My Path to Success

As Chairman and President of Safeway Inc., Peter A. Magowan engineered a turnaround that rescued the venerable grocery chain from a hostile takeover and restored it to profitability. He later enjoyed a successful 15-year run as General Managing Partner of the San Francisco Giants baseball team and led the drive that built the first privately funded American baseball stadium in over 30 years. Magowan was born in the grocery business. His grandfather had helped found the Safeway chain in the 1920s, but Magowan learned the business the same way other men in his family had: from the bottom up. He began as a teenager, mopping floors and bagging groceries. He graduated from Stanford, earned a Mater's degree at Oxford, and pursued graduate studies in international relations and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins before returning to work in the family business full-time. He served as a real estate negotiator in Washington, D.C. and then as a store, district and division manager across the Southwest before becoming CEO of Safeway at age 38. When the chain was threatened with a hostile takeover, Magowan formed an alliance with leveraged buyout specialists Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and took the company private in 1986. He sold off unprofitable stores and renegotiated the remaining labor contracts, returning the firm to profitability in fewer, and more selective markets. In this address to the Academy of Achievement, recorded at the 1992 Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, Magowan discusses the unique lessons of the supermarket business and the lasting impact of the most basic workplace values. The year following his address to the Academy, Magowan and a small group of partners purchased the San Francisco Giants. Magowan spearheaded the construction of a new stadium, AT&T Park. Since the opening of the park, the Giants have been in the top half of revenue earners in professional baseball. Magowan retired from the Giants management in 2008.

The molecular biologist Joan Steitz is famed for her discoveries involving RNA, one of the three major macromolecules essential for all known forms of life. Growing up in Minnesota, she was fascinated by biology but lacked female role models in the sciences. At Harvard, she was the first female graduate student to join the laboratory of the famed biologist James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule. Throughout her career, her work has centered on the function of RNA in catalytic processes. In 1970, Steitz became an assistant professor at Yale, and within five years had published the groundbreaking research for which she is most famous, demonstrating the complementary base pairing of ribosomes. Her discoveries have blazed new trails for basic molecular biology, and may yield new insights into the diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune diseases such as lupus, which develop when patients make antibodies against their own DNA or ribosomes. In 1989, she became the first female recipient of the Warren Triennial Prize, an honor that often precedes Nobel recognition. Today, she is Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University. In this 1992 address to the Academy of Achievement in Las Vegas, Nevada, she discusses her lifelong interest in science, and the personal challenges she faced as a woman scientist in the 1970s. She urges the Academy's student delegates to make the most of their opportunities, and extols the rewards and satisfactions of teamwork in the sciences.

Barry Diller is one of the most successful media and entertainment entrepreneurs of our times. As Vice President of Development at ABC Television in the 1960s, he pioneered the Movie of the Week and miniseries formats. He led the struggling network to dominance with popular programs such as Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley before leaving ABC to become Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures. At Paramount, he helped triple profits within six years with blockbuster features like Saturday Night Fever and Raiders of the Lost Ark. After a decade at Paramount he moved to Fox Inc., parent company of the 20th Century Fox movie studio and the fledgling Fox television network. As Chairman and CEO of Fox, he built the new television network with offbeat successes such as Married With Children and The Simpsons. In this podcast, recorded in 1992 at the Academy of Achievement Summit in Las Vegas, Diller tells the Academy's student delegates about a recent decision to take a break form his work in entertainment and broadcasting to drive across the United States and reflect on his direction in life. He recalls the administrative jobs he held in his early years in the entertainment industry and recounts how he broke through to a more creative side of the business. He encourages the students to take risks in their working lives and jump out of their comfort zones. In more recent years, Barry Diller has held controlling interests in QVC, the Home Shopping Network and USA Broadcasting. In 2005, he became Chairman of Expedia, Inc. At the time, he was estimated to be the most highly paid executive in the world.

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."

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.

H. Wayne Huizenga is one of America's most successful entrepreneurs. He started driving a truck while still in high school and dropped out of college to join a family friend's trash-hauling business. Huizenga bought his own truck and worked his collection route from 2:30 am until noon, then spent the rest of the day hunting for new customers. At age 31, he started Waste Management, with a single garbage truck, which became the world's largest waste collection and disposal company. In 1987, he repeated his business success with the Blockbuster Video Company, which became the country's largest movie rental chain. In 1996, Huizenga formed AutoNation, and expanded it into the nation's largest automotive dealer. He also introduced professional baseball and hockey to South Florida as the initial owner of the Florida Marlins and Florida Panthers, and in the 1990s purchased the Miami Dolphins football team before selling the team in 2009.

Chuck Jones was born in Spokane, Washington. He moved, with his family to Southern California when he was only six months old. The family moved often, living at various times in Hollywood and Newport Beach. In Hollywood, the young boy was able to observe the still-young film industry. He remembers peering over the studio fence to watch Charlie Chaplin at work on his silent comedies.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones encouraged the artistic leanings of their children, all of whom grew up to be professional artists. At age 15, Chuck dropped out of high school, at his father's suggestion, to attend Chouinard Art Institute (now known as California Institute of the Arts).

Emerging from school in the depths of the Depression, the young artist found work in the fledgling animation industry, working in succession with Ub Iwerks (Walt Disney's original partner), Charles Mintz and Walter Lantz (creator of Woody Woodpecker). He advanced from washing cels to in-betweening, finally landing a job at Leon Schlesinger Productions, the supplier of cartoons to Warner Bothers. Chuck Jones was to continue this association for the next 30 years. In this company he worked for the great animation directors Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin and Tex Avery, men he credits with teaching him the comic timing, vivid characterization and jubilant anarchy for which Warner Bothers cartoons were famous. He advanced to animator, working on Bugs Bunny and some of the earliest Daffy Duck cartoons. At last, he was promoted to animation director. His trademarks include highly stylized backgrounds and a slew of hilarious characters. His own creations include Pepˆ© LePew and, most famously, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

The first Road Runner cartoon was conceived as a parody of the mindless chase cartoons popular at the time, but audiences around the world embraced the series. In the 1940s and '50s he directed some of the most durable and hilarious animated shorts, including What's Opera, Doc? and Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century. In 1950, two cartoons produced by Chuck Jones's unit won Academy Awards, "For Scent-imental Reasons" (with Pepˆ© LePew) and an animated short ("So Much for So Little"), which won in the documentary category, the only cartoon film ever to do so.

In the 1960s, Jones produced Tom & Jerry cartoons for MGM, and The Pogo Family Birthday Special for television. In 1962, in the waning days of the theatrical cartoon business, Jones loosened his ties to Warner Brothers and wrote an original screenplay for a UPA animated feature Gay Purr-ee, which featured the voices of Judy Garland, Robert Goulet and other stars of the day. Jones collaborated with Theodore Geisel (a.k.a. "Dr. Seuss") on a pair of cartoon specials for television, Horton Hears a Who and The Grinch Stole Christmas. The latter has become a holiday classic. Both won Peabody Awards for Television Programming Excellence. Chuck Jones won another Academy Award in 1965 for the animated short, The Dot and the Line, based on a book by Norton Juster. He also produced, co-wrote and co-directed a feature film based on Juster's children's classic The Phantom Tollbooth.

Under the banner of his own production company, Chuck Jones Enterprises, he produced, wrote and directed nine half-hour prime time television specials: The Cricket in Times Square, A Very Merry Cricket, Yankee Doodle Cricket, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Mowgli's Brothers, The White Seal, Carnival of the Animals, A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur's Court, The Great Santa Claus Caper and The Pumpkin Who Couldn't Smile.

His books include his autobiography, Chuck Amuck; a children's book William, the Backwards Skunk; and How to Draw from the Fun Side of Your Brain.

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 did during the 1991 battle to oust Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait. 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. 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. This podcast was recorded during the 1991 International Achievement Summit in New York City shortly after his historic victory in Kuwait. In this segment of the podcast, General Schwarzkopf discusses his four leadership rules.

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 did during the 1991 battle to oust Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait. 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. 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. This podcast was recorded during the 1991 International Achievement Summit in New York City shortly after his historic victory in Kuwait. In this segment of the podcast, General Schwarzkopf answers questions from the students in the audience about leadership, his career, and the Gulf War.

Doug Marlette (1949-2007) was a celebrated American cartoonist, playwright and novelist. Born in Hillsborough, North Carolina, he began drawing newspaper cartoons when he was 16. At 22 he was editorial cartoonist for the Charlotte Observer. He moved to the Atlanta Constitution, where he won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartoon. He later worked for New York Newsday and other newspapers. His editorial cartoons were syndicated in more than 300 newspapers and were featured in the magazines TIME and Newsweek. Beginning in 1981, he also wrote and drew a daily comic strip, "Kudzu," drawing on his Southern heritage. The strip was syndicated around the world, and Marlette later adapted it into a successful stage musical. Marlette's cartoons were collected in 19 volumes. He also wrote a book about cartooning, In Your Face, and two novels, The Bridge, and Magic Time. Doug Marlette died in an automobile accident at the age of 57. This podcast was recorded during the 1991 International Achievement Summit in New York City.