Lessons of Leadership (SD)

For 25 years, Larry King was the host of Larry King Live on the CNN cable television network. From an early age, he dreamed of becoming a broadcaster, but found no opportunities in his native New York. At age 23, he took a bus to Miami and found a job sweeping floors at a radio station. His first break came when a disc jockey suddenly quit, and he was asked to replace him. King eventually attracted the attention of larger radio stations, and in 1978 began hosting The Larry King Show, a live nationwide phone-in program. His unique and often controversial style quickly attracted a faithful following of millions. In 1985, he agreed to a similar program for CNN, the first live worldwide phone-in television talk show. Larry King Live became a favorite venue for celebrities and political leaders from around the world and Larry King became one of the most respected and honored personalities in broadcasting.

From 1995 to 1999, General Charles Krulak served as the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. Born in Quantico, Virginia, he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy. After his commissioning and graduation from The Basic School at Quantico, he commanded a platoon and two rifle companies in Vietnam. In 1987, he was assigned duty as Deputy Director of the White House Military Office. While serving in this capacity, he was selected for promotion to brigadier general. By 1994, he was a lieutenant general assigned as Commander of Marine Forces Pacific/Commanding General, Fleet Marine Forces Pacific. The following year he was promoted to four-star General and chosen to serve as the 31st Commandant of the Marines. After 35 years of distinguished service, General Krulak retired from the Marine Corps in 1999 and embarked on a new career in banking. In 1999 he joined MBNA Corporation; within two years he was named CEO of MBNA Europe. General Krulak left MBNA in 2005 when it was acquired by Bank of America. He has also served on the boards of ConocoPhillips, Freeport-McMoran (formerly known as Phelps Dodge Corporation) and Union Pacific. In 2011, he became the President of Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama. This podcast was recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1996 Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho, while General Krulak was Commandant of the Marine Corps.

In 1995, Dr. Kent R. Weeks made one of the greatest archeological discoveries of the century, the tomb of the 50 sons of Pharaoh Rameses II. A vast complex, unseen by human eyes for over 3,0000 years, it is the largest tomb in Egypt's fabled Valley of the Kings. Kent Weeks was fascinated by ancient Egypt from childhood. He undertook his first field work in Egypt while earning a Master's degree in anthropology at the University of Washington. After conducting a groundbreaking x-ray study of mummies in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, he received his Ph.D. in Egyptology from Yale University. He has worked in the Egyptian collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, taught at the University of California, Berkeley and was Field Director of the University of Chicago's Epigraphic and Architectural Survey at Luxor, Egypt. Since 1988, he has been Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. Having previously explored and documented a group of tombs to the west of the Great Pyramid, Professor Weeks founded the Theban Mapping Project to survey and map the vast complex of tombs and temples on the West Bank of the Nile, across the river from the ancient city of Thebes. His 1995 discovery of the labyrinthine tomb of the sons of Ramesses, full of magnificent artifacts, captivated the world. This podcast was recorded the following year, when Kent Weeks was honored at the Academy of Achievement's Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Not since Dwight Eisenhower in World War II has a military man won the affection of the American public the way General H. Norman Schwarzkopf has. As commander of Operation Desert Storm, he gave the American people the satisfaction of seeing their armed forces triumph in a decisive confrontation with a hated enemy. After the frustration and heartbreak of the Vietnam war, this victory helped many Americans regain an almost-forgotten pride in our men and women in uniform. Credit for this must go in large part to General Schwarzkopf, a visionary commander who won and kept the undying loyalty of his troops. General Schwarzkopf is a second-generation West Point graduate. His father was also called General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. (The "H" stood for Herbert, a name Schwarzkopf senior hated so much he only gave his son the initial.) From West Point, the younger Norman Schwarzkopf served his country in Europe and all over the United States. He spent two separate tours of duty in Vietnam, where he was wounded twice and repeatedly decorated for bravery. He saw action again as Commander of U.S. ground forces in Grenada and capped his career with the triumphant expulsion of the Iraqi army from Kuwait in 1991. He returned home to the hero's welcome he and so many other Vietnam veterans had missed after their first experience of war. Although he is now retired from the army, General Schwarzkopf remains, for many Americans, the ideal of the American fighting man.

Not since Dwight Eisenhower in World War II has a military man won the affection of the American public the way General H. Norman Schwarzkopf has. As commander of Operation Desert Storm, he gave the American people the satisfaction of seeing their armed forces triumph in a decisive confrontation with a hated enemy. After the frustration and heartbreak of the Vietnam war, this victory helped many Americans regain an almost-forgotten pride in our men and women in uniform. Credit for this must go in large part to General Schwarzkopf, a visionary commander who won and kept the undying loyalty of his troops. General Schwarzkopf is a second-generation West Point graduate. His father was also called General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. (The "H" stood for Herbert, a name Schwarzkopf senior hated so much he only gave his son the initial.) From West Point, the younger Norman Schwarzkopf served his country in Europe and all over the United States. He spent two separate tours of duty in Vietnam, where he was wounded twice and repeatedly decorated for bravery. He saw action again as Commander of U.S. ground forces in Grenada and capped his career with the triumphant expulsion of the Iraqi army from Kuwait in 1991. He returned home to the hero's welcome he and so many other Vietnam veterans had missed after their first experience of war. Although he is now retired from the army, General Schwarzkopf remains, for many Americans, the ideal of the American fighting man.

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.

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.

The father of the art furniture movement, Wendell Castle has been a sculptor, designer, and educator for more than four decades. An influential artist, his work has led to the development of handcrafted, modern, designer furniture as a major art form and his name is revered above all others in the field. His bold and graceful pieces, with their sinuous organic forms are crafted from rare and beautiful hardwoods, plastics, veneers, and metals in a timeless contemporary style. Born and educated in Kansas, Castle moved to Rochester, New York in 1961 and taught. He is Artist-in-Residence at the at the School for American Craftsmen in Rochester, New York, and maintains his art studio in nearby Scottsville. Internationally lauded for his contributions to the American art and design field, his numerous awards and honors include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, honors from the American Craft Museum, the National Museum of American Art and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Design from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In 1998 Wendell founded The Wendell Castle Collection to bring his sculptural vision to a broader audience. The Collection offers original works hand-crafted in Wendell Castle's workshop by world-class craftsmen and women. This podcast was recorded during the 1991 International Achievement Summit in New York City.

The arrival of Wynton Marsalis on the music scene in 1982 could not have been more unexpected. Barely out of his teens, this trumpet prodigy from New Orleans recorded jazz and classical music with seemingly equal facility. Even more startling was his dedication to a self-defined mission to restore jazz music to a central place in American life, and with it, the values he believes jazz embodies: freedom and discipline, romance and responsibility, pride and respect for both the African and the European components of our musical heritage.

In the following decade, Wynton Marsalis almost single-handedly initiated a revival of interest in mainstream jazz tradition among young musicians. In 1987 he co-founded Jazz at Lincoln Center to sponsor jazz performance and educational programs at New York's premier performing arts center. In addition to his busy schedule of composing and performing, Marsalis produces music education programs for public radio and television. His four-part, Peabody Award-winning TV series "Marsalis on Music," introduces young viewers to the adventure of making music. In 1997, he became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, for his epic oratorio on the subject of slavery, "Blood on the Fields."

Wynton Marsalis continues to compose, to tour, and to bring his message to a new generation as Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and leader of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. When Hurricane Katrina devastated his native city in 2005, Marsalis swung into action, organizing benefit concerts in both New York and New Orleans to raise money for relief and reconstruction efforts. Beyond his achievements as an artist, Wynton Marsalis has matured into a public figure of courage and conviction.

This podcast was recorded at the 1988 International Achievement Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, shortly after the founding of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

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, artic 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.