BusinessMakers

Announcer

The following program was funded in part by Enterprise Holdings... American Airlines... Toyota... and Dorothy Terrell.

The best secret sauce that I've ever seen is passion. Where there's a will, there's a way. Go for it. Don't let anything stop you.

Theme music playing

Man

Hello. My name is Jonathan Capehart, your host for today. Success in business-- it's a concept that goes hand-in-hand with the American Dream. For African Americans, this dream often has come with great odds.

Still, there are those who have reached the pinnacle of the business world. These "BusinessMakers'" stories that you are about to see are introductory, firsthand accounts from the archives of The HistoryMakers, the nation's largest African American video oral history archive. We hope that they will inform, educate, and inspire you to learn more about our nation's African American business leaders.

Johnson

When I think back to my childhood--and that was really my breeding ground, if you will, that developed an interest in business. I recall being, oh, probably 5 years old and sitting down at the kitchen table one night, and my dad was, you know, clearly disturbed about some things in the business, and I told him, "God, I wish I had $5,000 to give to you," you know, "to take care of all these problems," and he looked at me and he said, "Son, $5,000 won't do it," and I thought $5,000 was, like, all the money in the world. And my dad always instilled in me that, you know, to succeed, you have to be better than the others, and I took that pretty literally, and even in my career in Johnson Products Company, because I was the son of the founder and the president, if I got a promotion, my requirements for productivity were clearly different than anyone else in the organization so that I was held to a tougher standard. That gave me an innate desire and motivation to achieve.

When I became president of Johnson Products, that stock is trading at $2.50 on the day that I become president, and the day I left, it's trading at $26. But somehow, in the back of my mind, I kept hearing this little voice that said, "This is not it," and I decided that I had the courage to leave this very comfortable position in this well-established company that really was my lifelong dream because I began to believe-- both through my internal feelings, as well as this voice, that the voice was right. This was not what I'm here to do. And in March of '92, took the step to leave Johnson Products Company.

I met with Jolyn Robichaux one day for about 3 hours, and we essentially struck a deal in that very first conversation, but she had a belief that I would, in fact, grow the business. You know, the company grew from 1992 to 1997 by 410%, and that really started to create an environment where we could look at some other options and "how do we really develop the business and how do we grow the business?" When I first walked into what was called Richardson Foods Company, I felt immediately at home because liquid products, such as shake flavorings and syrups and hotcake syrups and ice cream toppings, they go through the same type of machinery and equipment that cosmetics run through because they're highly viscous liquids, and so, not only did I feel a comfort with the plant, I knew the equipment, I knew the machinery, and I could evaluate how sophisticated their production processes were. And then, on top of that, I met the people. Every morning, I get up, I'm ready to go.

Cathy Hughes

As a young child, I had visions of being the first African American woman on the radio. Little did I know that Hattie McDaniel, after she won the first Academy Award, had also become the first African American ever to have a syndicated radio show, so I was about 20 years behind schedule at birth.

Hughes

Tony Brown, he said, "I want my students "at Howard University in the School of Communications "to be as committed to their community "as they will be to their craft, and I think that you can help me do that." When I took over, they were number 26 in the ratings, and they were billing $300,000 a year. When I left, they were number-one in the ratings, and they were billing $3 million.

Melvin Lindsey

Ah, the next couple of songs I'm gonna play have a lot of meaning for me, and I want you to listen to the words. They're dedicated from me to you.

Hughes

Ultimately, it went on to become the most successful urban format in the history of black radio. It was on nearly 500 radio stations at one time. Radio stations named their whole station "The Quiet Storm" and did my format 24/7.

Vaughn Harper on radio

The Quiet Storm. You are the spice of life.

Doc Wynter on radio

As you may or may not know, The Quiet Storm is St. Louis' number-one-rated nighttime radio program.

Hughes

Unfortunately, there was no black bank that had the lending capability, and all the white banks we were asking were saying no, and we went through 32 different banks. The 33rd presentation was to a woman banker in New York at Chemical Bank, and it was her first week on the job, and she said yes.

Hughes on video

Now that I've entertained the Washington audience, I would like to have the satisfaction of knowing that I was able to inform them as well as entertain them.

Hughes

When I was at my lowest, they had repossessed my car. I'm sleeping in my radio station in a sleeping bag, washing up in the public bathroom, and Herb Wilkins goes to a formal affair

that gets out at 2

00 in the morning, and he makes himself, his wife come to the station to see is it true that their "crazy" general manager and owner was sleeping in a sleeping bag. He told me that he never foreclosed on me because anybody that was that determined, he said that night that "All the way home, I kept saying to my wife, 'She is going to make it because she is bound and determined.'" Finally, I find an accountant that I can afford, and I get a statement, a monthly statement, and there are no brackets around my bottom line and it's not in red ink, and I call him up and just go off. I'm like, "I can't go through this again with my lenders. You cannot make a mistake." And he start laughing.

He said, "It's no mistake. You made a profit this month." We did a $1.3 billion acquisition from Clear Channel. It was the largest business deal ever undertaken by an African American company. In my opinion, the most important thing a human being can do for another human being is to motivate and inspire them to do it themselves.

Woman

This corner shall be called the Cathy Hughes Corner.

Cheering and applause

Hughes

I hope that on the day that I close my eyes that there will be thousands of individuals who have improved, enhanced lifestyles because Helen Woods and William Woods gave birth to a baby girl named Cathy.

Fudge

You have Nestl, Folgers, which is Procter & Gamble, and Maxwell House. It was usually the--between us and Procter all the time. We went back-- one and two, one and two, and it was kind of fun. I love competition.

Out-of-home beverage consumption, particularly coffee, was growing. I think people really didn't grasp how it would grow 'cause people would say, "Why, you know, pay $3.00 for a cup of coffee when you can make your own?" Blah blah blah. So we started doing things like coffee in a tea bag, you know, to help with portability and convenience, all those things from a product standpoint, but you get to a point and you see the numbers, like, "This isn't going away." Sometimes, perceived competition should be looked at as "co-op-etition."

And I went out and met with Howard and called

"Let's talk. You think we could ever do anything together?" Of course, he's trying to recruit me; I'm like, "Nope, not leaving, but let's talk about what we can do together." And so it went on for a couple of years, honestly, and when they started trying to sell their own coffee through their own distributors, through the grocery store, we're like, "Cool. "We'd love to help you do that. "We have the relationships with the grocers.

We can help you get shelf space." That conversation went forward for a while. My boss didn't even think-- "You're never gonna make that work, he's never gonna want to do it." I was like, "Yeah, if we don't have the conversation and try, but we have to build trust first." So we started with some things like helping them with ideas. Our tech guys met with their coffee roasters, and we really helped them 'cause we've been doing this roasting thing for years, right? So you don't just go right into it like, "I love you, I want to marry you," but find those places where there's points of commonality where you can help one another.

There was a benefit coming in as a client and starting a whole lexicon around client partners and thinking about building partnerships versus what we wanted to sell to them or what services we felt they needed versus listening more.

No audible dialogue

Fudge

And I have to tell you, as a woman who's been in corporate America her whole life and now serving on many corporate boards, I have had my struggles. No one advances without hitting speed bumps, and sometimes they're bigger than speed bumps, they're big hurdles, but something gives you the strength to move forward. While I remember many things about my father, the thing that really influenced me was that my father got me very interested at a very young age in things having to do with finance and banking and et cetera. And in fact, as soon as I could do math at a reasonably proficient level, he had me balance the checkbook.

And so I had the great opportunity to go to work at Davis, Polk, & Wardwell. I loved it, but I knew I didn't love it enough to be a partner, and the reason is it didn't take advantage of sort of the busi-- the economics side of things. And my first two years on the Fed are nose down, study hard, learn everything you can, so I take on whatever assignment they want and do the best I can. The vice chairmanship opens up, and Alan Greenspan signals to the White House that he wants Ferguson to be the Vice Chairman, so this is a year and a half of just hard work, no job too small, do well, and little Roger from Northeast D.C.

becomes the Vice Chairman of the Fed. April, May of 2006, I leave the Fed, take a role at a company called Swiss Re Insurance. I'm there, very happily doing what I'm doing over there at Swiss Re, and then, in early 2008, I get a phone call from a headhunter saying, "You're probably not thinking of moving, but there's this company called TIAA-CREF, and they looking for a new CEO."

Woman

Traders here working the phones say a lot of their customers are freaked out, waiting to see how low the Dow will go.

Shepard Smith

It was the worst day on Wall Street since the crash of 1987.

Ferguson

Here I am, newly minted CEO, responsible for the life savings of millions of Americans-- about $490 billion, $480 billion-- and we had to hunker down, we had to get ready. Rode out the storm. We went out and raised a small amount of capital. We actually ended up maintaining the same level of capital, maintaining all of our ratings, but my first and most important goal was to keep people's retirement safe, and I'm really proud of the fact that we did that.

And their big client at that time was Carl Icahn, so I felt like, "OK, if this is not interesting with this kind of spotlight, with a character like Carl," who was all over the press, "then I need to find a different job." I really enjoyed finance. It's not just about a deal or a group, it's about what Chemical Bank needs to become, and you're in those conversations and having a point of view. And I got a call from an executive recruiter who said, "Well, Karl von der Heyden suggested I give you a call." I said, "Karl von der Heyden? OK, I'll listen."

So he describes this job

"General Mills is spinning off its restaurant business-- Olive Garden, Red Lobster. They need a treasurer." And I said, "That sounds all great, but "I don't have that background, I mean, a treasurer, so why are you talking to me?" He says, "Well, "Karl von der Heyden had good things to say about you, "and I've known Karl a long time, and Karl rarely has good things to say about someone." Ha ha ha ha ha! "OK." Our CEO basically said, "I think that you have general management potential," so beyond finance. "You're CFO here, "you could be CFO of a much bigger company.

"Go into operations and general management, takes you off that track." As a public company, ultimately, you really need to grow. With casual dining, there are limits to any one chain's growth. There's a penetration level that you get to that you start to have as many as you need at any particular time. In our case, we were so big that to create something from scratch, it took so long for it to get to a size where it could affect our results, and so I felt that we needed to move away from trying to create our own new chains and acquire chains.

And the important thing was to recognize that both cultures could contribute something positive. You very quickly learn that this business is about the frontline employees, the people, a lot of folks who don't know how good they are. You have to say, you know, "You're really good at this." The biggest challenge was the financial crisis, so this is 2008, 2009. We were able to really stick with our teams and continue to provide them the kind of hours that they needed and be fair from that perspective, and so that value, that loyalty brought a lot of value.

People continued to work with enthusiasm and passion, and that showed up in the customer experience.

Frazier

I was assigned to a Merck case as a first-year associate at Drinker, and I had the temerity to say that I'd like to try the case, and they all looked down the table at me 'cause I'm this kid and I've only been there a year, at most, and they called the general counsel of Merck-- I can still remember this

like yesterday-- and they were yukking it up

"This young feller wants to try this case." He said "feller"--I remember it like it was yesterday-- and the general counsel of Merck was on the speakerphone. He said, "Well, why not give him a chance?" Bottom line--the reason I eventually became general counsel of Merck was because I had that direct connection with that general counsel when I was a young person. What I really got involved in was the heart and soul, the business of Merck. I was representing Merck to the outside world.

The big issue, and one that I'm very proud of, was that this company discovered a medicine called CRIXIVAN, which many people would say was the key to converting HIV from a death sentence to a chronic, manageable disease in the West. It was my responsibility inside the company to make the argument for differential pricing. We had never done that before. That is to say that we would charge a higher price in the U.S.

and a lower price in Africa because of their purchasing power ability. When the announcement came out, and I looked at it and I realized, "I'm the CEO of Merck, and my father had a third-grade education and was the janitor," I felt really good about that, my family felt really good about that, but I really am honest when I say that I think my overwhelming feeling was a feeling of huge, awesome responsibility. It's my job to do what's in the long-term best interest of this company.

Joe Biden

We're seeing two health companies, each with over 130 years of experience, coming together to help write a more hopeful chapter in our battle against COVID-19.

Frazier

Now, some observers may view this corporate partnership as the coming together of rivals, but in these extraordinary times, we are colleagues, not competitors.

Andrew Ross Sorkin

This does appear to be the first time a group of leaders of your prominence have come together on an issue like this in such a forceful way. We all know the right to vote is fundamental, but for African Americans, they had to earn the right to vote.

Sorkin

What have your conversations been with your peers not just in this group, but across the country around this topic? I think it's important at the outset for people to understand what's wrong with this law. My father, he would tell us about when he went to-- as a 47-year-old man, paid his admission to what was then called Shibe Park in Philadelphia and saw Jackie Robinson on the playing field. He said, "I knew my children could do anything after that."

Crowd cheering

Frazier

And so his point of view was not that people weren't going to try to stop you, but he would say, "The only question in life is can you be stopped?"

Archambeau

Well, I decided in high school that I wanted to run a business, so I did my research, and I found Wharton.

Woman

When you start at IBM full-time, what's your job?

Archambeau

Uh, sales rep, which, I will tell you that when my friends said, "You're gonna join IBM in sales? "Understand they're going to Wall Street to be "investment bankers, they're going to P&G to be product managers." And I'm gonna go do sales? Am I crazy? Well, the reason I did sales is every single CEO at IBM started out in sales.

IBM, I thought, was very focused on diversity before diversity became hip. That said, when I got my international job, going to Japan, I was gonna be the first African American female that went on an international executive assignment, and this was 1987. IBM used to rank the different industries every quarter on year-to-year growth, and when I got there, we were in the bottom 10. When I left that job, we were in the top.

To me, that was the biggest success. You know, initially, it was great. You know, we got the website built, we did all kinds of cool things. It was wonderful.

So Netflix was a fledgling startup at the time. Came to Blockbuster. We had this big meeting. He and his team say, "OK, let's take "blockbuster.com, the brand...

"Netflix, the technology, "combine them, spin it out as a separate entity, and go conquer the world." My boss didn't see it. He said--and I'll never forget--he said, "If this ever turns into anything, we'll just buy it." And that's why I said, "I'm done here." Zaplet raised a hundred million dollars during that bubble period, and when I got there, they had, like, $7 million left, and they were burning over a million dollars a quarter, so they were kind of on their way out of business. So we had to pivot. We had to find a new problem to solve that the technology that we've built could be adapted to, quickly, so that was the-- that was the challenge, and the good news is the Zaplet of 14 years ago is the MetricStream today.

We have customers all over the globe. We have international partners in terms of supporting us. We're considered leaders in our space by the-- all the analysts; matter of fact, we're the largest independent company that's considered a leader in governance, risk, and compliance. But because we do it differently doesn't diminish our ability or capacity in leadership.

As a matter of fact, studies have shown that we actually have advantages when it comes to leadership. When I first came to Silicon Valley, I was shocked at the lack of diversity. I don't know that just looking at the numbers is the way to fix this. I really think it's looking deeper than that and looking at the culture of the organizations that we're creating because an African American female...CEO in tech is still pretty rare, so I want people to know they can do it so we get more of 'em.

Coles

We studied health systems around the world. We studied Cuba, and what happened in Cuba at the outbreak of the HIV crisis, which was about 10 years prior, the Cuban government made the decision to take all the HIV-positive men in the early eighties and quarantine them because that was the only way they could control the spread of the virus. So here we have individuals whose human rights were being compromised, all in service of the greater public good. And what it taught me is that everything I had grown up with and accepted as a-- basically a law of physics-- that everyone has an inviolable right to health and access to healthcare-- was not true.

So I thought, "Well, if they can be abrogated, "and they can be changed for the better, "and if they can be changed for the better, "why do I have to assume that what we have today is the best that we can possibly give?" And I could then make it better, and that's how I made the decision to leave the practice of medicine and focus on population-based healthcare. Leaving these hallowed academic halls is a hard thing to do because of the expectation, and there were a lot of people in my life at the time senior to me who said, "You're being a traitor," "You're going to the dark side." I concluded these were people who didn't know me very well, and if they didn't know me very well, to know that this was the best thing for me, why would I listen to them? My life was destined to be about creating change and making an impact, and the pharmaceutical industry became the platform through which I could do that. The emphasis that we at Cerevel and at Yumanity, two companies I'm involved in, are paying towards neurodegenerative diseases and neuroscience diseases will eventually pay a dividend, especially in this platinum age of science.

We just need a little bit of time, but we'll figure this out; that, I have every confidence. If you find a breakthrough, and that breakthrough works, new therapy, you can save hundreds of thousands of lives. That's--that's powerful. That was the reason I came to the industry and left the practice of medicine, because whereas I could impact one life at a time in medicine, here was the opportunity to impact tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people.

So if you can live what you love to do, that's the best life you can possibly have.

Washington

I didn't enjoy it. I was there at the Federal Reserve 18 months and-- but the great thing about it, it was one of those jobs that made me really soul-search, to think about what did I want to do. And there was this company, Tandem Computers. They had a job in Detroit, Michigan.

That was a regional controller. I worked for a general manager, not for finance, so he wanted me out really learning the business. So it was my first... chance to say, "Wow, even though you're a 'finance' person, you can really add value to a business." I think PeopleSoft was probably third, behind SAP and Oracle.

We acquired a company out of Denver, JD Edwards, which was more of a manufacturing, which propelled us to number 2. Within a week or so, Oracle launched a hostile takeover to take over PeopleSoft, and the world pretty much changed for us because, for the next 18 months, we spent, as an organization, fighting off a hostile takeover. Mind-blowing as that experience was, it was probably one of those defining moments in your career, where you're fighting for survival, but you're learning a lot about corporate governance.

Woman

When you joined, did you know that they were gonna be acquired?

Washington

Not at all, not at all.

Woman

I mean, it's so soon after you--

Washington

18 months, and actually, we started discussions about 11 months after. We knew the Oracle players. They did reach out this time and ask, "How can we do this better than we did at PeopleSoft?" And so I think I added value in that regard. And I got this call from a recruiter about Gilead Sciences.

For my due diligence, I read about the company and what we did, and that was what intrigued me. I'd say it's probably one of the most enriching jobs that I ever had, being part of that leadership team, being part of the thought process as to what areas of diseases that we were gonna pursue. Because of the outcome of what we did, of helping people live normal lives with HIV, we acquired a company that allowed us to cure Hepatitis C for millions of people with a pill. I still love...software and I love technology, but I'm equally fascinated by...the scientific value of what you can bring to the world and the difference that you can make with drug discovery.

And I think the role of boards and board members is to bring different perspectives to bear that you might not typically find in a technology company, particularly a West-Coast-based technology company that has the impact and influence that Alphabet has. You know, we shouldn't stop at wanting to say we're the first or the only one. We should ensure that we're creating a world that we're just one of many.

No audible dialogue

Smith

My grandmother, she was an entrepreneur. She owned a corner drugstore and soda fountain. She would let me help her close out at the end of the day and, I mean, that's where I kind of got my finance background, from working with my grandmother back then. This guy comes over to our table and says, "Hey, listen, a lot of us are going to my place afterwards.

Would you all like to join us?" "Sure, why not?" So we followed him to his house. And then we pull up to the house, and there was a Rolls-Royce, got a pool, and then we were all partying and just having a great time. At the end of the day, he gives me his card, and it said, "Aubrey O'Connor, "President, Chief Executive Officer, "Hibbard, O'Connor, & Weeks, Investment Bankers." I didn't even know what an investment banker was. I had no clue, and I think probably, within 6 months, I said, "You know, I think this is what I want to really do, I want to see if I can do it." I talked to his firm and talked to others, and no one would hire me.

"Black Enterprise" had just started putting out their 100 top businesses--

Woman

"B.E. 100."

Smith

Yeah, B.E. 100. So I put together a business plan around working with these black banks, insurance companies, and savings and loans. And I went to Aubrey's firm.

I said, "Here's a market that I think that I "can develop for you guys, and I think you should at least give me an opportunity to try." Then he said, "OK, you're hired," and that's how I got into the business. I'm not saying that it was hostile, but my first day on the trading floor, this guy walked by my desk and called me "you black MF." We had this big whiteboard that was behind the trading desk, and when you do a trade, it was $100,000, $500,000, and you'd put your initials by them. I did this $10 million trade. A $10 million trade had never been done at our firm.

And I went up, wrote "$10 million, Ginnie Mae H.," and I signed it "N-I-G-G-E-R" and underlined it. And the whole room just went ballistic. It was--for me, it was a--it was a... it was my moment to exhale.

So, once they realized I was good at what I did, I asked them to consider hiring other people of color, and they ended up doing it, they ended up because they said, "Well, you know, blacks can make money, too." By this time, I had put together a business plan to start my own money management firm, but the folks from Underwood said, "Help us with this, you know, for a year or two, and we will be your financial backers in your own firm." I was a rain-maker.

Woman

So you brought in the business and then--

Smith

I brought in the business and Ladell managed it. We were doing something different than most fixed-income money managers was doing. We were using mortgage-backed securities as a surrogate to credit, so we were taking no credit risks, so our portfolios were triple-A. We talk a lot about "How can we on boards "make a difference in how, you know, for the-- in changing the corporate culture?" Not only from a standpoint of diversity, of--of, you know, the C-suite, but where these corporations give their monies and in supporting the, you know, the broader communities.

So I see that as being, you know, very, very important, and it's not always easy, but you got to make sure that you become part of that consciousness, of the broader role of what you're there for.

Bill Lewis

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. My first trip to New York City was in the spring of 1978, and I remember it just like yesterday, coming down the FDR Drive and going right across the street there to that white building at 1251 Avenue of the Americas. Miss Raglan, my guidance counselor, said, "Don't say 'Avenue of the Americas,' say '6th Avenue,'" and that was how I got into investment banking. I had no idea what investment banking was until I started to prepare for my Morgan Stanley interview, and it just seemed to me as if the excitement and the variety of the work that I was doing as a young investment banker combined with New York City, sort of sold me on wanting to come back to the financial services industry.

My timing and return to Wall Street was perfect, as it coincided with the beginning of the historic explosion in the stock market. The market almost tripled over the next 7 years, and I made partner in 1989. I was the first African American managing director in Morgan Stanley's history, and I'm convinced that it happened because I took a calculated career risk. Ultimately, your success as an investment banker is determined by, well, that you can bring in business.

And so I took 3 other guys and we went out to Chicago, and for the most part, the job was about sort of knocking on doors, trying to develop business, and we were pretty good at it and I made partner from the Chicago platform. After making managing director in 1989, I had gone on to ultimately head or co-head all of the major investment banking departments, including mergers and acquisitions, real estate, and corporate finance. I was also chairman of Morgan Stanley's charitable foundation, chairman of its diversity task force, and a member of the firm's political action committee. In 2004, I joined Lazard as co-chairman of Investment Banking, a 163-year-old firm with offices in 40 cities around the world.

Lazard offered a wonderful opportunity to, first of all, get back to being an investment banker because I'd been on a management track for 10 years, so this Maytag deal was, like, the first big deal I did once I got back online. But just as importantly, Lazard afforded me the opportunity to do a tremendous amount of not-for-profit stuff that I've always had an interest in. Of late, providing education opportunities for poor kids has become my predominant interest. My favorite word is "passion," and I have been talking to young people about being passionate about their pursuits.

When I was growing up in Richmond, even though we were really, really poor, there was always a sense of hope, and I felt strongly that if I just did certain things that I would be just fine, and so I never despaired as a kid, I never lost hope. I was always optimistic, and somewhere along the lines, that has no longer--that no longer remains the case. So it's my hope that somehow, somewhere, we'll get to a period in time where lots and lots and lots of young people will conclude that there's no reason to give up on hope.

Ray McGuire

I have today been the longest-standing head of investment banking in probably the history of Wall Street. There's not a creative writer, there's not a statistician who would say I would be in this position; not coming from my neighborhood, not 120 Guard Street in Dayton, Ohio. That doesn't work. To be here, talking to you?

No, mm-mmm. I can remember when graduated from Harvard and I came home with that diploma, first and only time I saw my grandfather shed a tear. We've come a long way from there. There were only two people who were doing this business

on Wall Street then. Woman

And it was you and who--

And Bill Lewis. Woman

That's right. It's one thing to do the work. It's another to--

McGuire

Another thing to bring in the work.

Woman chuckles

McGuire

That's right. That's what Wall Street's all about, whether or not you can develop relationships that translate into generating revenue. While at Merrill Lynch, I was consistently recruited by Morgan Stanley, so eventually decided to go to Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley's at the top of the heap.

They are--historically, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were the premier M&A franchises, and I was at Morgan Stanley for 2 or 3 years. I went in as a managing director and, based on my performance, I was elevated to co-head the M&A business, the global M&A business, which is one of the most, I think, coveted jobs on Wall Street. You're a CEO. Your tenure's gonna be however long.

You're not gonna make a whole host of acquisitions. There are gonna be a lot of people out there who want to be your advisors, and it's incumbent upon me and my team to get close enough to you to convince you that one-- we know the targeted audience that you'd like to think about acquiring, and also to give you confidence that we can execute. The responsibility was a larger responsibility than the one that I had at Morgan Stanley. The brand was a different brand, at least in North America, admittedly, and I thought that if I could take the experience that I've had, if I could take my skill set, you know, if I were able to attract the right talent, that Citi could...

credibly be in a position of one of the premier advisors around the world. I am blessed to be here.

Morse

Things that motivated me to move in the direction of venture capital are the things that continue to motivate me to this day. The reality is, in this society, you need a certain amount of wealth to have healthy communities, a certain amount of wealth to be able to affect the political process that affects how resources are allocated and to whom. One of the ways we contribute to doing that is to support gifted, talented investors who know how to build successful companies, to acquire and build further successful companies, and that's where my visceral satisfaction comes from-- seeing that happen. We were very clear about the fact that we wanted to attempt to intermediate capital from capital-rich to capital-starved, under-served environments, so, in effect, we were gonna be engaging in a form of democratizing the capital markets.

That--we were conscious of this. I was approached by Cooper's & Lybrand, which had been retained by USAID to put together an interdisciplinary group of professionals to advise them on how to structure what was going to be an enterprise development fund in Southern Africa. So it was the 11-country SADC region-- South African Development Community--that it had in mind. We got political scientists, sociologists, public administration professional, an economist, a venture capitalist to go over and visit these environments and to give them some read on where it should be situated, which environments were most hospitable to this kind of capital, what was the likelihood of return of capital.

Woman

And what was your recommendation at the end of it?

Morse

That they should commit, in an initial tranche, a hundred million dollars to an Enterprise Development Fund. A very clear stream of entrepreneurial talent coming in from all over Africa, not just South Africa, and ultimately, they did that. You here at this institution, in this department, being inducted into the International Honor Society in Economics, are the beneficiaries of a first-class education. There is literally nothing that you cannot do or accomplish in the world if you are prepared to be committed in your pursuit, and rigorous and honest in your self-assessment.

I'm a firm believer in goals and writing things down. Establish your goals, what is it you really want to do in this life, and commit yourself to working towards it. You take a little step every day towards it, you know, kind of, eventually, you get closer, you get there. There's nothing all that strange about that.

It's easily said. It's not easily done. I always read these biographies as a little kid in the library of our school, and I went through the whole series. There were probably, like, you know, 50 or 100 of them, and mostly, I guess, I was influenced by the people who were unconventional.

I didn't want to have sort of this very predictable life, and I still don't.

No audible dialogue

Morse

The year was 1989, and I was between my sophomore and junior year at Princeton, and I had the opportunity to come and work at Ariel and specifically worked for John, who then held the title of president. And my job was very undefined, and it was more or less

doing whatever he needed to get done

special projects, correspondence, tagging along on things. I mean, I call this a snowflake in the universe versus the giants that were out there, well-established brand names. We knew we couldn't spend against them in advertising or anything like that, so the huge challenge was how to break through when there were thousands of mutual funds. Secondly, there was this whole issue of feeling a responsibility to educate our community about the importance of saving and investing, but at the same time, not turning off the broader community to Ariel as an investment opportunity for them.

I am so passionate about the topic that I'm gonna talk about today. It's one that I think has broad implications for all of society. I know you see Ariel-Schwab Black Investor Survey. This is not just a black issue.

We want to define ourselves around our investment strategy, not our color, but at the same time, we knew that we wanted to do some targeted marketing in areas that we felt were untapped and desperately in need of our expertise so that we could help in the wealth creation of our community and, ultimately, the narrowing of the wealth gap that exists between black and white America. The other thing that was a challenge was the one thing about our businesses you can't control-- the stock market, so out of the gate, in the early years of Ariel, we did very, very well, and then there was a period in the mid-nineties where we had a terrible time and we lost half of our assets. We went from $2.2 billion down to $1.1 billion. That was enormously difficult, and it was probably the hardest time in my professional career.

You know, the only good news out of that period is it happened to me very early, and the other part of the good news there was, as a result of having to have the stamina to survive-- people firing me basically every day, firing our firm every day, or firing us through me-- that the firm became my firm, too. And I often talk about this idea of dreaming wide awake. Can you dream in vivid color about what your future can be? My mother, every single day, she told me, "Mellody, you can be anything," and it's because of those words that I stand here right now, full of passion, asking you to be brave for the kids who are dreaming those dreams today.

Applause

doing whatever he needed to get done

I want them to look at a CEO on television, say, "I can be like her" or "He looks like me," and I want them to know that their future matters and their dreams are possible. Thank you.

Applause, cheering, and whistling

Applause and cheering fade out

doing whatever he needed to get done

Thank you.

Capehart

Consider what you learned today at the beginning. These business innovators have and continue to be pioneers, and their life stories provide us a unique opportunity to learn more about their contributions to American society and the world. This is only the beginning. We all have a lot to learn.

Theme music playing

Announcer

For more information or to order your own copy of "BusinessMakers," please visit thehistorymakers.org or call 866-914-1900. The preceding program was funded in part by Enterprise Holdings... American Airlines... Toyota...

and Dorothy Terrell.