Lessons of Leadership (Audio)

Hamid Karzai was born to a prominent position in his society, but he won his present role by fearless dedication to the cause of Afghanistan as a free and united modern nation. He served as a diplomat and advisor to the anti-Soviet resistance, and was deputy foreign minister in the postwar government. When civil war erupted, the Taliban movement sought Karzai's support, but their regime fell under the influence of foreign terrorists, and Karzai organized an anti-Taliban faction in exile. In October, 2001, Karzai raised an armed revolt. He had a single satellite phone for communication, his troops lacked basic supplies, and he had no certainty of outside support, but by December the Taliban were beaten. Rival factions set aside their differences and in June 2002, the traditional Afghan Grand Council -- the Loya Jirga -- overwhelmingly ratified the choice of Hamid Karzai as Head of State. In 2004 he was elected to a full term as President of Afghanistan in the country's first free election.

President Clinton and Bono join in a unique conversation with 200 students from around the world, moderated by broadcast journalist Sam Donaldson. William Jefferson Clinton was the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two full terms in office. During the Clinton administration the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses and enjoyed the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. In foreign affairs, he fostered the historic peace accord between Israel and Jordan, and helped promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. President Clinton dispatched American military forces to enforce the peace agreement in Bosnia and to avert impending genocide in Kosovo. Born and raised in Dublin, Paul "Bono" Hewson was still in his teens when he answered an ad posted on a school bulletin board to join a fledgling rock band. It became one of the most original, best-loved rock groups of all time: U2. For many, U2's success came to symbolize a new prominence for Ireland in Europe and the world. Bono and U2 lent their support to African famine relief, to Amnesty International and the campaign against apartheid. U2 still fills arenas all over the world and Bono has continued to speak out for Third World debt forgiveness and to raise global awareness of the AIDS epidemic ravaging Africa.

President Clinton and Bono join in a unique conversation with 200 students from around the world, moderated by broadcast journalist Sam Donaldson. William Jefferson Clinton was the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two full terms in office. During the Clinton administration the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses and enjoyed the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. In foreign affairs, he fostered the historic peace accord between Israel and Jordan, and helped promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. President Clinton dispatched American military forces to enforce the peace agreement in Bosnia and to avert impending genocide in Kosovo. Born and raised in Dublin, Paul "Bono" Hewson was still in his teens when he answered an ad posted on a school bulletin board to join a fledgling rock band. It became one of the most original, best-loved rock groups of all time: U2. For many, U2's success came to symbolize a new prominence for Ireland in Europe and the world. Bono and U2 lent their support to African famine relief, to Amnesty International and the campaign against apartheid. U2 still fills arenas all over the world and Bono has continued to speak out for Third World debt forgiveness and to raise global awareness of the AIDS epidemic ravaging Africa.

President Clinton and Bono join in a unique conversation with 200 students from around the world, moderated by broadcast journalist Sam Donaldson. William Jefferson Clinton was the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two full terms in office. During the Clinton administration the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses and enjoyed the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. In foreign affairs, he fostered the historic peace accord between Israel and Jordan, and helped promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. President Clinton dispatched American military forces to enforce the peace agreement in Bosnia and to avert impending genocide in Kosovo. Born and raised in Dublin, Paul "Bono" Hewson was still in his teens when he answered an ad posted on a school bulletin board to join a fledgling rock band. It became one of the most original, best-loved rock groups of all time: U2. For many, U2's success came to symbolize a new prominence for Ireland in Europe and the world. Bono and U2 lent their support to African famine relief, to Amnesty International and the campaign against apartheid. U2 still fills arenas all over the world and Bono has continued to speak out for Third World debt forgiveness and to raise global awareness of the AIDS epidemic ravaging Africa.

Born and raised on a kibbutz in central Israel, Ehud Barak enlisted in the Israeli Army at age 17, and first led a combat unit in the 1967 Six-Day War. As a member of Israel's most elite commando force, he crossed borders in disguise and rescued hostages from hijacked airplanes. As a rising officer, he commanded a tank battalion in the fiercest battles of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He retired from the military after 36 years as Chief of Staff, commander of the armed forces, and Israel's most decorated soldier. On leaving the military, he answered the call of his friend and mentor, Yitzhak Rabin, to enter politics and join Rabin's cabinet as Minister of the Interior. After Rabin's death, Ehud Barak became Foreign Minister, and shortly thereafter, leader of Israel's Labor Party. In 1999, only four years after entering political life, Ehud Barak won election as Prime Minister of Israel. As Prime Minister, he ended Israel's 17-year occupation of Southern Lebanon and brought Israel closer than ever before to a final peace agreement with the Palestinians. Since 2007, he has served as Minister of Defense in a multi-party coalition government, working to obtain a lasting peace while preserving his nation's security. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2001 Summit in San Antonio, Texas, he recalls his childhood, his education, his service as an enlisted soldier and commanding officer. He emphasizes the horror of war, while admitting that the skills and confidence he acquired in the military served him well in his subsequent role as public servant. In his exchange with the Academy's student delegates, he also discusses his efforts to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Born and raised on a kibbutz in central Israel, Ehud Barak enlisted in the Israeli Army at age 17, and first led a combat unit in the 1967 Six-Day War. As a member of Israel's most elite commando force, he crossed borders in disguise and rescued hostages from hijacked airplanes. As a rising officer, he commanded a tank battalion in the fiercest battles of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He retired from the military after 36 years as Chief of Staff, commander of the armed forces, and Israel's most decorated soldier. On leaving the military, he answered the call of his friend and mentor, Yitzhak Rabin, to enter politics and join Rabin's cabinet as Minister of the Interior. After Rabin's death, Ehud Barak became Foreign Minister, and shortly thereafter, leader of Israel's Labor Party. In 1999, only four years after entering political life, Ehud Barak won election as Prime Minister of Israel. As Prime Minister, he ended Israel's 17-year occupation of Southern Lebanon and brought Israel closer than ever before to a final peace agreement with the Palestinians. Since 2007, he has served as Minister of Defense in a multi-party coalition government, working to obtain a lasting peace while preserving his nation's security. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2001 Summit in San Antonio, Texas, he recalls his childhood, his education, his service as an enlisted soldier and commanding officer. He emphasizes the horror of war, while admitting that the skills and confidence he acquired in the military served him well in his subsequent role as public servant. In his exchange with the Academy's student delegates, he also discusses his efforts to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard University, David Herbert Donald (1920-2009) also taught at Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Oxford and Columbia. He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, in 1961 for Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, and again in 1988 for Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe, a study of the great American novelist of the 1930s. Professor Donald is best known for his works dealing with the era of the Civil War, especially the monumental Lincoln (1996), the first biography of Lincoln to draw on the complete collection of Lincoln's personal, presidential and legal papers. The enthralling biography remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for 14 weeks. He continued his examination of Lincoln's life and character with We Are Lincoln Men, a study of the 16th President as seen through the eyes of his closest friends. Speaking at the International Achievement Summit on the eve of the 2000 United States presidential election, Professor Donald discussed the qualities he believed voters should look for in a presidential candidate.

When George F. Russell, Jr. joined his grandfather's brokerage and mutual fund company in 1958, it was a two-person operation. Two months later, his grandfather, Fran Russell died, and George found himself in charge of the struggling firm. In 1969, George Russell saw an opportunity to provide large corporations with advice on the management of their pension funds, a service no other firm was offering. A cold call to J. C. Penney brought him his first major client Within five years he had 40. In 1999, when it merged with Northwestern Mutual, the Frank Russell Company had 1500 clients in 25 countries. Among the enterprises to enjoy its investment and pension fund consulting services are AT&T, Barclays Bank, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Boeing, Caterpillar, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Federal Express and Toyota. I After the merger with Northwestern George Russell headed his own firm, Russell Investments, as well as The Russell Family Foundation. In addition to his business activities, George Russell has served as Chairman of the EastWest Institute and The National Bureau of Asian Research. He is the founder of One Nation, a project working to change the perceptions of Islam and Muslims in America. This podcast was recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1999 Summit in Washington, D.C.

From a segregated elementary school in Alabama, Keith Black emerged as an award-winning scientific prodigy, practicing transplant surgery on laboratory animals and publishing his first scientific paper while still in his teens. In medical school, he discovered his life's passion, the human brain. Although it is famously regarded as the most difficult specialty in medicine, Keith Black has excelled in brain surgery, not only through his fantastic dexterity, but through a series of visionary discoveries that have revolutionized the treatment of brain cancer. Among other innovations, he identified the compound that enables chemotherapeutic drugs to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, and pioneered a vaccine-like treatment to mobilize the body's immune response against cancers of the brain. In little more than 20 years, Keith Black has performed over 5,000 brain tumor operations, extracting cancers so inaccessible that other surgeons had dismissed them as inoperable. Patients from all over the world come to Dr. Black's facility at Cedars-Sinai, to be treated by the man they regard as a miracle worker. This podcast was recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1999 Summit in Washington, D.C.

Michael J. Saylor is the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of MicroStrategy, a software company specializing in business intelligence, enterprise reporting, and online analytical processing. The son of an Air Force sergeant, he spent his childhood living around the world, and graduated high school at the top of his class. In 1987, Saylor earned his degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics and Technology from MIT on an ROTC Scholarship, but a benign heart murmur kept him from becoming a pilot. While at MIT, he took a "system dynamics theory" class, which gave him the initial idea of a computer modeling business with non-linear mathematics. After graduating from college, he worked as a venture manager at DuPont. The time he spent creating computer simulations at MIT prepared him for his new job at DuPont, where he constructed models to simulate business interactions. Saylor went onto co-found MicroStrategy in 1989, at the age of 24, with a consulting contract from DuPont, which provided him with $250,000 and office space. MicroStrategy's early focus was on data mining software for companies. His company secured a relatively large deal with McDonald’Ŵs early on, inspiring Saylor to take the company in the direction of business intelligence (BI). In 1998, he took the company public, and its meteoric growth often put Michael Saylor (with a net worth of $7 billion) and his company in the spotlight. Saylor soon became a household name in business and technology. In 2000, however, the SEC brought charges against Saylor for inaccurate reporting of results, and his personal stock lost 90% of its value in a few weeks and Saylor's personal net worth plummeted $6 billion on March 20, 2000 (and he was labeled as the person who "had lost more money in a single day than anyone in history other than Bill Gates"). Saylor's sanction was to pay $350,000 in penalties and a personal disgorgement. By the fiscal year 2008, Saylor and his company celebrated its 10-year anniversary as the leading independent provider of open systems business intelligence software. By 2009, the annual company revenues were nearly $400 million and, in 2010, they released a Mobile BI product for the iPhone, the iPad and Blackberry. This reflects Saylor's belief that mobile technology will shape a "new class of applications that will change the way we think about our business." He is the inventor or co-inventor on 29 patents in the areas of business intelligence, wireless security, and speech automation. Michael J. Saylor participated in the 1999 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. and spoke to the student delegates about his "ten secrets for life."