Lessons of Leadership (Audio)

Susan Howlet Butcher was an animal lover, a business woman, a wife and a mother. She was also called "the best competitive dog sled racer in the universe." Before her, there were many women who competed in sports, but not many who entered the race called the Iditarod, one that took her 1,152 miles across the Alaskan wilderness, enduring 100 m.p.h. winds, arctic blizzards, snow blindness, wild animals, thin ice, sleep deprivation, avalanches, and every other hardship nature can inflict in the land of the midnight sun. Butcher won this race four times in five years, so often that "Iditarod," as well as the sport of mushing, became synonymous with her name.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, her love of the wilderness and animals drew her to Alaska when she was 20 years old. Starting out with only two dogs, doing odd jobs during the summer months in order to live through the long winters, she eventually rose to become the most famous dog musher in the world. She also became an outspoken advocate for wildlife and the environment, and educated the public about the proper care of animals.

Butcher lived with her husband, fellow dogsled racer David Monson, in the remote area of Eureka, where they raised two daughters and a pack of wonderful sled dogs. For many years after her retirement from competition, Susan Butcher owned and operated Trailbreaker Kennels in Eureka. In 2006, she died of leukemia at the age of 51. In the years following her death, the State of Alaska honored her in a number of ways. In 2008, the state legislature established Susan Butcher Day, to be observed on the first Saturday of March each year. Later that year, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks announced the creation of the Susan Butcher Institute, to develop public service and leadership skills among young Alaskans.

For over 30 years, Michael Douglas has been a dominant figure in the world of motion pictures as both actor and producer. His 50-plus films have had an indelible impact on the spirit of our times.

He first achieved national recognition playing a young detective on the long-running television series Streets of San Francisco. At the same time, he emerged as a successful producer of feature films. He purchased the rights to Ken Kesey's celebrated novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and put together a package with director Milos Forman and actor Jack Nicholson. Released in 1975, the film won all five major awards, including an Oscar for Michael Douglas as producer of the year's Best Picture.

He became a major star with his swashbuckling roles in the romantic adventure comedies Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile, which he also produced.

Of all the roles he has played over a distinguished career, his most memorable appearance may have been his portrayal of the ruthless financier Gordon Gecko in the 1987 drama Wall Street. His performance, with its controversial "Greed is good" speech, came to epitomize the hyper-charged atmosphere of the financial industry in the 1980s boom years and brought Douglas an Oscar as Best Actor of the Year.

He continued his run of acclaimed performances in a wide range of films, including comedies such as The War of the Roses and The In-Laws, thrillers such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, issue-oriented dramas like The China Syndrome and Traffic, and the romantic political drama The American President. He received particular acclaim for his nuanced portrayals in the dramas Falling Down and Wonder Boys.

In 2010, he reprised the role of Gordon Gecko in the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The same year, he was diagnosed with Stage IV throat cancer. After undergoing a grueling round of radiation and chemotherapy he ended the year with high hopes for recovery.

This podcast was recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1988 Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, shortly after Michael Douglas received the Oscar for his performance in Wall Street.

For over 30 years, Michael Douglas has been a dominant figure in the world of motion pictures as both actor and producer. His 50-plus films he have had an indelible impact on the spirit of our times.

He first achieved national recognition playing a young detective on the long-running television series Streets of San Francisco. At the same time, he emerged as a successful producer of feature films. He purchased the rights to Ken Kesey's celebrated novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and put together a package with director Milos Forman and actor Jack Nicholson. Released in 1975, the film won all five major awards, including an Oscar for Michael Douglas as producer of the year's Best Picture.

He became a major star with his swashbuckling roles in the romantic adventure comedies Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile, which he also produced.

Of all the roles he has played over a distinguished career, his most memorable appearance may have been his portrayal of the ruthless financier Gordon Gecko in the 1987 drama Wall Street. His performance, with its controversial "Greed is good" speech, came to epitomize the hyper-charged atmosphere of the financial industry in the 1980s boom years and brought Douglas an Oscar as Best Actor of the Year.

He continued his run of acclaimed performances in a wide range of films, including comedies such as The War of the Roses and The In-Laws, thrillers such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, issue-oriented dramas like The China Syndrome and Traffic, and the romantic political drama The American President. He received particular acclaim for his nuanced portrayals in the dramas Falling Down and Wonder Boys.

In 2010, he reprised the role of Gordon Gecko in the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The same year, he was diagnosed with Stage IV throat cancer. After undergoing a grueling round of radiation and chemotherapy he ended the year with high hopes for recovery.

This podcast was recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1988 Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, shortly after Michael Douglas received the Oscar for his performance in Wall Street.

Beginning as a young trainee at a funeral home, Steven J. Ross (1927-1992) effected an ingenious series of deals and mergers, building a publicly traded company that expanded into publishing and entertainment, acquiring businesses including DC Comics and Mad magazine, before taking over the ailing Warner-Seven Arts motion picture studio in 1969. Under Ross's leadership, the studio became Warner Communication Inc., a leader not only in motion pictures, but in the recording industry and cable television, creating a host of profitable subsidiaries, including MTV, Showtime and the Movie Channel. In this 1988 address to the Academy of Achievement, Ross describes the first steps in his extraordinary career. Only months after addressing the Academy, he engineered the most daring coup of all, merging Warner Communication with Time Inc. to create the largest media conglomerate in the world.

Born in the Free City of Danzig in 1927, Professor Rosovsky received his A.B degree in 1949 from the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 1959. He taught economics, history and Japanese and Korean studies at the University of California at Berkeley until 1965. Thereafter, his Harvard service has been lifelong, with the most important of his numerous positions including Professor of Economics (1965-1996), Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (1973-1991), and, briefly in both 1984 and 1987, Acting President of Harvard. Professor Rosovsky has received many achievement awards and honorary degrees and has been a member of numerous professional associations, advisory boards and corporate boards. He has taught as a visiting professor in Japan and Israel and has worked variously as a consultant with the United States government, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and UNESCO. Along with many articles, Professor Rosovsky is the author of Capital Formation in Japan (1961), Quantitative Japanese Economic History (1961), Japanese Economic Growth (with K. Ohkawa, 1973) and The University: An Owner's Manual (1990). He also edited Industrialization in Two Systems (1961) Discord in the Pacific (1972), Asia's New Giant: How the Japanese Economy Works (with H. Patrick, 1976), Favorites of Fortune (with P. Higonnet and D. Landes, 1991) and The Political Economy of Japan: Cultural and Social Dynamics (with Shumpei Kumon, 1992).

The stage director Lloyd Richards (1919 - 2006) was a trailblazer for African American artists in the American theater. When Richards began his career in the 1940s, African American actors were largely confined to stereotypical roles as servants or comedians. Black directors and playwrights were virtually unknown. No single event did more to change that situation than Lloyd Richards' groundbreaking production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. For the first time, a Broadway audience saw a contemporary African American family portrayed realistically through the eyes of an African American playwright and brought to the stage by an African American director. The play's leading actors -- Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands -- became stars of theater and film, and Lloyd Richards became first the dean of African American stage directors and ultimately, the Dean of the Yale University School of Drama. In 1984 he staged the first production of a play by an unknown playwright, August Wilson. In all, he would directed the world premieres of six of Wilson's plays. Together, these Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas constitute a moving theatrical panorama of American history. Besides August Wilson, Lloyd Richards nurtured the careers of a host of young playwrights, including Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang, Lee Blessing and David Henry Hwang. Lloyd Richards never confined himself to the work of American playwrights -- he directed classics by Shakespeare, Shaw and Chekhov among others -- but one of his greatest contributions was the cultivation of new voices in the theater. Lloyd Richards addressed the Academy of Achievement at its 1987 gathering in Scottsdale, Arizona. In this podcast, recorded on that occasion he discusses the great satisfactions of his career in the theater and urges the Academy's students to find the work they love most in life.

Samuel Zell is a real estate entrepreneur. He is Chairman of Equity Group Investments (EGI), the private, entrepreneurial investment firm he founded more than 40 years ago. EGI's investments span industries and continents, and include interests in real estate, energy, logistics, transportation, media, and health care.

Zell is also co-founder and Chairman of Equity International, a private investment firm that focuses on real estate-related companies outside of the U.S. In addition, Zell maintains substantial interests in, and is the Chairman of, a number of public companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, including: Equity Residential (EQR), the largest apartment REIT; Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS), a REIT that owns and operates manufactured home communities; Covanta Holding Corp. (CVA), an international leader in converting waste to energy; and Anixter (AXE), a value-add provider of integrated networking and cabling solutions that support business information and network infrastructure requirements. Zell is also the chairman of Tribune Company, a private media conglomerate.

Erma Bombeck was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper column that described suburban home life from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s. Bombeck also published 15 books, most of which became best-sellers.

From 1965 to 1996, Erma Bombeck wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns chronicling the ordinary life of a midwestern suburban housewife with broad, and sometimes eloquent humor. By the 1970s, her columns were read, twice weekly, by thirty million readers of the 900 newspapers of the U.S. and Canada.

Today, Diane Sawyer is known to millions as the host of the daily evening newscast ABC World News, but she long been familiar to American television audiences through her decade as the host of the same network's Good Morning America program, and for her previous career at CBS News.

Sawyer grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and attended Wellesley College, assisted by a scholarship she had won as America's Junior Miss. After graduation, she returned to Louisville, where she began her broadcasting career with the local ABC affiliate. She was hired as a White House aide to President Richard Nixon. She remained at the White House during the administration of Gerald Ford, and later assisted former President Nixon with the writing of his memoirs, as well as the preparation for his historic series of television interviews with British broadcaster David Frost.

She joined CBS News as a political correspondent in 1978 and was soon named co-anchor of the CBS Morning News. Sawyer left CBS for ABC News in 1989 to co-anchor the news magazine Prime Time live with Sam Donaldson. During the same period she co-anchored the twice weekly prime time program 20/20. She became host of Good Morning America in 1999, a post she held for nearly a decade, before assuming the weekday evening anchor responsibilities at ABC World News in the last days of 2009. She received the broadcast news profession's highest honor, the Peabody Award, for her 2009 story "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains."

Over the years, she has won a reputation as an adroit interviewer. In addition to the celebrities and entertainers she has faced in the news magazine setting, she has held her own in broadcast conversations with four American presidents, as well as such difficult foreign leaders as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro, Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein.

At the time of this 1987 address to the Academy of Achievement in Scottsdale, Arizona, she was a regular correspondent for 60 Minutes, the venerable CBS Sunday news magazine, and was already one of America's most popular broadcast news personalities.

General Yeager addressed the student delegates at the 1986 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. at the opening symposium held at the Smithsonian’Ŵs National Air & Space Museum.