Lessons of Leadership (SD)

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.

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.

Eric Steven Lander is the founding director of the Broad Institute (a collaboration between MIT and Harvard) and director of its genome biology program. As one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project, Lander is exploring the molecular mechanisms underlying the basis of human disease. He was captain of the math team at Stuyvesant High School, and graduated in 1974, and participated in the Achievement Summit in Salt Lake City as a high school delegate. Lander then attended Princeton, and graduated as valedictorian. He went on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he wrote his doctorate in symmetric designs. As a mathematician, he studied applications of representation theory to coding theory. Lander enjoyed mathematics but did not wish to spend his life in a "monastic career." Unsure of what to do next, he took a job teaching managerial economics at Harvard Business School; he began to write a book on information theory. As the suggestion of his brother, he started to look at neurobiology. In order to understand mathematical neurobiology, Lander felt he had to study cellular neurobiology; this in turn led to his study of microbiology and he continued down to the level of genetics. Lander then joined the Whitehead Institute in 1986 and later MIT as a geneticist. In 1990, he founded the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research, and, under his leadership, it became one of the world's leading centers of genome research. The institute made important breakthroughs in the study of medical genetics. The Center formed the basis for the creation of the Broad Institute, a transformation in which Lander was instrumental. Lander is one of the driving forces behind today’Ŵs revolution in genomics, and the study of all of the genes in an organism and how they function together in health and disease. In 2008, he was named with fellow Academy of Achievement member Harold E. Varmus, one of the co-chairs of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Dr. Eric Lander also attended the 1999 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. and spoke to the student delegates about his journey as a pioneering researcher.

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."

Owner of Chez Panisse, "the nation's most widely-acclaimed restaurant," Alice Waters led a culinary revolution that has transformed modern cooking. She first became inspired by great food and the culture surrounding it on a trip to France at age 19. After earning a degree in French Cultural Studies at the University of California, she traveled throughout France, then returned to Berkeley, California. At first, she intended to be a teacher, but she soon found she preferred cooking to teaching, and decided to open a neighborhood bistro like those she had loved in the south of France. It was eight years before Chez Panisse showed a profit, but in time, food lovers sought it out, and restaurant chefs in other cities began to imitate her approach. Her interest in serving the finest produce in season taught her that foods grown organically, in environmentally sound conditions, would produce the best flavors. Today, she encourages American families to eat together and take an interest in what they eat, and in how it is grown and prepared. In her 1998 address to the Academy of Achievement at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, she discusses the values and experiences that have informed her approach to cooking and eating.

Growing up in a working class neighborhood in Chicago, Mike Krzyzewski learned to rely on himself to organize the games he wanted to play. When he failed to make his high school football team, he turned to basketball and became a local star. At that time, he hoped for nothing more than to teach high school and coach basketball. A recruiter from the U.S. Military Academy changed all that. At West Point and in the United States Army, Krzyzewski began playing and coaching at a higher level than he had thought possible. Today, he is the winningest coach in the NCAA. As head coach of Duke University's Blue Devils, he has placed his team in five consecutive Final Fours and won four national championships. While his teams have boasted such star players as Grant Hill, Christian Laettner and Shane Battier, the sustained success of the Duke program must be credited to Coach Krzyzewski's long-term strategy. While other schools may be willing to sacrifice their academic criteria for the sake of a winning team, "Coach K." holds his players to the highest standards on and off the court. In so doing, he has won the accolades of his peers and the affection of the entire Duke community. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1997 Summit in Baltimore, Maryland, Coach Krzyzewski discusses the nature of teaching and coaching with broadcaster Larry King.

A lifelong leader in academia and an esteemed scholar of constitutional law, Gerhard Casper was the ninth President of Stanford University, serving from 1992 to 2000. Casper was born in Hamburg, Germany, where he survived the wartime bombing of the city. He first visited the United States at age 16, as delegate to an international forum for high school students. He earned law degrees at the University of Hamburg and at Yale University, completing his Doctor of Laws at the University of Freiburg. A specialist in American constitutional law, he emigrated to the United States in the 1960s, and began his academic career as a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Casper was a longtime faculty member at the University of Chicago, where he served as a professor of law, dean of the law school, and provost of the university. He joined the Stanford Law School faculty on assuming the Presidency of Stanford in 1992. As President, he was immediately tasked with rebuilding a campus still severely damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. He led the first comprehensive review of undergraduate education at Stanford in 25 years. He was in the midst of these activities when he addressed the Academy of Achievement at its 1997 Summit in Baltimore, Maryland. In this podcast, recorded on that occasion, he reminds the student delegates that chance will play an enormous role in their lives, as it had in his. He extols the value of an open mind in responding to unexpected opportunities and challenges. Since retiring from the presidency of Stanford, he has served the university as emeritus professor and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has held the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress, as well as serving as a trustee of Yale University, the Central European University in Budapest and the American Academy in Berlin.