“I’m an inner-city, Spanish-speaking, low-income, free-lunch, first-in-her-family-to-go-to-college girl,” said Miriam Rivera at an awards dinner in her honor.
Marie Quintero-Johnson was persistent. At least once per month, she went to the vice president of business development to tell him she wanted to work with him.
Although Marcos Gonzalez loved the close-knit home his Mexican parents built in Los Angeles in the 1960s, he remembers thinking, “What else is out there?”
There’s a famous scene in the classic 1967 film The Graduate in which a family friend approaches Dustin Hoffman’s character with an unprompted bit of advice.
He’s led a multibillion-dollar Fortune 500 technology company, he advises President Barack Obama on cyber crime, and he hunts for early-stage tech investments at Bain Capital Ventures—but Enrique Salem didn’t set out to become a thought leader.
One sunny day last May, Paul J. Diaz—then CEO of Kindred Healthcare—stood onstage at American University’s graduation ceremony and looked over the crowd.