My Path to Success

Oscar de la Renta first won renown as the designer of elegant evening gowns, but is now the master of a design and fashion empire that embraces women's wear, men's wear, accessories, household items furniture and perfume. Born in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, he traveled to Spain at age 18 to attend art school in Madrid. He originally intended to become a painter, but after working as a sketch artist for the city's fashion houses he became intrigued with the world of fashion. When the wife of the U.S. ambassador saw some of his original design sketches, she commissioned a gown for her daughter's debut. The ambassador's daughter -- and her dress -- appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine and Oscar de la Renta decided to pursue fashion full time. Lacking formal training, he apprenticed with the famed Madrid house of Balenciaga. He moved to Paris as assistant to the designer at Lanvin and then to New York to design for Elizabeth Arden. By 1966 he was as producing clothes under his own label. He became a U.S. citizen in 1971 and his business was soon expanding in all directions. His Paris show in 1991 was the first by a major American designer. His evening gowns have been worn by some of the most visible women in the world, including three First Ladies of the United States. He has received every major award in the fashion industry, as well as decorations from the government of the Dominican Republic, where he is renowned for his generosity to schools and children's charities. This podcast was recorded later that year, at the International Achievement Summit in New York City.

Don and Doris Fisher founded and then transformed a single store in San Francisco stocked with Levi's, records and

tapes into a thriving, nearly $15 billion global business with more than 134,000 employees, more than 3,100 stores

and a permanent place in pop cultural history. They have been credited with inventing the specialty retail category,

though they were equally known for their commitment to philanthropy and civic work.

Throughout his distinguished career, Don kept a sharp focus on growing Gap Inc. thoughtfully, but always maintained

a commitment to his family, his philanthropic and civic duties and his love of the arts.

Don had never anticipated that his once small business would grow so rapidly, that it would revolutionize retail

and transcend cultures. He'd always envisioned a modest chain of casual wear stores’Ůmaybe, as he once put it,

"as many as 10." His approach was led by passion and determination’Ůdoing things his own way.

The first Gap store, in 1969, would change retail forever.

Born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1934, Jim Lehrer received an A.A. degree from Victoria College and a B.J. in 1956 from the University of Missouri before joining the Marine Corps. From 1959 to 1966, he was a reporter for The Dallas Morning News and then the Dallas Times-Herald. He was also a political columnist at the Times-Herald for several years and in 1968 became the city editor. He is currently the Executive Editor and Anchor of the PBS NewsHour.

Lehrer has been honored with numerous awards for journalism, including the 1999 National Humanities Medal, presented by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Also in 1999, Lehrer was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame with MacNeil and into The Silver Circle of the Washington, DC, Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He has won two Emmys, the Fred Friendly First Amendment Award, the George Foster Peabody Broadcast Award, the William Allen White Foundation Award for Journalistic Merit and the University of Missouri School of Journalism's Medal of Honor. In 1991, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In the last six presidential elections, Lehrer has served as a moderator for eleven of the nationally televised debates among the candidates.

He spoke to students at the 1990 Academy of Achievement Summit in Chicago.

Sidney Sheldon (February 11, 1917 - January 30, 2007) was a master storyteller and one of the best-selling novelists in the world. He was born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago, into a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. During the Great Depression, he worked at a variety of jobs and attended Northwestern University. In 1937, he moved to Hollywood with the dream of becoming a screenwriter, and landed a job reviewing scripts and collaborated on a number of B movies. After World War II, Sheldon moved to New York City where he began writing musicals for the Broadway stage while writing screenplays for MGM and Paramount. By age 25, had three musicals musical hits simultaneously and won a Tony Award. As a young Hollywood screenwriter earned an Oscar for "The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer" and was the creative pen behind such movie classics as "Easter Parade" and "Annie Get Your Gun." Sheldon later produced and scripted "The Patty Duke Show" as well as the TV hits "I Dream of Jeannie" and "Hart to Hart." In 1969, at age 50, he wrote his first novel "The Naked Face" and his second novel "The Other Side of Midnight" climbed to #1 on the best-seller list. His novels often featured determined women who persevere in a tough world run by hostile men. Sheldon went on to author a string of other international best-sellers, including "Bloodline," "Rage of Angels," "Master of the Game," "If Tomorrow Comes," "Windmills of the Gods," and "The Sands of Time" - which sold more than 100 million copies in 30 countries. Sidney Sheldon struggled with bipolar disorder for years and contemplated suicide at age 17. He addressed the student delegates at the 1990 Achievement Summit in Chicago, the place of his birth more than seventy years earlier.

One of the nation's largest shopping center developers, Theodore "Ted" Lerner is a self-made man. When his father died, young Ted worked day and night to support his mother and siblings. He sold houses on weekends while attending George Washington University Law School. The year after graduation, he started his first real estate company with $250. At age 30, he invested in and helped develop Wheaton Plaza, the first large shopping center to be built in the Washington area. In 1968, he opened Tysons Corner Regional Shopping Center in Northern Virginia, and later developed nearby Tysons 11, a five million-square-foot venture, which became premier shopping center in the land. Over the next few years, he continued to add new properties to his portfolio -- retail complexes, office parks, office buildings, hotels, and thousands of residential units. Among his largest shopping centers are the 30-acre Chelsea Piers in New York City, White Flint in Maryland and the Dulles Center in Virginia. His family business, Lerner Enterprises, is the largest private landowner in the Washington, D.C. area and Ted Lerner is a billionaire many times over. He participates in many charitable activities linked to his family heritage and the passions of his childhood, including major gifts to George Washington University and the United States Holocaust Memorial. Since 2006, he has been the principal partner in the Washington Nationals baseball team. In this audio podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1990 Summit in Chicago, Illinois, Ted Lerner discusses his life and career. He urges the Academy's student delegates to take risks and enjoy the challenge if they want to succeed in business, and reminds them that a happy family life is the most important achievement of all.

Scott Turow is an author and a practicing lawyer. He has written several legal thrillers such as The Burden of Proof, Presumed Innocent, Pleading Guilty, and Personal Injuries, which Time Magazine named as the Best Fiction Novel of 1999. All four became bestsellers, and Turow won multiple literary awards, most notably the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers. In total, he has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies.

When Neil Sheehan arrived in Vietnam as a young reporter in 1962, he had no idea that he was entering a conflict that would shape his entire career. As America's military involvement escalated, he found that the war he was observing firsthand no longer resembled the contest the U.S. government was trying to present to the American people. Sheehan's reporting brought him into intense conflict with the Pentagon and the State Department. As a New York Times correspondent, Sheehan acquired the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department's classified history of the war, which revealed a long-standing pattern of government deception about the origins of the conflict and prospects for its favorable outcome. When the Nixon administration attempted to block publication of the documents, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, in a decision that vindicated the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of the press. Neil Sheehan distilled his experience and insight of the Vietnam War in his massive narrative A Bright Shining Lie. Sixteen years in the writing, it told the story of the war through the experience of a single exceptional warrior. Sheehan's book received the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and was hailed as the most outstanding book to emerge from the conflict. His subsequent works include, After the War Was Over and A Fiery Peace in a Cold War. Neil Sheehan's courage and tenacity as a reporter, and his eloquence as a writer, have made him the role model for all journalists who fight against powerful opposition to bring truth to light. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1990 Summit in Chicago, Illinois, he discusses his career path as a journalist and author, and the powerful impact of the discovery of the Pentagon Papers.

Tom Brokaw was the longtime anchor and managing editor of the NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004, and is the author of the best-selling "The Greatest Generation" about the American citizens who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II and went on to build modern America. Brokaw is a graduate of the University of South Dakota and began his broadcast career in Omaha. He moved to Atlanta and detailed the civil rights movement for the network. In 1966, Brokaw transferred to Los Angeles as the featured political reporter and evening news anchor. In 1973, he was named NBC News White House Correspondent, where he covered some of the most tumultuous years in American politics, and then went on to anchor "The Today Show." In 1983, Brokaw became the sole anchor of NBC "Nightly News" where he carried out special assignments around the globe. He conducted the first exclusive television one-on-one interviews with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Vladimir Putin and was the only network anchor in Berlin when the Berlin Wall fell. Brokaw has earned a solid reputation as one of the world's preeminent broadcast journalists and currently serves as a Special Correspondent for NBC News and works on documentaries for other television channels. Tom Brokaw spoke to the Academy students at the 1989 Achievement Summit in San Francisco about his broadcasting career and his personal motivations.

Philip H. Knight was an accounting student and middle-distance runner at the University of Oregon when he was seized with the idea of importing high-tech running shoes from Japan. It was not easy to persuade others that this was a promising business opportunity, but Knight took the idea to his track coach, Bill Bowerman. The two of them shook hands and agreed to start a small import business. At first, Knight sold the shoes out of the trunk of his car at high school track meets. From importing shoes, Knight soon gravitated to the idea of designing and manufacturing them with a company of his own, and Nike Inc. was born. Knight and his team created the revolutionary "waffle sole" by pouring rubber into a kitchen waffle iron, and introduced the new product at the 1972 U.S. Olympic trials. Knight built the company brilliantly through constant innovation, astute advertising and well-chosen endorsements. In only ten years, he built a billion-dollar business. Today the Nike "swoosh" is the most recognizable of trademarks, and Nike is the largest sports and fitness company in the world.

Mr. Knight addressed the student delegates and answered their questions at the 1989 Academy of Achievement Summit in San Francisco.

William "Bill" Hanna (July 14,1910 - March 22, 2001) and Joseph "Joe" Barbera (March 11, 1911 - December 18, 2006) were two of the world's most influential animators, directors, producers and cartoon artists whose movie and television carton characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century.

Hanna was a college dropout during the Great Depression, he worked at a series of odd jobs in the Los Angeles area, but discovered he had a talent for drawing. He joined an animation studio in 1930 and

slowly gained skill and prominence, and, in 1937, met Barbera at MGM Studios.

Barbera lived in New York City and displayed talent for drawing as early as the first grade. During his young adult years, he tried unsuccessfully to become a cartoonist but supported himself as a bank teller

during the Great Depression. He continued to pursue publication of his drawings and his single cartoons began to be published in magazines. Barbera took art classes at the famed Art Students League and the

Pratt Institute. In 1932, he joined Van Beuren Studios as an animator and storyboard artist. Lured by a salary increase, he moved to California in 1937 where he met Hanna who was working at the adjacent desk.

The two men began collaborating, and were most known for producing "Tom and Jerry" live action films. In 1957, they founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful TV animation studio in the entertainment industry for more than 50 years, producing programs such as "The Flintstones," "The Huckleberry Hound Show," "The Jetsons," "Scooby-Do," "The Smurfs," and "Yogi Bear." Hanna and Barbera won seven Academy Awards and eight Emmy Awards. Their cartoons have become cultural icons. Hanna-Barbera's shows have a global audience of over 300 million people and have been translated into more than 20 languages. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera spoke together to the Academy's student delegates about their long and illustrious career during the 1989 Achievement Summit in San Francisco.