Lessons of Leadership (Audio)

Dominick Dunne (1925 - 2009) won fame as an author and investigative journalist after a previous career as a motion picture producer and studio executive. Born to a prominent family in Hartford, Connecticut, he was one of six children. The novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne was his brother. Dominick Dunne studied at Williams College before serving in World War II; he received the Bronze Star for heroism in the Battle of Metz. After the war, he worked as a stage manager in early television in New York City. He had achieved a measure of success in Hollywood when he fell prey to alcoholism and drug addiction. He left Hollywood to overcome his demons in solitude, and wrote his first novel, The Winners. Though it was not a success, he persevered in his career as an author, and found his niche chronicling the lives of the rich and famous. After his daughter, actress Dominique Dunne was murdered, and her murderer received a shockingly light sentence, he became a sharp-eyed observer of the criminal justice system. For his remaining years he covered high-profile criminal cases -- including those of O.J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow, Michael Skakel, William Kennedy Smith, and the Menendez brothers -- for the magazine Vanity Fair. His observations of these trials inspired a number of novels, including A Season in Purgatory and An Inconvenient Woman. He made frequent appearances on television, commenting on criminal cases, and hosted his own program on Court TV. His last book, Too Much Money, appeared shortly after his death at age 83. In this audio podcast, recorded in Las Vegas, at the Academy of Achievement's 1994 gathering, Dunne recounts some self-deprecating anecdotes of his career. He refers to himself as a "low-life author," and recalls the mid-life crisis that took him from a career as a film executive to one as a freelance writer. He expresses gratitude to the editors who helped guide his career and shares his views on crime, guilt and responsibility.

Lesley Stahl has been co-editor of 60 Minutes since March 1991. This season marks her 11th on the broadcast and her first season as anchor of 48 Hours Investigates.

Stahl has had a remarkable year reporting for 60 Minutes. She made headlines last June with her interview of indicted terrorist Abdul Rahman Yasin, still wanted in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. In his first interview, Yasin told Stahl that New York Jewish neighborhoods were the original targets for him and his co-conspirators. Before that, Stahl interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and also made news with a report containing new information about notorious spy Robert Hanssen. Her interviews of Warren Buffett, Robert Rubin and Jack Welch about the economic prospects of America directly following the 9/11 attacks were quoted on the front pages of many newspapers.

Prior to joining 60 Minutes, Stahl served as CBS News White House correspondent during the Carter and Reagan presidencies and part of the term of George Bush. Her reports appeared frequently on the CBS Evening News, first with Walter Cronkite, then with Dan Rather, and on other CBS News broadcasts.

During much of that time, she also served as moderator of Face The Nation, CBS News' Sunday public affairs broadcast (September 1983-May 1991). For Face The Nation, she interviewed such newsmakers as Margaret Thatcher, Boris Yeltsin, Yasir Arafat and virtually every top U.S. official, including George Bush and Dan Quayle.

From October 1990 to March 1991, Stahl added to her work at the White House and Face the Nation by joining Charles Kuralt as co-anchor of America Tonight, a late-night CBS News broadcast of interviews and essays.

Her experiences covering Washington over 20 years became the subject of Stahl's book, ’ŹReporting Live.’Ź

Over the years, Stahl anchored several CBS News documentaries, including "The Politics of Cancer" and "In the Red Blues," about the budget deficit, both for "CBS Reports."

She has a collection of Emmy Awards for her interviews on Face The Nation and her 60 Minutes reporting. Her 60 Minutes reports "How He Won the War," about former FDA Commissioner David Kessler's battle with the tobacco industry, and "Punishing Saddam," which courageously exposed the plight of Iraqi citizens, mostly children, suffering the

effects of the United Nations sanctions against Iraq, were both Emmy winners. "Punishing Saddam" also won Stahl a prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award. She won another Emmy for her 1992 report, ’źLambs of Christ,’Ź a radical pro-life group employing scare tactics to dissuade doctors from performing abortions.

In 1996, Stahl was awarded the Fred Friendly First Amendment Award given by Quinnipiac College in Hamden, Conn., in recognition of her journalistic achievements. She was also honored that year by the Radio and Television News Directors Association with an Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence in Television for her reports on the Michigan Militia. In 1993, she received a Matrix Award for Broadcasting, presented by New York Women in Communications Inc., which recognizes and honors women for outstanding career achievement. The University of Maryland’Ŵs College of Journalism honored Stahl as the Best White House Correspondent of 1991, and in 1990, she received the prestigious Dennis Kauff Journalism Award for lifetime achievement in the news profession.

When President George H.W. Bush tapped Dr. Antonia Novello to be Surgeon General, she could hardly believe her ears. She was both the first woman and the first Latin American ever to serve as the nation's number one public health officer.

She had come a long way from the little town of Fajardo, Puerto Rico, where her widowed mother had struggled to raise a child who was sick from birth. Overlooked in the public health system of her native island, Antonia waited 18 years for the operation that allowed her to live a normal life. Undaunted by illness, discomfort or harship, she excelled in school and embarked on the study of medicine, determined to spare other children the neglect she had suffered for so long.

Dr. Novello has specialized throughout her career in the health problems of children and adolescents. It was her work in pediatric AIDS that led to her appointment as Surgeon General from 1990 to 1993. Her service to public health has continued in the years since. As representative of the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, as Commissioner of Health for the State of New York, and in her present post at Disney Childrens Hospital in Florida, she has been a tireless campaigner for children's health.

Dr. Novello participated in the 1993 Achievement Summit in Glacier National Park and addressed the student delegates on her career of service and her personal lessons of leadership.

Marian Wright Edelman is the founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund and one of the most respected voices for children in the nation. The youngest daughter of a Baptist minister, she developed a sense of mission while growing up in a small segregated South Carolina town. Edelman later entered Spelman College and became involved in the civil rights movement and realized that "helping others would be the very purpose of life." After being arrested for her activism, she decided to study law and enrolled at Yale Law School. Edelman became the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar. In 1968, she moved to Washington, D.C. and helped organize the Poor People's Campaign of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1973, Edelman founded the Children’Ŵs Defense Fund as a voice for poor, minority and disabled children. She single-handedly championed the cause of children and expanded Head Start and Medicaid coverage for children and helped to combat hunger among the very young. Edelman worked to persuade Congress to overhaul foster care, support adoption, improve childcare and protect children who are disabled, homeless, abused or neglected. She continues to advocate youth pregnancy prevention, child-care funding, prenatal care, greater parental responsibility in teaching values and curtailing children's exposure to the barrage of violent images transmitted by mass media. Edelman is the recipient of many high honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in tribute to her lifelong crusade to help America's disadvantaged children. Marian Wright Edelman participated in the 1993 Achievement Summit in Glacier National Park and addressed the student delegates on her career of service and her personal lessons of leadership.

The most honored entertainer of our era, Barbra Streisand has made an indelible mark on our culture as a singer, actress, film producer, director, writer and champion of social causes. A high school honor student from Brooklyn, New York, she threw herself into show business right out of high school and rocketed to fame with a Grammy-winning record album and a starring role in the Broadway show Funny Girl. She reprised the role on screen, winning a Best Actress Oscar for her very first film. She won a second Oscar for composing the song Evergreen for her 1976 hit film A Star is Born. Her soaring voice, crystalline diction and passionate phrasing have made her a premier interpreter of American song. With number one albums in five consecutive decades, she has survived the ever-changing fashions of popular music, winning eight Grammy Awards and selling more records than other female artist in history. With her 1983 film Yentl, she became the first woman to produce, direct, write and star in a major motion picture, winning Golden Globe Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. She has acted on her outspoken social convictions through The Streisand Foundation, directing millions of dollars to causes of women's equality, civil rights, women's health, the needs of children at risk and the preservation of the environment. She is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor the United States bestows on its artists. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1992 Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, Barbra Streisand advises the Academy's student delegates to follow their own paths in life and measure success by their own standards. She urges them to embrace negative experiences along with positive ones as an essential part of their life's journey.

Kevin Costner won twin Oscars for producing and directing the 1990 blockbuster Dances With Wolves, a powerful tale of the tragic interaction of Native Americans and the expanding United States in the 19th century West. The film was a high point in the remarkable string of hits that made Kevin Costner the box office champion of an era. Born in Los Angeles, his family moved often when he was a child. Buy his own account, he was a shy, withdrawn youngster. He discovered acting while studying at Cal State Fullerton. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles, with no contacts in the entertainment industry, to pursue a career as an actor. He won a substantial role in the film The Big Chill, only to see his part disappear in the editing process. He made his first major impression in the western Silverado and followed it up with a starring role in the period crime drama The Untouchables. A former high school baseball player, he enjoyed major hits with starring roles in the baseball-themed films Bull Durham and Field of Dreams. He made his directorial debut with Dances With Wolves, in which he also starred. The film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Subsequent successes include starring roles in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, JFK, The Bodyguard, Thirteen Days and Tin Cup. He received further critical acclaim for his direction of the western Open Range, in which he also starred. This podcast was recorded at historic Hoover Dam, during the evening ceremonies of the Academy of Achievement's 1992 Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. In his address to the student delegates, Costner discusses his own family's history in the West, including his grandfather's participation in the building of Hoover Dam. He encourages the students to think for themselves and stand up for their beliefs.

Richard Taylor shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics with his colleague Jerome Friedman for a series of experiments proving demonstrating that protons, neutrons, and the other elementary particles of the atom are in turn composed of smaller entities, known as quarks. Born in the town of Medicine Hat, in Alberta, Canada, Taylor earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and his Ph.D. at Stanford, where he joined the High Energy Physics Laboratory. From its inception, he was involved in the design and construction of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). The experiments run at SLAC in the late 1960s and early '70s involved scattering high-energy beams of electrons from protons and deuterons and heavier nucleii. The results provided the first experimental evidence that the protons and neutrons were made up of point-like particles, later identified to be the up-and-down quarks that had previously been proposed on theoretical grounds. The experiments also provided the first evidence for the existence of gluons. In this address to the Academy of Achievement, recorded at the 1991 Summit in New York City, Dr. Taylor recalls his collaboration with his fellow physicist Jerome Friedman and their discoveries of electron/proton scatterings. He discusses the role of leadership in team work and urges the students to take their time and enjoy the process of education. In extolling the importance of taking risks, he also relates the heavy price he paid for his own risk-taking.

As an international film star, Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) personified chic, cosmopolitan elegance, but she spent the last decades of her life traveling to the corners of the earth most afflicted by poverty, hunger and disease. Born in Belgium to a Dutch mother and a British father, she grew up in the Netherlands during the German occupation, and her memory of the hunger and deprivation of those years motivated her later efforts as a champion of the world's children. She received the Best Actress Oscar for her first appearance in an American film, Roman Holiday. After a dazzling career as the star of films such as Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady, she traveled the world as Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund. In 1991, she addressed the Academy of Achievement at the United Nations, where she shared her views on the responsibility of service to the world's children.

Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Color of Money, GoodFellas, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence, Casino. A list of films directed by Martin Scorsese is a roll call of some of the most exciting, powerful, personal motion pictures ever made. By his own account, Martin Scorsese was a "sickly kid" with asthma who watched the world unfold from the window of his parents' small apartment in New York's Little Italy. His parentws hoped he would become a priest, but he left the seminary for film school. Today, he is acclaimed as the most talented director in America. He received a long-awaited Best Director Oscar for his 2006 film The Departed. In 2011, his 3D extravaganza Hugo brought Scorsese's art to a new generation of moviegoers. In this audio podcast, recorded in at the Academy of Achievement's 1991 Summit in New York City, Martin Scorsese recounts his career in film and takes questions from the Academy's student delegates.

Barbara Walters made history in 1975 when she became the first woman ever to anchor a network new broadcast. She had already earned the respect of the television public as co-host of the Today Show, where her professionalism as an interviewer broke new ground for women in broadcasting. She has won international fame for her exclusive interviews with world leaders and is today widely regarded as "the most influential woman in television."