Mellody Hobson

I’ll tell you a little story. Mellody and I have known each other in various ways for several decades now, beginning with her involvement at Ariel and my involvement as the mutual funds editor at money magazine. Through careers in television and now later in life here at the Booth school, I had the pleasure and oh, by the way, another dear friend is Don Phillips, who is here. A round of applause for Don Phillips, who’s done so much for the University of Chicago and for the Graham School. He’s been an inspiration to me and a good friend for, for the better part of four decades. So thank you. About six months ago, Mellody and I were on stage at a event for teach for America, where I interviewed as I’m going to today, Mellody, about her life and the lessons she has learned from it. And I went in as a well-prepared journalist as I am today with tons of questions. I mean lots of scribbles and so on and so forth. We got into the first question, and I realized I wasn’t going to go back to my notes at all. The conversation was just so organic and iterative that I threw out the playbook because it just transformed itself along. It just it just carried itself along the waves of conversation. And I didn’t need to go back to my notes.

I think today I’ll probably stick to my notes a little bit more, but, but, but the lesson at the end of it was that something happened in that room that evening. I think you will agree. And it was the way Mellody related to and touched the individuals there with the story of her life and her accomplishments and her values and her definition of excellence, which is really the topic we’re here to discuss today. And by the end of that evening, I would say and certainly my wife said to me, my wife said to me, can you hear me? You can hear me better now, but I have a pretty big voice. That’s what happens when you go on television for 40 years. By the end of the evening, people came up to me and said, I want to be her friend. And that was really the takeaway there. And that was the that was the spirit that was in the room that evening. And so if we can rekindle some of that tonight, we will have done well. I think most of you know a lot about Mellody’s biography. You also know who Mellody’s life partner is. It’s the great and and wonderful filmmaker George Lucas. So my first question to you, Mellody, is, what is it like to watch a movie with George Lucas?

And how many times have you seen Star Wars?

I have to say, one thing about watching a movie with George is that you learn things you never thought you could learn. And seeing art through the eyes of a director is very enlightening and I’m so glad I’ve gotten to do it. And he’s a teacher, so he’ll say things to me. We’ll watch something like Citizen Kane and he’ll say, this is so important. This was the first time there was perspective and how do I know? He said, Mellody, I can see the ceiling. They didn’t light from the ceiling. And they’ve they’ve given us this view from a different. And you sit there and you’re like, how do you see that? But he was taught, obviously. And then he, he and his friends are real students of film, so it’s brilliant to watch a movie with him. Brilliant.

When you watch a movie with him, I’m sure if you go back and watch the movie again.

You can never.

Not see it.

Well or, you know, stories about it that you shouldn’t know. Like when they did when they did there are so many great movies where he’ll explain something to me. We for our museum, we own the piano from Oh, my God, the movie is escaping me. Play it again, Sam. Play it again. Sam.

From Casablanca.

Casablanca. Casablanca. So I watched Casablanca with George, and he said, first of all, there was no script. And he said they wrote the movie as they were shooting it. Wow. It was shot at John Wayne Airport, and every day they got a few pages. So he buys this piano from Casablanca in an auction, and he says, this piano is very important. And I was like, why is the piano important? He says in the piano, notice it’s an upright piano. It’s yellow. Look at the painting on the piano. It’s blonde. It’s her. Wow. And you sit there and you’re like, what? And he’s like, she’s the piano. Yeah. And, you know, these are the kind of things that you don’t know as a regular person when you’re watching.

You’re watching a movie. He knows those details.

Exactly.

Because he studied.

And he’s like, so the director is influencing you in very subtle ways that you don’t understand.

Let’s go way back to the to the early times in your life. You grew up in Chicago, you were not a child of privilege in any sense. You were the youngest of six children, and the the distance in age between you and your nearest sibling was several years. Your mom was a hard working person who worked in the real estate business, but had to struggle to make ends meet. The lights would get turned off, cars would get repossessed. You would get evicted. What influenced you in those early days to get set on a path towards excellence? And what was your fuel?

My fuel was scarcity. My influence was I wanted a better life. It was very simple. I had the benefit of my siblings and their choices. And I do say that with so much gratitude, because I could watch what they did and decide what I wanted to do or not do. And so I’m the only one in my family that went to college as an example. So I had all of these people in front of me and I said, okay, that was a choice that I don’t think I should make. That was a choice that I don’t think I should make. And I don’t say that with any condemnation or in any way to be critical. It was helpful to me. I’m a composite of all of those other siblings, those five siblings and their choices. So their lives gave me Guideposts. And so I’m very, very grateful to them for that.

Your fuel towards excellence, you say, was scarcity. Scarcity is not something that bedevils you today in the same way. So how has your fuel in your continuing quest for excellence? How has your fuel changed? What is it today?

Well, it’s interesting because George always says to me, he’s very wise. I always joke, I married Yoda’s dad. He’s very, very wise. And he always says to me that what happens to you and your childhood shapes your entire life. It’s a it’s a very, very foundational not to be stating the obvious, but it sort of anchors your thinking. So, yes, I have no scarcity today in the same way, but I feel it. It’s like being a never leaves you, baby. Never leaves you.

Never leaves.

You. Yeah. Children of the depression always felt that they couldn’t. They could lose everything. So they were great savers. And they did a lot of things that were extraordinarily smart. And I feel the same way that that that foundation is sits with me. So, you know, they always ask, what is your recurring nightmare dream? One of mine is I’m homeless, but I have all these shopping bags from department stores with fancy names. So I have Gucci and Louis Vuitton and Chanel, and I’m walking around with these bags. But I don’t. But I don’t have anywhere to sleep, which is a a really interesting dream about my today versus my past. So it does linger with me.

Well, I’m not going to be your therapist today and decode that. But but I’m sensing that in your endeavors today, which run the gamut from business to philanthropy to community service to advocacy you run hungry all the time.

All the time.

You.

Run. You know, it’s like that movie Spinal Tap. I run at 11. Yeah, the dial doesn’t stop at ten. Yeah.

Besides your mother, who were your early influencers in setting you on a path to excellence? Was there a teacher? Was there an individual? An early boss? And we’ll get to Princeton, where I know was was a formative time for you in just a moment.

Certainly there were a lot of teachers that took a great deal of interest in me. I remember just a very quick story. When I was in grade school, I ran I won the declamatory speech contest, which was you memorized something and you, you know, competed against the school. I won that I went to the district. I won that the district against 25 schools. But what happened? My principal, whose name was Mary E Shannon, when I won at the school level, she said, every single day at lunchtime, you have to come and give that speech to me for one month.

Wow.

Every day. Wow. So every day I stepped outside of her office, and then she would invite me in, and for four minutes, I would do The Creation by James Weldon Johnson. Every day. And then when I got to the district, I competed against the 25 schools. You drew a number. My mom was with me. You drew a number, and I was number 25. I’m despondent. You sit in a row by your number. I’m last. And I’m literally, like, a little choked up with tears in my mom’s, like, this is the greatest thing ever. You get to go last. You’re going to leave the best last impression. You’re going to win.

And so you did, and so you did.

But it was that preparation of a principal who said, every day you’re coming for a month to do the same thing over and over again. That was someone who taught me about repetition and excellence. And she would say, start again or think about this. Or, you know, maybe you could say this a little bit differently. Obviously, I had it memorized cold. There was no chance of forgetting it, but it was also just the idea of at that point, it was scripting it. It was dramatizing it. It was voice intonation. It was all of these things. And she was paying attention to that.

Another thing you had memorized cold was your very eloquent, I believe it was 2014 Ted talk called Color Brave, not Color Blind. We’re going to get to that in just a moment, but I suggest that you go back at the end of this and, and go on YouTube and find color brave versus colorblind with Mellody Hobson. It is an extraordinary and eloquent sort of personal memoir, in part, but also a call to action, I would say. And I and I think it had.

Relevant than ever.

More relevant than ever and had impact and continues to have impact. One of the things that I think we are going to be exploring in enduring excellence over the next several months is the difference or the distinction between excellence, which connotes something different to me than success or achievement? And I’d like you, Mellody, to to ruminate on that thought for just a couple of minutes. What is the distinction that you would make between enduring success and enduring excellence? Maybe I can look forward to the guests we’re going to have next week. Arthur Brooks, I think he would say in part for him, that excellence is its own reward and that success is marked by external rewards, accolades, trophies, pay. Talk to me about the difference that you see today as you look back on your life and as you continue to move into next chapters, the distinction between excellence and success or achievement.

I think I see it a little bit differently, because I think you could have no external validation and feel very successful. So I think I take a little bit of, of I’ll take a slightly different view there. But I would say my, my perspective would be excellence is an input and success is an outcome. And the input for me is a never ending input. You know, the thing about excellence is it’s something to be you strive. I have strived for it for my whole life. It’s not a it’s not definitive in what it means. It is a ever changing goal. And when you become good at something, you’re trying to dial it up all the time. So you could be doing the same thing and still seeking excellence to get better at it. I’ve certainly seen that with someone like George who makes movies, or John Rogers who pick stocks. In fact, those people that I most admire. They are domain experts and they go deep. I use the the quote all the time. An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less. There’s a difference between a general practitioner doctor and a brain surgeon. One takes a lot more time and energy and schooling to become that person. And so when I think of someone who’s excellent, that’s what they’ve done. They keep knowing more and more about less and less. And in so doing, they keep dialing up the they keep turning up the dial on their expertise. And ultimately I think that drives their success.

Well, I’m kind of going out of order here but but but while we’re on that topic of excellence, your career has led you into into various other fields business and asset management, Prime among them philanthropy, which is a big part of your life today, women’s sports and partial ownership of the Denver Broncos. Advocacy on behalf in part of financial literacy community activism. I suppose we could say is that is is excellence the same board membership and leadership? Is excellence the same across all of those endeavors, or is it subtly different in each one? In other words, do you bring a different kind of excellence to your board work than you do to your co-CEO? Work with Ariel, to your philanthropy?

I believe how you do one thing is how you do everything, and I remember meeting who is now passed away. Charlie Trotter, the chef, and Charlie Trotter once came and spoke to our students at our school at the Ariel Community Academy, and he told an amazing story. He told a story about how they find a new chef for his restaurant, which of course doesn’t exist anymore, but was world renowned Michelin stars, etc. and so he said that when they look for a chef, they bring him in, they interview him, and then they have them do something extremely menial, like clean the floor or clean the grill. And he said one of the things he learned very quickly is you learn the person’s personality immediately about excellence. The people who are put off and annoyed that they were asked to do such a task, he said, not a servant, not someone who serves others or the people. He said, you give them. You say, clean the floor and they look at you and they say, give me a toothbrush.

And that was something that stuck with me. He said that’s the person I want in my restaurant where I think everything matters. And so I think cleaning the floor for that person who says give me a toothbrush is the same for them as what they might put on your plate. And that is my example of how you do one thing, is how you do everything.

It’s interesting. I’ve been watching, as I’m sure many of you have the Bear, which is a show about every second counts. Yeah. Every second counts. And in one episode, Richie who’s who’s kind of one of the rebellious members of the clan goes to train at a very high end restaurant, and he is there to polish the spoons, the spoons or the forks. And it gets to that point. Let’s talk about Princeton a little bit. I know it remains incredibly important to you. It was a formative step in your life. It remains so important that you and your family foundation have made the lead donation to create the Hobson Residential College, which, oh, by the way, is the first residential college at at Princeton named after an African American female or an African American person. So congratulations on that. Why did you choose Princeton? I agree. Why did you choose Princeton? And what did you learn there about excellence and living a purpose, a life of purpose and high standards.

Well, even though Princeton lives in the shadow of University of Chicago. Somehow I managed to do okay going there, and I know some of my Princeton friends are here. Other fellow alumni. I loved Princeton so much, I really did, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity I had to go there. It’s a very long and funny story about how I ended up going to Princeton, but I would say that the thing that that Princeton showed me was the world. I learned about the world at Princeton. When I got there. I had lived in Chicago, had grown up in Chicago. I had this large but small family because we didn’t have any extended family, really. And then I go to Saint Ignatius College Prep, which was very, very insular in terms of even just the religion which was Catholic. And then and that was great. And I was raised by Jesuits in that regard. And that was wonderful to really push me on how to thank. But when I got to Princeton and I saw people from everywhere, and I saw people who came from nothing, I saw people who came from the wealthiest families in the world. And we were we were put on the same playing field in terms of intellectual expectations. I wouldn’t even say excellence. Yes, it was just expectations. That’s when my eyes were opened up to anything was possible. I was unconstrained in my ability to learn, and I was unconstrained in my ability to be challenged because and to challenge others. That was the setting. You could spar intellectually in a way that was so fulfilling and so enlightening that I was. I knew at the time I would never have that experience again of that kind of utopia, educational utopia.

Yeah. So at Princeton, you learned through the fact that everybody was on an equal playing field, that that you learned about having to compete, you learned about what the standards were and measuring up to them and that that carried forward.

You also had to advocate for yourself. I mean, it wasn’t something that was just, you know, there were a lot of moments where you had to fight for your point of view or to get into a class that you wanted. Or I could go through a lot of examples where I had to learn to, you know, put myself out there if I wanted to have to get something.

Fast forward to Ariel. You are still working in your first job.

I have never left.

You’ve never left. The legend is that you still have the same office phone number that you had on day one. Why did you end up at Ariel? Why have you stayed there? You. You’ve certainly had plenty of opportunities to leave. Why did you stay there? And what is the enduring lesson of excellence that you have learned at Ariel, either from John Rogers, or from the culture there a culture that, oh, by the way, you helped to build.

Well, let me start off with the fact that why did I stay there? I’ve had one job since I graduated from college. Now lots of jobs in that job. But I’m the only person out of my graduating class of 100 people who’s had the same work phone number for 34 years. Just to give you a sense of that. So I stand out in that way. Why did I go there and why did I stay there? I went there because I went and did all the Wall Street interviews. You know, I went on the train into town, into New York and interviewed all the big Wall Street firms. And one day I was sitting in the what was then called the Woodrow Wilson School building where I was. That was my major is the name has since been changed to the Princeton School of International Studies. And I’m in the basement of Woody Wu. And I’m saying to myself, wait a minute, I could work with the guy. Like I could sit next to this guy and learn from him, as opposed to being three layers down, four layers down, five layers down. Binding books.

So the smallness of Ariel was one of the attractions.

The bigness of John.

And the bigness of John.

So it was this idea.

A Princeton grad, a captain of the basketball team.

And also just an extraordinary stock picker, someone who had great, great wisdom about the markets and investing, who had spent his whole life since he was 12 years old, 12 years old, picking stocks, 12 years old. His father had given him stocks every birthday and every Christmas instead of toys. So he again, deep, deep, deep in the area of small cap investing, value investing. And there were so many moments. It was a summer intern where I got to the opportunity to learn from him. He was about excellence. So I told this story about a letter John wanted me to write to Mayor Daley. When Mayor Daley appointed him to the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Board. How do I know all of this? I write the letter. I take it into John’s office. I’m 19, 20 years old. And John says, you know, I read the letter. Dear Rich, blah blah blah, blah blah. He said, this is a formal letter. I think I should address him as Mayor Daley. I go back, retype the letter on a typewriter. Dear Mayor Daley, he goes, I go back, give it to him, and he says, aren’t you supposed to say the honorable at the top when you address it? I go back again, rewrite the letter. Thank you for appointing me to the board, which is what it was known as. He said, is that the formal name of it? No, it had been on the other letter. Right. I go back again. Retype it. Metropolitan Pier and Exposition authority. This goes on for one letter, 5 or 6 times. It only took that to happen one time for me. Then I knew everything matters. And he had the patience to teach me that. And it was like spoon feeding. It was like a mama bird with putting little bites of food into a bird’s mouth, and the bird coming back again and again.

It’s kind of like that, that principle that you had, who made you come in and give that same speech.

I found those people.

Found those people.

Who insisted.

On excellence, who insisted on excellence. And you rise to become the co-CEO of that company? A major investment firm. How did you develop the strategic thinking, the resilience, the commitment to excellence to thrive there? Because to be blunt about it, it is not like you had a lot of role models. There are not a lot of African American women of color leading major investment firms, as you do.

I was lucky to find John because John grew up with an extraordinary mother. His mother was a was an ambassador. His mother was a very successful lawyer. She was the first black woman to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School in 1946, very, very well known in the black community. Extraordinary. So I think John’s having grown up with a mother like that, made him absolutely the perfect person to encourage and and mentor me, because he was used to women being strong and he was in no way off put by my strength. And my strength was there from the beginning. And he would always he had to teach me a lot of things, like pick my spots and things like that. It’s how you win. The merit of your argument does not matter, Mellody. It’s how you win. He used to say that to me all the time because I would be on the merit. I’m like, But I’m right. He’s like, but you’ve destroyed them in the process of being right. You didn’t win. Well, I’m like, but it’s still it’s true. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. They’re on the floor. Yeah. You know, the merit of your argument doesn’t matter. How do you win? And so I think that that helpful hand in guiding, along with the fact that he had this mother who was so extraordinary, so he was like, you are unleashed, you know, do what you do. I’m not here to put you in a box or contain you. That was a great culture for me. And that’s a culture that is at Ariel. We want people to feel that they can. They can. They’re not in an image of us, of John or me. I am I am not like John. He’s introverted. I’m extroverted. He’s one thing, I’m another. We’re yin and yang, but our values are.

Complementary.

Aligned.

It’s complementary. The personality differences complement one another and your values.

And sometimes they don’t. But and we get through that, which I think is what is important in life. The idea that you.

Have big fights.

We’ve had a couple over the years that have been significant. They’re not you know, I always feel let me back up. We had a moment of truth a few years ago, and we were disagreeing over something pretty intense. And John said it was probably ten years ago. And John looked at me and he said, listen, Mellody, here’s what I know about you. You love this company as much as I do. I started it, and you love it as much as me. I know that you want the best for Ariel, and I want the best for Ariel. We just have different ideas. Always remember that. It was like, it’s not about me. It’s not about you. Because we both care about this company that anchored all of our debate and disagreement forevermore. Because I always had in the back of my mind, he wants the best for Ariel. We just have a different opinion.

Do you think you’ll stay at Ariel for the rest of your working life?

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, it’s what I do.

You will always.

Be. It’s my company too.

Whether you are the co-CEO or something different there, you will always.

We’re the kind of people who die with our boots on, you know, like we are those people who work till the end, and I Yeah. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else now. I do a lot of other things. No ship has been the center. I wake up thinking about Ariel. I go to bed thinking about Ariel in terms of my professional life.

Yeah. And you’re leaving later today to go to talk with pension managers in Albany, New York.

Albany?

It’s not all glamorous in Hollywood. No, but it’s important.

And that’s. They are. They are, you know, the centerpiece. Those state capitals are very important to firms like Gary.

I’ve got so much to cover and so little time. Let’s move on to some of the other work you have done, most notably your board service. You have been on the boards of Estee Lauder of Dreamworks animation, where you were the chair you were on the board and the chairwoman of the board of Starbucks 20 years. You just recently left the board. The board there, where you were the first African American female chair of an S&P fortune 500 company.

Non-executive. So Ursula Burns technically was the first. She was an executive chair and I was the first.

You were the first non-executive.

And first and only. And there isn’t one today.

And which is shocking, crazy and troubling.

Yes.

It’s troubling. Yeah. Let’s zero in on those and oh, by the way, on the board of and continue to be on the board of JP Morgan Chase, which is run by a fairly charismatic and well-known dude. What have you learned about excellence from your exposure to those companies and to the individuals who led those companies, for example Jamie Dimon, Howard Schultz, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Condoleezza Rice, Bob Iger, and, oh, by the way, George Lucas. What have those individuals taught you about excellence? What did that board service teach you about excellence?

Well, the first thing it goes back to what I said earlier. They’re domain experts. The one thing I’ve learned from all of them is they are not know it alls. I remember sitting in a room with Satya Nadella, was on the Starbucks board with me for years, and he left a year before I did. And I remember once Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, he said, I don’t want to be a know it all. I want to be a learn it all. And that was something that I thought was just really brilliant. Those people are not know it alls. They’re learn it alls, and what they learn it all about is in their area. So if you talk to them about something else, they will be the first to tell you. I don’t know anything about that. I’m very leery of people who are experts in everything, who mouth out on everything, who are very sure, who speak with certainty. That always makes me very, very nervous. Certainly even in people we might invest with. I’m like, they’re too sure. I the older I get, the one thing I know is I don’t know anything. And you know, when you speak to people who are literally on something they’ve never even encountered and they, they have no expertise in, and they are, you know, they’re telling you why they know more than you do about it. That’s always very concerning. These people don’t do that. And what they do know, they know with such precision and with know with such detail. You could walk into a store with Howard and just like, walking into the store, he could know what was wrong or right with it before you’ve done anything. It’s like it was like a spidey sense that would be present. And then you I would say to him, tell me the one thing about what? About Howard? And I learned a lot. I sit next to Howard in every single I.

Read this, that you made it your business to sit next to him at every board meeting.

He didn’t even know I was doing it. No one did in the board. I wanted to know what he reacted to.

Did somebody ever inadvertently sit in your seat?

And you have Mary Dillon, who Mary Dillon once said, did.

You have to kick her out? What did you do?

I came in and she was in my seat, and I grabbed a chair and I said, everyone moved down. But I would tell you what I wanted to do. There is I wanted sitting in a boardroom and you’ve got the CEO. People are presenting. And then he would write something down and I’m like, why is he writing that down? Like, why is this important? What is he thinking about? And I literally just wanted that energy and that understanding and that proximity would give me that to understand what might be important to him or what he’s thinking about or needs to follow up on, etc. that was just very, very enlightening for me, which is why I always sat there. But one of the things I’ll tell you about Howard is when you would travel with Howard. Howard would pass a store and say, let’s just go in, stop the car. Literally, I remember we were in Wyoming once we were on the board of Dreamworks together, and he was giving me a ride back and to the airport, and we stopped at three Starbucks before we got there. And I was like, unlike you, I’m on a commercial flight.

Yeah, you know, I’m.

Not going to make the plane. But we stopped in a Starbucks, in a grocery store, a Starbucks that was standalone, etc. and in each situation I saw the attention to detail. And you there’s there are Jamie Dimon versions of that. That’s Jeffrey Katzenberg with an animated movie telling you how hard it is to make wet fur or moving hair. That is, I can go on and on and on with the individuals and how deep they go. And it is awe inspiring, truly. And every time I was in those rooms, I was like, I can do better. I can, I can take my game up another level. Watching how they work.

What makes for an excellent board member?

They ask great questions.

Did you go into board meetings with like, like Tyler Mathison here with a bunch of questions? Did you know what you were going to ask?

One significant, not obvious question was always my goal. Nothing rhetorical. No stating the obvious and the question. Nothing that is there to make you look smart. Something that was probing and intellectually Challenging. And so I would literally read a book, read the board book with that in mind. And I still do. What is the one question you can’t have? 13 because no one cares and doesn’t want to hear you talk that much. But what is that probing question that that is that is foundational to maybe a decision that we might make? And the reason I say that is because declarations in boardrooms, I think, aren’t well received. You know, having people sort of point at you and tell you they know better when you’re doing a drive by coming into the company 4 or 5 or whatever times a year. I just think that there’s it’s always more it’s better received. It’s in the form of a question. And the the second question is almost, almost more important than the first one.

You’ve learned. You’ve learned different things about excellence from from different chairs and people. You Howard Schultz, obviously one, Jamie Dimon, obviously

Roger Enrico, he was chair of.

Roger.

Dreamworks.

Of.

Taught me how to be a chair.

Roger Enrico, who was the Pepsi chair at one point.

And CEO.

And CEO at one point, probably preceding Indra Nooyi, who from whom we will hear in a couple of months. Another person, somewhat randomly, whom I’ve heard you speak of reverentially with respect to excellence, is your now partner as a part owner of the Denver Broncos, the formula One driving champion, Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton is one of the great athletes and drivers of all time. Why has he made such an impression upon you? And how does he manifest excellence? That really connected to you? How how does he do it?

So I will have to tell you that there are a few.

People in my life who have made as big an impression. John Rogers. George Lewis Lewis is my brother. We weren’t. We don’t have the same family, but we are literally linked in a way that is so powerful. And the one thing I will tell you about Louis is that he taught me he is enormously competitive to be a seven time world championship champion in Formula one. You are a killer. And yet his heart and kindness are as intense. And that is something I’d never seen before. He’s. He’s so competitive and yet so gentle. And that is something that is just it’s confounding. It’s almost trying to hold two ideas at once that are just completely opposite. So that’s number one. Number two, Lewis never, ever gives up. And he taught me that. Never, ever give up. Even when you think there is no chance you can win. I have watched him win. I’ve also watched something that and he’s taught me something that he uniquely taught me, like the never give up. I understood, but I watched it in action with him. But what he uniquely taught me was speak kindly to yourself in your head. When people are very, very ambitious and driven and seek excellence, you can beat yourself up in your head, he says. Mellody, only speak kindly to yourself in your head. And he has told me that over and over and over again. He’s like, the world will be very critical.

A.

Very Zen kind of.

Don’t.

Help them.

Yeah.

Don’t help them. He’s like, they’re going to do it on their own. Don’t help them. So stay inside of your head in a very kind place. And I think that that is something that everyone, especially young people, need to hear. Because I think it is something we we we we are. George always says to me, says Mellody, the thing about people, we have these bars in front of us and we have our hands on the bars and we have the keys in one hand. We can open our prison at any time, but many of us choose to live in this prison, and some of that is in our own head. It’s of our own creation. And so, Lewis, having taught me that as something that I’m forever grateful, we just had an exchange last week going back and forth. And at the end of it he said, Mellody and I was literally I take pictures of these texts and save them. He said, Mellody, let’s continue to inspire, inspire people we’ll never meet.

Say that again.

Let’s continue to inspire people we’ll never meet. That was his last line. And I just thought, I mean, there’s so much wisdom and and thoughtfulness there. It never ends.

One of the things that I’ve noticed as I’ve begun to study people whom I consider exemplars of excellence, like Lewis Hamilton, is, they are also incredibly disciplined. And they have an amazing, often a very religiously kept routine. He gets up and does physical training every day, and he follows a certain

Whatever in the world, wherever.

He is. I mean, he has flown to me and I will. I wake up at four and he’s already, you know, because he’s on some time zone coming back and you’ll say, where have you been? He’s like, oh, I just did a 10-K, I just did a 15 K, and you’re just sitting there saying to yourself, you can’t believe it. But his discipline is it is like nothing I’ve ever. Now there, there, there’s a level of discipline that I’ve never seen in another person like him, ever.

Right.

Let’s talk a little bit because I promise that we would about color blind versus color brave and your and your discussion there. What stands out to me about that is not I’d like you to explain what the distinction is. And obviously take the audience who hasn’t had the benefit of seeing it through a couple of the points that you made in this Ted talk some years ago, but it seemed to me to be not merely eloquent, but an example of what I would call excellence in thought leadership. And the reason was not just the power of the ideas, but the power that those ideas had to affect change and to affect the way companies think about and talk about race. To the extent that they do.

So, was the.

Effect of it?

Yes. It had.

That mattered.

I’ve had literally thousands of people tell me either how they’ve watched it, or they’ve played it inside of their company, or its must viewing in certain major corporations in America, which is always shocking to me. But I’ve had people be affected by this nuance that I made. The nuance was that there that so many people had come to me, and they always talk to me about being colorblind, and they were proud of it, and they were generally white to be, you know, very, very direct. And they would they would wear that as a badge of honor. I’m colorblind. And I said, the thing that is problematic about your being colorblind is you’re not noticing the absence of color around you. You’re wearing a badge of colorblind. So now I want you to actually notice color. I actually want you to intentionally notice when it exists or doesn’t exist in your world. And that was this idea of being color brave, seeking out people who don’t look like you, who don’t think like you, who don’t act like you, who don’t come from where you come from. And the goal there was to then build knowledge and tolerance, and that would then lead to better companies, a better society, a better world in every way.

In that speech, you there was a and I’m going to let you tell it because I will mangle it. You you observed that an individual walking into a boardroom where all of the board members would black were black would think, wow, this is unusual, but the same individual walking into a boardroom where 100% of the members were white and male would think nothing of it.

Correct. So I give this example. I said name any company in the example that I give in the speech. I said, let’s pretend it’s ExxonMobil that you have the ExxonMobil board. Again, I’m just making this up. And every single person was on the board was black. You would literally say, what is up with this? Your eyes would would not even understand how to take it in or if all the board were women. Yet when we see 100% or largely white male board, we have no reaction. That seems like a normal state. So I’m challenging people in this idea of seeing color to notice even that that difference that you would have in that reaction, which most people do agree with.

Can because it just leads us here. Can a company Can a board be excellent if it is not diverse?

No.

Full stop. You can’t be because you are. You are, by the very nature of the homogeneity, limiting the viewpoints that you have in that room. Most boardroom issues, especially things when things aren’t going well, require significant brainpower and lots of diverse opinions to solve the hard problem. And you want those opinions to come from all different points of view, which is why people want diverse backgrounds of board members, diverse industry representation maybe even geography. And so if you don’t have also racial or ethnic gender diversity in that situation, you are losing. And people don’t, especially in this day and age. This is these are all four letter words woke, which I am just stunned by because the opposite of woke is asleep, so I don’t get it. I really don’t I have literally like, challenged everyone. I’m like, I don’t want to be asleep. So I’ll choose woke in that situation, even though I think the word has been politicized in a way that just doesn’t make sense to me. But the idea that you want people in the room who will challenge and then bring perspectives that will be helpful to the ultimate solution. The example that I give in the speech is when smallpox was ravaging Europe. Not different from when we had Covid, right? They brought together the greatest scientists in the world. Greatest. They could not solve for the problem. Millions of people were dying. And it was ultimately supposedly this is the law. The observations of a dairy farmer who noticed the milk maidens were not dying of smallpox to this day, the smallpox vaccine. And it does work.

Smallpox vaccines don’t get us started on vaccines.

Bovine based Because supposedly of the observation of a dairy farmer. No, I always say maybe the dairy farmer was Mensa. We don’t know. But we do know his experience led to a breakthrough because, he shared, these people seem to be protected and it ultimately worked. No, he didn’t formulate the the the vaccine, but he gave the key ingredient, ingredient to that formulation.

So if I, I know I heard you right, I asked you whether a company could be excellent if it is not diverse. And you said no. Full stop. I assume that a you would extend that thought to a company leader who is not sensitive to diversity has a very hard time you know, getting through the gates to excellence. I wonder what you think. Would you share with us what you think about what? I will describe my words, not yours, as the assault on diversity. That seems to be in the culture today.

So let me start with what I’ve said for years, which is that a lack of diversity or a leader that doesn’t believe in it is going to commit corporate suicide. It would be a self-inflicted death. Now, I don’t know when it will come. It may take a long time, but at some point you will be removed from the zeitgeist because you won’t have it represented in the room. Now, in certain businesses, that is certainly I don’t think there’s a there’s a situation where it’s more important than others. So people would think I’m saying, well, the consumer market that’s more important. But I think that’s as important if you’re doing chips. I really do believe that. And so as a result of that, my perspective has been that the current situation that we have, which is is deeply. Disturbing. I mean, I can’t talk about it without being so Incredibly emotionally wrecked. It is moving us to a place that I think is, is is going to make us as a society, less effective, but it’s also going to demoralize people. And that is something that I just don’t like to see.

Is there a way back?

I always have hope. I think that, you know, at at some point when you suffer, you you tend to change. So the question is what kind of suffering will occur and how that pain will lead to different outcomes.

I want to turn to philanthropy, which is a big part of your life now. Maybe, maybe, maybe the central part of the second half of your of your story. We mentioned the donation for the residential colleges at Princeton. And amazing gift. But I know that you and your husband are deeply involved in bootstrapping the museum for the is it Museum for the Visual Arts.

Lucas Museum of Narrative.

Art, Narrative.

Arts, narrative arts, which is a distinction between visual arts. It’s storytelling through.

Through images.

Images. And it is a big, big project. I’d like you to tell us about that project, why it is so important to you and and obviously to your husband and, and expound, if you would, on the question of excellence in philanthropy, because it occurs to me that you can be a generous donor, but not necessarily an excellent donor, you can be, you can. The amount is one thing, but the intention, the purpose, the engagement is really what distinguishes the merely generous donor from the excellent philanthropist.

Well, it’s interesting to me because I have taken issue with the fact that in philanthropy you have to start something. I think there are a lot of people doing great things, and I’ve been really proud that we’ve supported great social entrepreneurs or great institutions that have that have been excellent for decades. Like you know Unicef is a good example. Unicef is something you can’t really recreate. Unicef and their reach around the world is something that is inarguable in terms of how they help children in a fundamentally clear and effective and efficient way. So that would be an example of something. It’s like you don’t need to start that over. There are also, however, areas where there is the proverbial white space, something that hasn’t been done before. And that is what George wanted for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He had been collecting art for over 50 years. We have over, I think, something like 40,000 pieces. It’s something ridiculous. And he never, ever wanted to sell it. He didn’t collect it for any kind of financial gain. He bought what he liked. And it’s interesting, George’s friends, they they like the same art. All of these directors have these, these collections that are, that are that tell stories because they see pictures and they see the images and the stories and the image and they are they are equally taken with them. And so one of the things about the Lucas Museum, which is a daunting effort, I mean, I never thought I’d be a person who would say, we have a museum, we’re building this museum in Los Angeles could have been in Chicago.

It is a beautiful piece of architecture. What I’ve seen, it’s a stunning building.

And John McCarter has is on our board, and he’s helped us a lot, including he was an interim CEO for a bit. It’s stunning.

It is. It is a stunning piece.

Yeah, it’s a masterpiece. There’s. I’ve never. This is. I told people when you walk into the lobby, it is my version of being inside of George’s brain. It is a stunning. There are no corners on the first floor anywhere. Everything is curved. And it takes a lot of vision to do what he has done. But it’s a gift to society and it’s something that he felt very strongly about. And therefore we’ve teamed up to do it. The gift to me has been I was not married to George when he made Star Wars. I see the George as a creator in this work and I am blown away. I am learning so much from how his mind works and creates, and all I can say is I need to write it down or figure out how to document it so that it is preserved for others to experience and see. I’ll give you a very simple example. I’m working on the website in my spare time, with our with our colleagues in the museum, and I’m trying to make sure George’s voice is there. And so the website has images around the, the the galleries. The galleries are not for people. The galleries are for ideas. So there’s a gallery on childhood love, family. So the images reflect those moments. And so I showed I talked to this to George about it, and I said, we’re going to do the website that will track the galleries, and I need hero photos of the the pieces of art that you want to represent.

Just a few each of those, those galleries. And he says you’re starting in the wrong place. And I said, what do you mean? And he says, well, for I show him a photo. And it’s a it’s for fantasy, which is one of the galleries, and it’s a woman standing on a cliff, and she has wings and she’s going to jump. And he says, and it’s beautiful. Beautiful painting. And he says, you are starting in the wrong place. And so I said, George, please help me to understand, I don’t understand. And he said, first, in order to understand fantasy, you must understand the myth of fantasy. I said, well, what do you mean? He said, we have fantasy to protect us from our fears. If you understand that first you understand this picture a lot better. So explain the myth to each area. There’s a myth to motherhood. There’s a myth to childhood. There’s a myth to fantasy. He’s like, and don’t go talking off the top of your head. Go and find anthropologists who will give you the myth. Have that anchor the landing page and then go from there with the picture.

Wow. That’s that’s a level of depth.

That was three dimensional chess.

Yeah. That’s, that’s I was.

Playing checkers.

That I don’t get to write.

That first you needed the myth before you could show the picture. That fantasy protects us from our fears. Yeah I mean that was those were big lessons for me. And I was like, wow. That’s when you think at a different level. And that’s when art is is is a very different thing for him than it is for us. We enjoy it and appreciate it. He tells me all the time. He says, Mellody, the thing that you don’t understand is art is all around you. And someone spent a lot of time. We were sitting in a hotel in China and he said that post, someone carved it and you’re just walking by it, not noticing it. And it was hours and hours of their life to create that beauty for you that you just take for granted.

I know I want to be mindful of the fact that you’ve got to get to Albany, but if you’ll. What a fun place. But I’m going to ask one final question, if I might. I know you’ve become very interested in women’s sports. You see it as kind of in stock market terms as the value play.

Small caps of.

Sports.

Small caps and value undervalued.

Women’s sports, I think, is the future of sports. And this is the example that I give. So I give two examples. The first is that I have a 12 year old girl named Everest and Everest. When she sees two men who are married or two women who are married. It’s not called gay marriage, it’s called marriage. I believe when we see women’s sports in the future, it will just be sports for a child. And that is very, very important. The future of sports. When you look at viewership, sponsorship, media rights, attendance, girls playing sports, merchandise sales, every single arrow goes straight up and to the right. We are seeing a once in a generation inflection point in sports right now, in women’s sports, will be the driver of the future. And the major league from the major league teams and leagues, they know that, which is why they want to capture women more. And so this is this has tremendous not only financial upside, which I think a decade from now, we’re all going to be very excited that people who invest in project level, that we own these teams and junior sports businesses, etc., but I also think it will have a profound effect on women on the field as well as women in society. 70% 70 of women in the C-suite seats today played high school or college sports. 70%. The one other thing which I found found so fascinating just societal impact there is there is very little evidence of domestic abuse amongst women athletes. It’s like it’s it is nonexistent. So you have these these examples of women in sports being powerful leaders, being role models, obviously, but also affecting society in ways that we can’t even imagine. Which is why I think it is a silver bullet. And so I’m very, very excited by what we’re doing. I think it’s as close to what I’ve ever seen in my career of what Warren Buffett calls a fat pitch.

Yeah.

Mellody Hobson, thank you so much.

Really great.

Thank you.

Well, I want to thank Tyler and Mellody. And if I can just say two quick thoughts. Mellody. I mean, one, we talk about ideas, but there’s also a presence that people that have this excellence in their core give. And when you’re in a room with someone like you, it is palpable and contagious. And so I want to thank you. And then secondly, as a dad, my 14 year old sojourner is a sports player, and for a decade she’s had one of those shirts. I play like a girl. Try to keep up. And as much as she has that. And my wife is an incredible, ambitious. She’s an extraordinary professor. And so she sees this amazing role model as much as she has all of that. It wasn’t until the professional women’s game really started to catapult that she began to realize that this was not just a shirt. This was a reality. And we were listening to your interview with A-Rod and my daughter, who’s really only been interested in social, like gender equity. Those she said to me, dad, maybe I want to be a business leader because that’s a powerful platform. And I know you mentioned you do this partly because you want to shape all those people out there. And there are millions, but there’s one in my house. And I just wanted to thank you personally. Thank you again. And everyone has a great day.