execution, and structured change management, SoftSnow transforms AI from concept into a tangible catalyst for measurable growth and lasting cultural change.

SoftSnow supports organizations across financial services, professional services, real estate, construction, marketing, and manufacturing as an embedded operator, building AI agents and workflows around how each team works and guiding adoption from there. Its work includes automating supplier pricing and estimating workflows for a construction products distributor and delivering agents for a marketing and advertising agency to speed up new-business responses, among other engagements.

Looking ahead, SoftSnow plans to expand its OpenAI-related offerings, invest in talent and enablement, and scale customer deployments, helping customers translate AI ambition into business outcomes.

Learn more about the OpenAI Partner Network: https://openai.com/business/partners/

About SoftSnow

SoftSnow is an AI transformation partner that helps mid-market organizations build AI-first operating models. Working as embedded operators, the SoftSnow team maps where AI creates the most value through its AI Opportunity Matrix™, then builds the role-specific agents and workflows that turn those priorities into daily work. The team also guides the change management and training that make adoption last. SoftSnow is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Learn more at https://www.softsnow.ai.

Media Contact

Gabriela Belli, SOFTSNOW LLC, 1 (312)848-8570, info@softsnow.ai, https://softsnow.ai/

View original content:https://www.prweb.com/releases/ai-transformation-firm-softsnow-named-an-openai-select-partner-302867396.html

SOURCE SOFTSNOW LLC

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