Sarah Breedlove McWilliams

“More emotions are better than less.”

   –  John Maeda, The Laws of Simplicity

Staring at her reflection in the oval mirror swinging slightly off a nail on faded yellow wallpaper in her small apartment, Sarah carefully parted her hair into sections with a metal comb. At six feet tall, Sarah had to bend her head to avoid hitting the low ceiling of her tenement dwelling. She was a big boned, large woman with brown skin, a large face, warm eyes and a striking countenance that riveted one’s attention. Pulling out some string from the left pocket of her white apron, she tightly wrapped it around each section, twisting it around to straighten the hair when she combed it out. In shock, she watched as a large tuft of thick black curly hair from her hand, floated down to the linoleum floor. She looked back at her image again in the mirror in horror. Frustrated, she let go of the hair and turned her head sideways to check her reflection, realizing slowly, with a sinking heart, that she was losing her hair.

At twenty years old, the knowledge that you are going bald would be quite devastating. Sarah Breedlove McWilliams was determined to find a solution. Sarah’s small apartment was similar to that of many Americans in the early 1900s that did not have electricity, central heating, or even indoor plumbing. She washed her hair once a month, a common practice in that era, which however, caused acute dandruff and scalp disease. Every day, she also cleaned households and washed clothes, employing harsh chemicals that were devastating to both skin and hair. By the time she was in her late teens, she was already losing hair and by her early twenties, would go bald if she continued the same method. She was determined to not let that happen.

            Sarah was not unaccustomed to hardship or suffering. In fact, that was all she had known for most of her life. The daughter of former slaves Owen and Minerva Breedlove who now worked as sharecroppers in Louisiana, Sarah was the first child in the Breedlove family to be conceived in a free world. Born December 23, 1867, Sarah entered a rapidly changing world filled with often raucous and raw volatile emotions as the country recovered from the ravages of the Civil War. The South was embroiled in the uneasy truce of the Reconstruction era and as many former slaves left their work in the cotton plantations to seek their fortune in the industrial North and the farms of the West, Owen and Minerva staunchly remained loyal to their former owners, the Burney family who owned a cotton plantation near Delta, Louisiana.

            Sarah worked in the fields with her parents until both Owen and Minerva contracted yellow fever and got deathly ill. Three of her brothers had already moved to St. Louis, Missouri. The South was unprepared for the deadly illnesses of Asia, and within weeks, Sarah’s parents both succumbed to the ravages of yellow fever. At seven, Sarah was left an orphan. Destitute, she turned to her older sister Louvenia, with whom she moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi.

            Louvenia however was married to a cruel and manipulative man who enjoyed ridiculing and beating Sarah in one of his sour moods. By the age of fourteen, determined to escape, Sarah quickly agreed to marry a man by the name of Moses McWilliams. Life with Moses however did not prove to be too stable either. Shortly after the birth of their daughter Lelia in 1885, Moses was caught up in the sweeping race riots rocking the South and brutally killed. In desperation, Sarah decided to pack her bags and move, joining her brothers in St. Louis.

            Fueled by an unquenchable desire to provide for her young daughter, Sarah was determined that Leila would have the opportunity to attend college. Sarah herself was illiterate. Despite being impoverished, orphaned, and now widowed, Sarah did not give up. She took a job as a washerwoman for $1.50 a day, and talking to local women that she met, found out and joined the St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal Church. Every week, she kept the same rigorous schedule of washing clothes all day and cleaning homes in the evening six days a week, attending church on Sundays. Her church became her podium for acquiring connections and confidence. It was there that she also met and married her second husband John Davis in 1894. Inspired greatly by the model set forth by Booker T. Washington in his autobiography Up From Slavery published in 1901, Sarah developed and refined her speaking skills, while working hard.

            Sarah was acutely conscious of her thinning hair. A scalp ailment had left some sections of her head bald, which she had to conceal with other hair. Mortified by her own appearance and desperate for a solution, she began to experiment with home remedies created by another black woman Annie Malone, who also had a part-time career as a model.

Her marital life was again chaotic as Davis left her and the couple got divorced in 1903. Despite the heavy blows dealt to her by life and her own choices, Sarah was determined to not give up. She was not going to sit and wait for opportunity to knock. Rather, she acted quickly and decisively on it. Sarah accompanied Annie Malone to the World Fair in 1904, watching her demonstrate her shampoo and hair irons. Sarah prayed desperately to God to save her hair. Her answer came in the form of a vivid dream where a large black man appeared and told her what to do for her hair. She got up and started to make that concoction, trying it out on her own scalp. Noticing, a considerable improvement, she began to experiment with the ingredients even more, recognizing the commercial potential of this hair care solution. She labeled her black beauty product, the “Wonderful Hair Grower,” a hair conditioning and scalp treatment formula that was soon followed by other products for the underserved black community such as Tetter Salve that treated scalp psoriasis, and Glossine hair oil. Within two years, she perfected a method for straightening African hair employing a pomade, brushing, and heated combs, while also treating hair conditions. Her steel hot comb with large teeth widely spaced enabled black women to easily style their hair, straightening and pressing as desired. After going from door to door selling her concoctions, Sarah moved to Denver, Colorado, working for Annie Malone as a commissioned agent, selling both her own remedies and Annie’s.

Sarah knew instinctively that she had the ability to reach the massive and untapped black beauty market. She just had to get out there and have her products recognized, produced, and distributed. Not content with just taking in her sales commission and waiting for an opportunity to arise, Sarah decided to split from Malone and build her own line of beauty products. Soon after, she met an advertising man called Charles J. Walker in Denver, whom she married in 1906. Charles encouraged Sarah to expand in a way that was inconceivable to her before. His journalism background assisted her in creating promotional avenues in black publications. Designing alluring advertisements for her beauty products, Charles convinced her to use a different name of Madame C. J. Walker. Those changes, accompanied by Sarah’s own remarkable journey of personal growth and confidence, led to incredible and unprecedented success. Within three years, sales had reached over six thousand and five hundred dollars (or the equivalent of one hundred and forty thousand dollars in 2008), and in the next several years, reached two hundred and fifty thousand dollars (or four and a half million dollars in 2008.)

Like other successful entrepreneurs, Sarah was able to recognize an opportunity in a large and untapped market, and act decisively to reach that market with a product she had devised and perfected herself. Despite being uneducated and hailing from an impoverished and destitute background, Sarah was able to overcome every adversity she faced and not only harness the opportunities available to her, but also to make them readily available to others.

Every skill that she acquired, from sales demonstrations to networking with people, she put to use. In many ways, Sarah was one of the best students of practical experience. Always open to suggestions for improvement, Sarah aggressively worked on improving her sales and marketing techniques. When her company achieved considerable success in 1908, Sarah opened Leila College in Pittsburg to teach and train her employees, whom she called hair culturists, run by her daughter Leila. She patented her own system called “The Walker System,” offering an extensive range of cosmetics, licensing her own team of “Walker Agents,” and providing an avenue for employment for several thousand black women.

Acutely conscious of the racial, social, and economic factors that hindered black women from acquiring wealth or status in society, Sarah’s business approach was two-fold. Sarah offered beauty products that enhanced the appearance of a black woman both in terms of personal hygiene and beauty. This in turn, inspired black women to feel more confident in their own self-image, while gaining access to dominant society. The second aspect of her approach was her conscious employment of hundreds upon thousands of black women, who worked in her factories in Indianapolis built in 1910 and as promotional agents. Walker agents, attired in long black skirts and sharply pressed white tops, were living testimonies to the benefits of her products as they went from door to door, selling Sarah’s cosmetics throughout the United States and the Caribbean and extolling her philosophy of cleanliness combined with loveliness.

Sarah acted on every opportunity that came her way. Recognizing the value of living by a burgeoning railroad hub for easy transport of goods, Sarah moved the manufacturing plant and consolidated all her offices in Denver and Pittsburg to the centralized location of Indianapolis. Her Walker Agents were carefully trained and groomed to build one of the most powerful sales force teams of the time. Apart from door to door sales, Sarah maintained an exhausting travel schedule, logging thousands of miles on the road as she demonstrated her products to people directly. Her daughter ran both the school and the exploding mail order business as well. Everywhere that she traveled, Sarah deliberately met with black leaders within the community, encouraging their use of her products and thus reaching the majority of the populace through their endorsements, combining both her sales effort with her own philanthropic and educational aims for the black community. 

Sarah also mastered her oratory and penmanship skills, soon holding large audiences in awe as she recounted her own personal stories and how through perseverance, hard work, and a relentless faith in her own ability to succeed, she overcame all obstacles in her path. As she said so eloquently herself on numerous occasions, “I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground.”

Sarah did not believe in an easy path to success. Hers was the result of hard, diligent work. Within less than a decade of inventing her first product, Sarah Breedlove Walker was the first African American woman to become a self-made millionaire. Manufacturing products in her own plant, she now commanded a sales force all over the nation that could sell her products as well as numerous beauty shops. With annual revenues exceedingly half a million dollars, her company was the largest and most successful black business in the country.

In an era where an unskilled white laborer could earn eleven dollars a week, Sarah provided employment for black women who could earn anywhere from five to fifteen dollars a day; a rare and highly profitable endeavor. Many women, who were thus empowered, were able to acquire both financial independence and social status. They could buy their homes and pay for education for their children. Sarah however was not content to simply make money. She encouraged her employees to give back to community, organizing clubs to foster philanthropy and an entrepreneurial spirit. Sarah also led by example, contributing to black education in colleges, supporting disenfranchised black women, and funding the new organization, the NAACP or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, while raising awareness against lynching and race riots. She spoke eloquently at demonstrations and meetings, and eagerly supported old age homes, orphanages, and colleges.
            Sarah did not shy away from public attention or controversy. Known not only for her philanthropic ways, Sarah also had an extravagant lifestyle befitting a millionairess, which only enhanced her public image of success and empowerment. Dramatically altering public conception of what a black woman could look and live like, Sarah Breedlove Walker offered opportunities for improving personal hygiene, beauty, and confidence for black women all over the country, while touching the lives of hundreds of thousands of people through her philanthropy.
            In many ways, Sarah was the quintessential saleswoman. She sold a product that she believed in and used herself. She had invented a product inspired by her own need and fueled by her own ambition and enthusiasm for her own product, Sarah was able to dramatically improve the standard of living for black women, empowering them to enter the world of business. Through her school and Walker agents, she built a business system that could be replicated and thus expanded. By simplifying her process and standardizing it, Sarah was able to reach hundreds of thousands of people through a proven sales and marketing system that she had created herself. She was then free to spend her time exploring new opportunities, building new products, and investing in other business ventures.
            Sarah was able to recognize immediately the universal nature of her own problem among the black community. What had been a reason for ridicule, “kinky” hair now offered her the chance to create a marketable solution, build a fortune, create a repeatable revenue model, and empower the lives of black women all over the country.

 

 

Isaac Singer

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.”

– William Shakespeare, As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII.)

When Singer first strode into Orson Phelps’ machine workshop in Boston in July 1850, he was intent upon carving his way into the book publishing industry. Penniless at thirty-eight, Isaac Merritt Singer was a man particularly bent upon achieving success. Married young to Catherine Haley whom he had several children with and after a string of affairs, Singer had plenty of mouths to feed and little money in his pocket. Passionate and driven, Singer easily won the affections of many women. At six-foot five, with a thick reddish blond hair and beard, a strong countenance, commanding gaze, and a penchant for witty prose, Isaac Merritt Singer was flamboyant and charming; a man that you could not easily forget.

            He was also not without talent. In fact, he was bursting at the seams with talent. Singer’s heart was in the theater but he did not have the luxury of following his heart’s desire without an income. He had however a gift for mechanical inventions and returned to his brother’s machine shop in Oswego, New York where he had apprenticed at the age of twelve. Singer was not afraid of working hard and to the bone when necessary. His own childhood had been one of stark deprivation, hard work, and perseverance in the midst of continuous change. The seventh child of immigrant Germans from Saxony, Isaac had worked from an early age and did not attend school apart from the wintertime. His parents Adam and Ruth had divorced when he was ten years old, after which he had gone to live with his brother and where he learned to work diligently with machines.

In 1839, Singer invented and patented a rock-drilling machine used for excavation while working with his brother as a laborer on an Illinois waterway. The invention paid him two thousand dollars, more money than Singer had ever earned before, toiling away inside the machine shop. Taking his earnings, Singer happily decided to form his own traveling troupe called “The Merritt Players,” and acquired a covered wagon, traipsing around the country, living and working out of his home on wheels. On one such journey, he met Mary Ann Sponseler, seven years his junior in New York. He fell in love and invited Mary to join him as his partner.

Pursuing his strong theatrical yearnings offered Singer an outlet for his exuberant personality and his penchant for adventure and travel. Yet, his ambition was curtailed despite his best efforts as his stint at the theater led him nowhere. But by 1850, with building familial pressures and with now five children to support in addition to two wives, he was ready to prove himself and succeed financially. Singer felt an insatiable hunger for success. He had always thrown his full weight behind anything he believed in. Abandoning his theatrical career, Singer buckled down and returned to work at a machine shop.

Renting two small rooms on 120 East 27^th Street in Boston, where he housed Mary Ann and their growing brood, Singer was desperate for both work and success. A friend and supporter George Zieber who worked in the publishing industry, gave Singer and his family ten dollars a week for sustenance. Zieber believed in Singer’s new invention, a cutting machine that could cut wood blocks to print images out of wood and metal. Singer’s first prototype built in New York was unfortunately consumed in a boiler fire that erupted in his rented studio. After sinking in a few thousand dollars into his machine, with no interested investors or merchants in sight, Singer was a volcano on the brink of eruption.

Hearing about his plight, Orson Phelps invited Singer to visit his machine studio at 19 Harvard Place to build a new cutting machine. Upon Singer’s arrival however, Phelps proposed something quite different. He asked Singer if he could improve his existing set of sewing machines. At first the feisty and hot-tempered Singer was outraged. He had poured his money and his heart into a machine he considered far superior than a simple sewing machine! But Phelps was frustrated and desperately in need of help himself. He had acquired one hundred and twenty Lerow & Blodgett sewing machines. The sewing mechanism in the machines resulted in sudden and frequent stops in thread, forcing the user to stop abruptly and rethread the machine many times. Sewing was thus agonizingly slow and painful. Phelps turned to Singer for help to repair the machine.

Standing in a room full of Lerow & Blodgett sewing machines, Isaac Singer surveyed the area with interest. It is perhaps the definitive sign of an entrepreneur in that ability to act on upon an opportunity that thus presents itself. As former Apple Inc. designer Guy Kawasaki says in his book Rules for Revolutionaries, “A good starting point for revolutionaries is to find fault with existing products and services and then do something big to improve them.”[i] Singer had at first, been opposed to working on the sewing machine, considering it a lowly apparatus, and it was only by the necessity of needing income and Phelp’s insistence that had compelled him to work on the sewing machine. Yet, instead of simply repairing the machine, Singer borrowed forty dollars from his friend Zieber and set to work. Working day and night, within a period of eleven days, he designed an improved model that had a straight needle going up and down instead of the previous curved needle. The new vertical needle also had an eye that could be threaded with a bobbin. Other features included an overhanging arm holding the needle bar over a horizontal table. By pressing a foot pedal and turning a wheel attached to the side of the machine, you could activate the needle that went up and down, continuously stitching cloth held in place on the smooth wood surface painted black with an elegant Art Deco swirling motif. His first attempts however failed and stitches kept falling apart.

After building such a useful machine, why would it not work? Isaac pondered the question for a long time and on the eleventh day he came up with a solution. He realized that the machine was not faulty but rather the amount of tension applied on the thread. By adjusting the tension of the thread, Singer was able to stitch together two pieces of cloth seamlessly without the thread snapping. Delighted, Isaac filed for a patent the next day, September 29, 1850. He continued to refine the machine, releasing new models in subsequent years.

Isaac Singer did not invent the sewing machine, but he improved the existing model and brought the machine into popular use. He also laid the groundwork for many entrepreneurial efforts to come in the future through his company, influencing social change. For centuries, human beings handcrafted clothing, armament, and bags from animal hides, employing sewing needles fashioned out of bones or animal horns and thread of animal sinew. It was only in the fourteenth century that the iron needle was invented and it would take another hundred years before eyed needles came into common circulation. All sewing was done by hand and sewing remained an act of individual craftsmanship until Singer brought the sewing machine into popular use. Changing an age old tradition where women sewed all clothing at home by hand would require not only a handy invention that could replace or simplify human effort, but also needed to be cost effective for husbands to consider purchasing the equipment for their wives. After all, labor at home was free and hence most husbands would not justify purchasing a sewing machine for the hefty sum of one hundred dollars apiece.

Despite his innovation, Singer’s new sewing machine failed initially to muster support with women at home and in tailor shops. Isaac however did not give up. He knew he was almost there. Harnessing the power of the technology of his time, Singer went about finding a way to reduce the costs of manufacturing significantly. The Industrial Revolution had spurred the growth of mass production for firearms with interchangeable parts. Recognizing the potential in these methods, Singer immediately invested in machinery that could produce sewing machines with interchangeable parts on a massive scale by 1857. Within one year, he reduced production costs to ten dollars per machine. Now, he could sell his machines for forty dollars, less than half their previous cost, while making more than five hundred percent profit on each machine.

Successfully reducing the cost of the machine, Singer still had to convince women to buy his machine. No one was willing to put down forty dollars for a machine right away. Hence, he came up with a new Hire Purchase plan where a lady could take home a machine for a mere five-dollar down payment and then pay him three dollars a month subsequently every month till the machine was paid for. Drawing upon his own theatrical skills, Singer held demonstrations of his machines, enthralling crowds while he sent salesmen all over the continent and into Europe to demonstrate his new machine. He also invested in an office and sewing factories in Paris and Rio de Janeiro, building one of the world’s first multinational companies.

The Singer sewing machine became an instant success. Women could make clothes at home much faster and easier. The garment industry was forever changed, as apparel could be manufactured far more rapidly and a new method of earning an income as a seamstress, tailor, or clothing designer was born.

A determined Isaac Singer had taken an opportunity that lay before him and converted into a money making enterprise, harnessing the tools of his day and all the learning and experience he had acquired as an actor, a machinist, and a person in tune with what people wanted. Through the singular act of redesigning a sewing machine and putting it out on the mass market, he paved the way for the creation of a new clothing industry.

What would have happened if Singer had failed to act on his opportunity or if he had given up when he had faced the obstacles of the destruction of his print cutting machine, high cost of manufacturing, and social barriers? Singer could have succumbed to the weight of his own personal problems just as easily. Yet, instead, he not only worked within the constraints of his own personal life, but it helped him focus and gave him the added impetus to succeed. He creatively employed the technologies of his time to overcome the barriers he faced. Failure was not an option for Singer. As Napoleon Hill eloquently put it, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”

His initial foray into the sewing machine industry was not an easy ride by any means and took several jumps and starts to get going. Singer also did not hesitate to act and to put his work in front of people to gauge their reactions and get their feedback even before his product was ready to market and ship.

Today in the world of news and media content creation, Harvard professor Jeff Jarvis[ii] explains how Google is able to recognize the importance of interacting with consumers as products and services are being prepared for market distribution. Unlike the old media marketing model of controlling content and running subsequent ads through which they add value to the world, Google does not consider themselves the only source of information but instead offers content that is editable and platforms that are in beta-mode. By opening up their process, they are willing to admit that their work is imperfect and incomplete and in doing so, asking us to help them to finish the work.

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[i] Kawasaki, Guy. Rules for Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services. New York: Harper Collins. 1999. Pg. 34-5.

[ii] Jarvis, Jeff. What Would Google Do?  Books Inc. Interview hosted on FORA.tv.  Feb 18, 2009.

Majora Carter

“I am always more interested in what I am about to do than in what I have already done.”

- Rachel Carson, noted environmentalist

One week after leaving Athens, Greece at the beginning of an eighty-five thousand mile journey spanning the globe, passing through twenty-one countries, the Olympic torch, the symbol of global community through athletic sport, arrived in San Francisco. Thousands of angry protestors lined the city streets, waving pro-Tibet and pro-China flags. The streets were heavily barricaded and lined with hundreds of police officers, ready to handle any disturbances that might arise.

Police officers were taken by surprise when one of the runners, a young woman from the South Bronx, while bearing the Olympic torch, pulled out a Tibetan flag from her sleeve. Immediately, she was yanked off the designated route while policemen seized the torch. While cops frantically called San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s office for instructions on how to proceed, forty-one year old Majora Carter remained calm although ebullient. She had succeeded in drawing attention towards the Tibetan independence movement.

The effect was instantaneous. Officials now shortened the torch relay path significantly to avoid any demonstrations in fear of skirmishes and protracted debacles that had occurred previously along the torch’s journey through London and Paris. Even the closing ceremony was cancelled while the flame was rushed to the airport and out of town as quickly as possible. Describing the event later to reporters, Majora explained, “I was expressing my right as an American citizen using freedom of speech in support of people who don’t have it. It just became really clear to me what was going on in Tibet and I wanted to do something.”[i]

Brazen confidence and the willingness to go right into the fire of conflict are characteristics of this outspoken, astute, and charismatic woman that few fail to notice. Born in the South Bronx of New York City in 1966, Majora Carter is an environmental justice activist, most well known for her activism directly within her own neighborhood and for coining the phrase, “Green the ghetto!” Growing up in a community that was imploding with dramatic increase in crime and arson, Majora had witnessed the burning of two apartment buildings on her own block. Her brother Lenny, who had survived two tours of Vietnam, had returned home to be murdered in his own community. The South Bronx, once a community of mainly white inhabitants, had changed over the years. When Majora was born, the last of ten siblings, an expressway designed by the planner Robert Moses had ripped through the once thriving neighborhood of Hunts Point. Her family home, acquired in the late 1940s, had slowly become surrounded by dilapidated buildings and crack houses as former tenants fled. Community had gone and in its wake, crime and arson had taken center stage.

            A gifted student, Majora studied science at the Bronx High School and went on to major in film studies at Wesleyan University. She left home planning never to return. While working on her masters in fine arts from New York University, Majora returned to her family’s residence in Hunts Point reluctantly. However, after meeting local artists, Majora quickly became involved in supporting their work and began Street Trees, a project where artists made sculptures out of scrap metal on the streets in replacement of trees. Warmed by the success of that endeavor, Majora went on to work with a smaller group called The Point that supported art for community development.

New York City was in the throes of change by 1993 when Rudolph Giuliani was elected Mayor. As he finished out his term, Giuliani proposed that a new waste center be created in Hunts Point, diverting forty percent of the city’s sewage into the South Bronx. Hunts Point already contained more sewage treatment facilities and waste transfer stations than any other neighborhood in the city. By adding the new commercial waste area, Hunts Point would have twice the amount. Already heavily burdened by its existing share of waste, Hunts Point would be crushed by this move in a way that it would be very difficult to recover from. Giuliani’s proposal was a direct violation of environmental justice, dumping the majority of environmental burdens on one community alone.
            Infuriated, Majora was determined to not let that happen. Starting the Sustainable South Bronx, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing environmental justice, Majora successfully lobbied against these measures. Later, she would tell Grist magazine, that she saw this as n economic-development group that was about planning our future, not just reacting to environmental blight. I wanted to play offense, not defense.”

This bold move won her much needed support including a ten thousand dollar grant from New York’s Parks Department. Recognizing that the health of the South Bronx community and residents depended significantly upon the quality of the urban landscape and environment, Carter started an initiative as executive director to clean up and revitalize the waterside park. Leveraging the ten thousand dollar grant exponentially into three million dollars, Majora orchestrated the development of a new park along the Hunts Point peninsula. The first of its kind in more than sixty years, the Hunts Point Riverside Park not only removed urban blight, but also dramatically enhanced the quality of life in the area through the addition of green spaces, picnic tables, boats, lush trees, flowers, and vegetation.
        In addition to these efforts, Sustainable South Bronx pushed forward a new idea to train locals in green collar jobs in their Environmental Stewardship Training program. The program has turned out to be extremely successful with an eighty-five percent employment rate. Graduates complete training in urban environmental stewardship, with a wide variety of skills, from installing green roofs to boosting energy efficiency of buildings and also have a personal stake in the success of their sustainable projects.

Additional programs include a South Bronx Greenway consisting of bicycle and pedestrian paths along the waterfront, for which the organization has already been granted one and a quarter of a million dollars by the federal government and also revitalizing the blighted Sheridan Expressway.

Drawing upon her experience in film and fine arts, Majora has contributed to numerous television and radio shows including co-hosting the Sundance Channel’s The Green. Winner of many prestigious awards including the 2005 MacArthur fellowship, the 2007 Rachel Carson Award by the National Audubon Society and the 2007 Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Humanitarian Service, Carter was also profiled in former President Bill Clinton’s book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.

Currently, Majora is president of a private green economic consulting firm called the Majora Carter Group LLC, which she runs along with her husband James Chase, who serves as the Vice President of Communications and Marketing. Incredibly optimistic, Majora explains, “This is about, ‘You can do well in this new green economy; you can actually have a healthy life as well. You don’t have to worry about the choice between saving the environment and having a job. You can have one that does both.’”[ii]

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[i] Youn, Soo and Bill Hutchinson. New York Daily News. Runer Carries. April 10, 2008.

[ii] Butler, Kiera. Mother Jones. Q&A: Majora Carter. November/December 2008 Issue. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/10/qa-majora-carter

Hedy Lamarr

“The most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether or
not the universe we live in is friendly or hostile.”

- Albert Einstein

Entering a dining room full of military personnel, a young woman barely twenty years old, carefully observed her husband as he discussed military control systems. Quietly standing by his side, she listened first out of politeness but then with a growing excitement about their ideas for military aircraft. Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler on November 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria to Jewish parents Gertrud and Emil Kiesler, the young woman had studied ballet and piano. Revealing an early aptitude for drama and theater, she had enrolled in Max Reinhardt’s acting school in Berlin as a teenager. Honing her skills, Hedwig was eager to reveal her acting prowess and soon after starred in Gustave Machat’s notorious film Extase (ecstasy) filmed in the Czech Republic that offered the first nude scene ever captured on film. The movie enjoyed popular adulation despite giving Hedwig a scandalous reputation. After playing successfully in the United States, the young actress made her way to Hollywood in 1933.

Over the course of the next four years, she became a leading lady and adopted the last name Lamarr suggested by Louis B. Mayer of MGM Studios. Lamarr was the name of a leading lady of the silent era, Barbara LaMarr who had died of a drug overdose. With first name shortened appealing to Hedy, a star was born. Considered the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, Hedy was enigmatic, alluring, and intelligent; a vivacious and slender brunette with a flawless complexion and deep soulful eyes. While she did not occupy the same position of power as either Katherine Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman, Hedy nonetheless graced numerous covers and was the face of inspiration for most women undergoing plastic surgery.

During those four years from 1933 to 1937, Hedy underwent a remarkable transformation. 1933 was a pivotal year for her. She had finished filming Extase and then met and married Fritz Mandl, a man thirteen years her senior who was one of the leading armament manufacturers in Europe. Mandl was closely aligned with some of Europe’s top military leaders and personnel, specializing in grenades, shells, and military aircraft. Mandl took his young wife with him to every social occasion, where Hedy gained a reputation for entertaining foreign dignitaries such as the fascist leaders Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler.

While most of her companions valued her for her beauty, Hedy was also very inquisitive and inventive herself. She learned a fair amount from the hundreds of dinners she attended with her husband about military communications and systems; knowledge that she would put to use in the years to come. These dinner engagements filled with military secrets and intrigue, were Hedy’s only source of entertainment since her husband sequestered her in his castle Schloss Schwarzenau.

A four-towered Renaissance castle surrounded by a moat overlooking the river with magnificent stucco reliefs of earth, fire, water, and air appeared to be a fairytale but the reality of living there was far from it. Bored and listless, twenty-year old Hedy was often kept against her will indoors, forced to remain within her watchful husband’s eyesight. She could see people milling around, exploring the area and enjoying the bright sunlight and lush green countryside of the Waldviertel, the forest district of southern Austria near the border of the Czech Republic but could not join or meet them. Mandl feared and loathed Extase, where young Hedy ironically played a young woman married to an old man who was indifferent and failed to appreciate her amorous ways. Desperate to assert his authority and remove images that he found inappropriate, such as the nude images of her running and experiencing an orgasm within the movie, Mandl bought as many copies of the movie that he could find and destroyed them. He prevented Hedy from acting and instead, encouraged her to attend military meetings with him.

By 1934, Fritz Mandl was quickly acquiring a reputation as an Austrofascist or part of the Ständestaat, followers of Englebert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg, who led a movement that rejected the Western system of parliament and instead focused on Austrian culture with an emphasis on the Catholic Church. Nationalism was at the forefront of public interest in the early years of the 1930s and while the Ständestaat did not publicly oppose Jewish people, pressure from Nazi Germany was building. Jewish leaders were fired from public positions as sympathizers to democracy and communism. The world that Hedy knew was quickly falling apart. Slowly, protests against the Jewish bourgeoisie in Vienna of which her mother was part, gained fervor.

Hedy soon found out that Mandl, despite being partly Jewish himself, was conspiring with Nazi industrialists. Infuriated, she decided to leave him. Disguised as a maid, she fled to Paris from where she got a divorce and left for London. From London, Hedy made her way back to Hollywood, where she became one of the most famous and glamorous actresses of her time, starring in twenty films, the most famous of which was her role as Delilah in the movie Samson and Delilah by Cecil B. DeMille, the highest grossing film of 1949. Yet Hedy was remarkably down to earth and a bit sarcastic about her own glamorous appeal, often quoted as saying, “Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” Unlike many women that graced the screen, Hedy had no qualms about expressing her sexual charms, saying directly, “If you use your imagination, you can look at any actress and see her nude. I hope to make you use your imagination.”

In 1940, three years after she had divorced Mandl and remarried, Hedy met the avant-garde pianist and composer George Antheil, her new neighbor in Hollywood. Antheil was famous for his musical compositions Ballet Mécanique and Airplane Sonata. The two quickly became friends and Hedy enjoyed discussing creative and inventive ideas with Antheil with ease. Soon the topic inevitably turned to military weapons as World War II had erupted in Europe. Hedy wanted to contribute to the fight against the Nazis. Now, she could put to use the planning and information she had acquired from attending military meetings with Fritz Mandl about designing remote-controlled torpedoes. At the time, the system was never put into production because the radio signals could easily be disrupted. The knowledge that she had gained all those years sitting by her husband’s side during hundreds of formal military parties had simmered in her brain for a long time.
         Inspired by a desire to assist the war effort by being able to secretly send and receive signals from missiles controlled via radio, Hedy came up with an idea to distribute the torpedo guidance signal over different radio frequencies and prevent enemies from jamming or intercepting the missiles. While the idea of having radio control for torpedoes already existed, Hedy’s idea of “frequency hopping” was entirely original. Frequency hopping involved broadcasting a signal over radio frequencies in an apparently random pattern, constantly switching at split-second intervals from one frequency to the next. This made the radio sounds appear random akin to a spinning radio dial, thus avoiding suspicion. However, if the receiver and sender both hopped in sync, they could easily communicate a clear, loud, and strong signal. Hedy suggested the idea to Antheil and asked for his help in synchronizing the signal. Antheil immediately agreed and assisted in developing a system. George’s experience building the Ballet Mécanique would come in handy. He offered to coordinate the rapid changes necessary in radio frequencies the same way that he had coordinated the sixteen synchronized player pianos for his ballet.
        Their first version for hopping frequencies was built on a system of eighty-eight frequencies that corresponded to the number of keys on a piano through paper rolls that were perforated and could rotate in sync with each other, while receiving or transmitting frequencies. Torpedoes guided by this system could not be jammed and were imperceptible to enemies.
        In December of that year, Hedy and George submitted their device to the National Inventors Council, a new organization founded to support inventors that had strong paramilitary associations. The pair then patented their idea, calling it the Secret Communications System in June of the following year and received their patent by August of 1942. Immediately, they offered the patent to the United States military. This technology would be the precursor to modern wireless communication and mobile telephone technology. Together, they went to invent a torpedo guidance system way ahead of its time. Existing technology and infrastructure was however too infantile to fully develop the idea. The U.S. Navy used the technology briefly during the war to detect submarines employing sonar buoys controlled remotely by airplanes. It was only after the arrival of the transistor and downsizing, Hedy’s idea was finally adopted and implemented by the U.S. Navy twenty years later in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis where the frequency hopping technology was utilized on a massive scale to offer secure communications for ships in the naval blockade.
       Neither Hedy nor George received royalties or recognition for their patent when it was used. Thirty-five years later in 1997, the Electronic Frontier Foundation offered Hedy an award for her contribution to the scientific community. This idea of hopping frequencies would quickly be adapted into mobile technology and later WiFi network. At first Hedy wanted to be part of the National Inventors Council. However, when the council told her that she would assist the war effort better in a different way, she followed suit and employed her celebrity status by selling war bonds, raising millions of dollars at events where she was present. In addition to her substantial acting prowess, her intellectual feat made Hedy Lamarr one of the most intriguing women of her time in the film industry.
            Hedy was only one of several dozen people at the various military meetings that her former husband Fritz Mandl insisted on attending frequently. He was the weapons designer, manufacturer, and armament distributor. Yet it was Hedy that would absorb all the information presented in numerous meetings and discussions and come up with a creative solution that could be employed on a massive and powerful scale. Ultimately, it is not just what you know but what you do with that knowledge and experience that you have gained. Fritz Mandl and his associates had poured over designs for orchestrating mass deployment of radio-controlled torpedoes but had never come up with a solution for avoiding detection and had thus abandoned the idea. Hedy instead quietly listened, walking with a strong grasp of the subject and realizing its enormous potential. She was able to strip away what was unnecessary and bring in what was of value. As John Maeda puts it, “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.”[1]

 

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[1] Maeda, John. The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life. Cambridge: MIT Press Books. 2006. Pg. 89.

Dave Eggers

“What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand…What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who’s up and who’s down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a [expletive] of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but that is what matters.

What matters is saying yes.”

– Dave Eggers, Interview in The Harvard Advocate, April 2000.

Quickly placing the last of his bags into their car, twenty-one year old Dave Eggers jumped into the front seat. With his younger brother Christopher or “Toph” as they called him beside him, Dave sped away. The drive across country over to Berkeley, California was more than two thousand miles away but Dave was resolute in his determination to build a new life.

Eggers had grown up in Lake Forest, a wealthy suburb of Chicago. After watching both of his parents succumb to cancer within the short span of five weeks, the young man was completely ready to purge himself and start afresh. Just a few weeks prior, Dave had graduated from University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, majoring in journalism and painting. Now, he and his three siblings, twenty-three year old Beth, twenty-four year old Bill, and seven-year old Toph were left orphaned.

Both Bill and Beth returned for the funeral and to assist in family matters. After their parents’ house was sold, Bill returned to his job at a think tank in Washington D.C. while Beth went back to law school in Berkeley. Dave decided to join his sister in California with Toph in tow. Like any freshly graduated college student, Dave was eager to prove himself and experience as much pleasure as possible. Yet Toph needed guidance, love, and supervision immediately. Juggling his own desires with taking care of his brother would be no easy feat for the young man.

Writing from the heart can be quite a gut-wrenching experience at times as any authentic writer can attest to. Yet storytelling was something Dave could do masterfully, describing in eloquent and ironic terms a journey across country and into the self in his first novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Dubbed the greatest book of the year in 2000 by Time Magazine, the novel is a memoir of his life, filled withpoignant and heartfelt moments, while bringing to light often deeply disturbing events to one’s attention with an immediacy and a playfulness that draws you in.

From his fears that the babysitter in whose charge he reluctantly leaves Toph will turn into a knife-bearing cannibal to “Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of the book,” and humorous monologues by characters within the book about the book itself, Eggers’s storytelling is clever and entertaining.

At a time when sarcasm has taken the forefront and bitterness drips more frequently from a writer’s pen than irony, Dave Eggers’s ability to deliver content with sincerity and subtle humor is refreshing. Passionate and eloquent, with a razor-sharp intellect, Dave Eggers is a contemporary writer, editor, and publisher whose written word is clear, powerful, and commands attention. Eggers seems more like a warrior on some distant and forgotten shore who raises the battle cry against the oppressive enemy. Except this time, his enemy is not some fierce bearded warlord but instead an elusive and condemning publishing world that fails to appreciate the effort necessary in any creative endeavor and gets caught up in the ruthless world of the literary critic. He proves that the pen can be much more powerful than the sword, because in the same paragraph where he denounces the cold critical nature of an unappreciative critic, he also inspires by asking for humility, sincerity, and the willingness of people to actually truly listen and love each other. It is this uncanny ability to offer deep insight into complex situations with a refreshing clarity and sharp confidence that has brought Eggers fame and a devoted following. 

Soon after his first novel, Eggers put out another book titled You Shall Know Our Velocity! as well as a collection of short stories How We Are Hungry. After running a magazine called Might constrained by typical advertising limits, while he supplemented his income as a writer for Salon.com, Eggers briefly took a job in New York working for Esquire Magazine. As he put it himself, it “seemed crazy that an advertiser—or a 22-year-old media planner—could determine whether or not your magazine had merit, how many pages you could print or whether (in the end) you existed at all.” Dissatisfied however with the direction his writing was taking, he returned to California and plunged forward into a new publishing endeavor. Eggers decided to start McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house that produces McSweeney’s Quarterly, a literary quarterly of essays and interviews out of San Francisco. His plan this time was decidedly different. Each issue would cost significant more and his print run was more modest.

McSweeney’s Quarterly  has developed a reputation for including the offbeat and eclectic from absurdist humor to experimental fiction and insightful essays, encouraging writers to explore and indulge their passions. Known for its nineteenth century appearance of heavy text and line drawings, McSweeney’s publishes stories considered arcane, cryptic, and less commercial that are usually rejected and avoided by glossier magazine publications, and thus attracting the idiosyncratic as well as famous writers such as Stephen King and musicians such as Beck.  Some of the issues have fancy accroutements attached while others have foldouts. Each copy costs twenty-two dollars and has only eight full-time staff, of which only one has a publishing background. Eggers insisted that everyone could do everything in the office from writing and editing to scanning photos and copy-editing. All of his staff chose to work for the publication, many starting as unpaid interns and even quitting their jobs and colleges to work for McSweeney’s Quarterly. After a first print run of one thousand and five hundred copies all distributed by foot, the magazine slowly expanded its reach to five thousand and then seven thousand and five hundred, reaching larger stores such as Barnes and Nobles. Today, McSweeney’s  enjoys a healthy circulation of twenty thousand. Interestingly enough, despite McSweeney’s Quarterly arrival in major bookstores, the majority of sales comes from faithful subscribers who frequent independent and mom and pop stores.

In addition, Eggers began a short film DVD quarterly titled Wholphin and a website for daily humor. Eggers’ other interests and subjects for literary endeavor include both education and oral history. Inspired by his teaching efforts at 826 Valencia, an incubator that he opened for writing and tutoring for young people in the Mission District in 2002, Eggers implemented a grant for talented Bay Area teachers on a monthly basis. 826 Valencia has now grown to include satellite chapters in six major metropolitan areas all over the country. Eggers co-wrote the book Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers to bring attention to the importance of having exceptional teachers in schools.

In 2004, Eggers who had always enjoyed oral history, began a series of books titled Voice of Witness to highlight crises and bring attention to human rights violations all over the world. Foraying into film, Eggers has co-written with Spike Jones the film adaptation for Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are as well as screenplay collaborations with his wife Vendela Vida, a novelist.

Egger’s ability to bring attention to controversial and often deeply disturbing topics with humor, heart, and immediacy, prompted Valentino Deng from the Sudan to approach Egger to write his autobiography. The book What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng published in 2006. A novelized autobiography, the book encompasses Dang’s life in Marial Bai in the southern part of Sudan before internal strife broke out into full-fledged war, his detainment into refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, and his arrival and experience of Western culture in Atlanta and other places. Soon after, Eggers co-founded the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation www.valentinoachakdeng.org to offer educational opportunities for Sudanese children. Below is an excerpt from the novel:

I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.

 

What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng
Ch. 26, Pg. 474-475.

  

At a time when writers and critics wax eloquently on the demise of education and prophesize the death of the book, Eggers refuses to give way to what he calls a “dangerous kind of intellectual sloth,” where people assume that children and teenagers no longer read books. Fully cognizant of media trends and how kids are reading books in electronic formats. His experience is direct, coming right from his teaching lab for high school students in San Francisco where he finds that all of his students devour the books, periodicals, and magazines he shares. Many of them hail from lower income families but all of them reveal a strong appetite for reading and literature.

            He is able to immediately recognize the potential from improved literacy nationwide and worldwide in addition to desktop software and print-on-demand that has created a more democratic process for distribution. In his characteristic style of persuasion and eloquence, Eggers asks in his most recent interview with Esquire Magazine in September of 2008 for readers to give teenagers “the benefit of doubt,

that they know what you know, that they do read and will read, that they will keep books alive, as alive as ever—that they will continue to pull the books from the shelves and add to those shelves books of their own.” Ultimately, he asks for hope and for people to be able to put aside hearsay for sincere and heartfelt inquiry.

Mike Rowe

“Innovation without imitation is a complete waste of time” 

- Mike Rowe 

Reaching his hand deep into a dark hole ahead of him and several dozen feet below the city walkway, a young man gingerly felt his way around the wet, squishy and dirt bottom as he tried to find what was blocking the pipeline. Teeming with giant cockroaches, litter, and human waste, the sewer system below the city of San Francisco is loathsome to behold, let alone enter. As a large filthy rat jumps over his shoulder, the man screams in horror, but continues trudging ahead through the fetid sewer that has now narrowed in size, and is crawling with cockroaches that jump off his back. Mike Rowe however continues unswervingly in his path, although the expression on his face reveals both his fear and disgust, bravely tackling one of the dirtiest and smelliest jobs in the country as he steps into the role of a sewer inspector.

One of the most popular episodes of the wildly successful television series Dirty Jobs hosted on the Discovery Channel, the Sewer Inspector story aired on August 2, 2005. In the same episode, Mike continues on to work with a disaster clean up crew for an entire day, assisting them in sanitizing a basement after a sewer overflows and then teams up with a demolition company as they rip down rooms of an office building. With dry humor and an adventurous spirit, Mike jumps right into every role, working alongside American laborers whose jobs are messy, smelly, and downright disgusting but keep the country clean and sanitized. Whether he is wading through smelly sewage or inseminating a pig on a pig farm in Iowa, Mike rolls up his sleeves and gets down and dirty. His cameraman Doug Glover and his field producer Dave Barsky are right beside him, enduring the same hazards and discomforts that Mike does, and often getting just as dirty.

Often wearing a yellow hard hat, jeans, and a tee shirt, Mike Rowe enjoys a broad appeal, namely for his willingness to work in any industry anywhere without hesitation. Perhaps it is the creases in his cheeks, his deep baritone narrative voice, or the gamut of emotions he expresses doing these various jobs that draws people in as millions of viewers tune in weekly to watch his latest escapades. The attraction however may lie in Mike Rowe’s uncanny ability to entertain people while working alongside some of the most hardworking people in America, unsung heroes in some ways, who keep the cities and farms working while performing some of the most difficult, dangerous, unusual, and dirty jobs.

Whether he is working side by side with salvage workers or coal miners on a grueling and exhausting schedule, cleaning up after birds at casinos, diving for golf balls in waters teeming with alligators, or cleaning out fuel tanks, Mike is willing to do it. Meeting his match working with wild monkeys in South Africa or harvesting slippery mussels, Rowe reveals both a gritty tenacity as well as a fun-loving, playful spirit. Mike is willing to undertake about any job that most people would try to stay away from doing and has traveled all over the country, trying out more than two hundred jobs including termite controller, monkey caretaker, bat cave scavenger, snake researcher, and poo pot maker.

Fueled by a desire to show hard work as fundamental and a noble pursuit, Rowe’s show Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe celebrates hardworking Americans in unpopular and often unknown roles that are still pivotal in maintaining civilized society. Entirely unscripted, the whole show revolves around Mike’s experience authentically portrayed as he delves right into a new role whether he is battling sharks or removing road kill from the streets. While Mike nonchalantly makes fun of himself and his crew nonstop, he refrains from criticizing the workers themselves and always brings attention to how cheerful his hosts are despite the dirty or dangerous quality of their work.

Born March 18, 1962 and hailing from Baltimore, Maryland, Mike had pursued some theater and opera in his youth, singing professionally as a baritone for the Baltimore Opera. After the launch of Dirty Jobs, when Mike was asked how his parents felt about his show, he said, “I think they’re puzzled, but pleased. My parents both taught in Baltimore County Public Schools. I think it’s safe to say they’re sympathetic to those with dirty jobs.”

After attending college, Mike auditioned for the QVC Cable Shopping Channel on a dare, taking the job selling jewelry as one of their hosts. While he was glad to be on air, the role was far from satisfying. It however gave him exposure and opened the door for more broadcast appearances. After a string of various roles on television shows such as The Most for History Channel, Worst Case Scenario for TBS, New York Expions for PBS, On-Air TV for American Airlines, and No Relation for Fox where he also flexed his ability to narrate and write stories, Mike moved to San Francisco. While he hosted the Evening Magazine, Mike worked on his own project, developing the idea for Dirty Jobs. Rowe already had worked briefly with the Discovery Channel, traveling to Egypt to film Egypt Week Live! in the Valley of the Golden Mummies and also to the Bering Sea to film stories on crab fishing in Alaska for the show Deadliest Catch.

Pitching his idea for Dirty Jobs to Discovery seemed like the natural next step for Mike. Initially, he conceived of the show as three one-hour specials, seeing himself as the guy that would travel out to Egypt, Mt. Everest, and exotic destinations. However, the network wanted a mini-series first starring Mike and so he quickly hatched the idea for Dirty Jobs, not expecting the enormous success that the show would have, appealing to millions of viewers worldwide.

Despite all the dangerous and often bizarre scenarios that Mike exposes viewers to every week on his show, there is one recurring theme of dignity and humor among all the people in these dirty jobs that are able to retain a perspective above their work. Unlike most television shows, Dirty Jobs has a high level of freedom because the show is not tied to a particular script or agenda.

While succeeding in the entertainment business seems like a lofty and unattainable goal to many, Mike puts it in simpler terms, describing how the variety of jobs that he had undertaken from actor to singer and talk show host enabled him to enjoy the lifestyle he wanted rather than pursue fame. In an interview with Baltimore Schools, he shares, “Basically, everybody’s looking for stardom, and that sort of mentality creates an opportunity for anyone not motivated solely by fame.”

Mike’s enthusiasm and optimism however are also hard to match. Apparently, he also lives by a completely different set of personal rules. As he describes:

“I’ve been thrown from horses, kicked by cows, scratched by cats, bitten by an ostrich, rubbed raw by the hide of a shark, bitten (really hard) by a catfish, crapped on by millions of bats, pecked by chickens, stung by lots of bees, attacked by a sewer rat, covered with hundreds of roaches, and profoundly frightened by an alligator. I wrenched my back hauling garbage, smashed my finger with a hammer, smashed my toe with a sledgehammer, cut my arm open on a rusty nail, burned my eyelashes off in a blacksmith’s furnace, and become dehydrated twice, most recently in a New Jersey sludge pit. …On the positive side, my left toenail has nearly grown back completely. My eyelashes have also returned, more or less.”[1]

Despite all this, he trudges forward and tries it all over again. He gets right into the work, whatever role it is, whether he is scooping out algae in a boat or visiting bat caves, working neck and neck with the locals while still displaying an irreverent humor for his own role. The viewers undoubtedly love him for that, flocking to his show in droves.
            Mike also reveals a trait shared by most entrepreneurial and creative spirits – the ability to harness previous experiences to build and propel a new idea. The idea for Dirty Jobs was inspired by many of his own experiences including his father’s previous work as a pig farmer; Mike’s experience as host of the show Somebody’s Got To Do It on the Evening Magazine where he showcased extremely dirty jobs; and his own experience in broadcasting and narration. Drawing upon what he knew best, Mike pitched an idea for a show that he could completely manage himself and that he knew already had a market appeal based on his previous experience.
            As the Discovery Channel puts it, “Mike Rowe has had more jobs than you. In fact, Mike has had more jobs than anyone.”[2] Cognizant of the importance of viewer input, Mike always requests submissions for new jobs and ideas, saying that the show would be lost without them. Viewers flooded the email inbox of the Discovery Channel with suggestions and even videos of their own dirty jobs. These ideas have provided ample stories for the show, which as Mike put it on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson in July 2007 as the reason why, “I haven’t had an original idea since then.”
            However, Mike’s commitment to authenticity perhaps is the most riveting and original idea. For example, he is willing to reveal his own incompetence and every adversity he faces, whether it is broken equipment, dangers on site, or difficult people to work with. His concept of dirty jobs that are always challenging, forces him to find what is interesting and entertaining within the story itself as well as in the production phase.
        In 2008, Rowe launched a website www.mikeroweworks.com to encourage trade schools and technical colleges by celebrating skilled labor and hard work. Mike now also hosts daredevil show such as Shark Week in South Africa with the Discovery Channel as well as the Egypt Week Live.

            His willingness to try anything and to put his hand literally in places that are always dirty, mainly curious, and sometimes extremely dangerous, reveals a temperament that is adventurous, at times foolhardy, and always hopeful.

            Instead of worrying about a job, Mike advocates that people should “find an industry that you like and then figure out a way to make money it.” Calling himself a
“fan of the reverse commute,” Mike proposes heading in the opposite direction of where the masses are going, saying that, “the best opportunities are currently nonexistent positions that will eventually be created by the people who really want them.”[3]

 

 

 

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[1] http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/dirtyjobs/bio/qanda/qanda-10.html

[2] http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/dirtyjobs/bio/bio.html

[3] http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/dirtyjobs/bio/qanda/qanda-10.html

Muhammad Yunus

“When there is an open mind, there is always a frontier.”

 - Charles F. Kettering

 Only three years after a bloody war with Pakistan for their independence, insurgent rebellions, and a devastating cyclone that had massacred over half a million people, the hot and humid capital of Dhaka was now once again being flooded with immigrants, eager to escape destitution in outlying agricultural areas and wetlands. At first the students of Chittagong University in Southern Bangladesh, a good five hours away by train, tried to ignore it. But thousands were literally starving to death, and people with barely any flesh on their bodies; skeleton-like and frail began to appear all over the capital. Hungry, forlorn, and impoverished, they all appeared defeated and broken. As Muhammed Yunus would describe later, “Often they sat so still that one could not be sure whether they were alive or dead. They all looked alike: men, women, children. Old people looked like children, and children looked like old people.”[1]

As a professor of economics, Yunus enjoyed debating with his students on economic theories but he was not prepared for the overwhelming poverty that would soon overtake his country in 1974. Horrified by what he saw, Yunus also grew dissatisfied with his economic theories because he could not help a poor person or eradicate their poverty through any of those academic methods.

Determined to make a difference, however small, Yunus went to Jobra, a nearby village where he listened to the locals about their economic hardships. With his students, he devised several different plans, of which one had an immediate effect. This plan was to offer small loans for self-employment. Muhammed’s approach however was decidedly different from that of traditional bankers interested in good credit and collateral. He extended loans primarily to very poor women borrowers, free of collateral requirements. Each villager who could apply for a loan had to be quite poor, owning less then half an acre of land.

The lending institution was named Grameen Bank and over the course of the next twenty years, would offer almost five billion dollars in aid to four and a half million families in fifty thousand villages across rural Bangladesh. One of the most fascinating aspects of this system, which largely differs from existing banking and credit models, is its foundation in mutual trust. Each villager is held accountable by a group of five neighbors who are invested in the success of her own enterprise, whether it is in harvesting crops or acquiring proper equipment. The repayment process consists of tiny installments designed to be small enough so that the borrower can meet her obligations, while paying the loan over a long period of time. Through the financial support of this program, the world’s poorest people can radically improve their life conditions by receiving micro-credit without collateral.

The model of the Grameen Bank has been adopted in over one hundred countries by more than two hundred and fifty institutions. In 2006, Muhammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to create economic and social benefit from below in alleviating poverty, which is so integral to peace efforts. As Yunus explains, “Conventional banks look for the rich; we look for the absolutely poor. All people are entrepreneurs, but many don’t have the opportunity to find that out.”[2] With fifty-eight percent of the people who borrowed from the bank now liberated from the shackles of poverty, Yunus is confident that through the Grameen Bank and Foundation that poverty will be halved by 2015.[3]

 Born in the village of Bathau in Chittagong, Bangladesh on June 28, 1940, MuhammadYunus moved from his rural environs to the city as his father opened a jewelry business. With a strong passion for economics, Yunus studied at Dhaka University and taught college before leaving to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship. Returning to Bangladesh after receiving his doctorate in economics from Vanderbilt University, Yunus returned to teaching in 1972. Prompted by empathy for the intense famine spreading across his country in 1974, Muhammed began the Grameen Bank Project. Over the next decade, the micro-credit lending project became a full-fledged bank.

Yunus’ first loan that he offered forty-two women in the village of Jobra totaled twenty-seven dollars. These women made their livelihood building bamboo furniture but were unable to make a profit because of the loans they had to pay moneylenders that exceeded their profits. Moneylenders preyed upon these women, even demanding slave labor in return. Traveling around the village, Muhammed gave them the money they needed to pay off their loans without any conditions. He told them to focus on their work and to repay when they could. 

Recognizing the importance of lending to people who had nothing, Yunus was determined to assist these villagers as they climbed their way out of poverty. It would take him two more years to secure a loan from a government bank. Over the course of the next six years, the bank would grow to more than twenty-eight thousand members. In 1983, the bank’s project became autonomous and launched under its own name of Grameen Bank. The word “Grameen” refers to “rural” or “village” areas.

Revolutionizing the concept of extending credit, Grameen Bank offers loans to people based on trust rather than collateral, offering small loans to entrepreneurs too impoverished to qualify for traditional bank loans. The Grameen Bank now offers additional credit for education and housing as well as irrigation, venture capital, and other projects. Clients are able to apply for bigger loans as they pay off smaller ones. Governed and owned by the borrowers themselves, the Grameen Bank focuses primarily on women in Bangladesh because they suffer in impoverishment more and are also more committed to taking care of their families than men. Yunus has grown the program to replicate the model of micro-credit around the globe via the Grameen Foundation.

Trust has gone a long way. The Grameen Bank receives one and a half million dollars in weekly repayments on time.

Apart from the opposition he initially faced in receiving credit from a bank to offer to the villagers, Yunus also had to deal with reparations from insulted husbands, and Islamic mullahs who lobbied against him, preaching that money from his bank was against their religion. It was definitely challenging for him to move forward but he did not give up, pointing out how women had been warriors throughout Islamic history. Yunus had to fight hard for equality and it would take him six years to reach a goal of equal loan distribution between male and female borrowers. Over the following decade however, the majority of loans began to flow towards women with now over ninety-six percent made to female borrowers.

Built upon the premise that impoverished people are reliable borrowers as well as invested, eager entrepreneurs, Yunus’s program would soon expand in scope as he grew more familiar with poverty on a global scale. Recognizing the importance of liberating people out of despair by offering microcredit and thus restoring their dignity as they gained access to basic necessities, Yunus attracted support and investment from the United Nations, corporations, and private investors. His willingness to provide what was necessary stepping away from large loans and heavy paperwork, revealed immediately his clear vision for success as well as his strong conviction in social entrepreneurship; both traits that would garner him much needed support.

For example, one of his initiatives GrameenPhone provides telephones for women villagers through simple handsets and solar chargers in conjunction with TELN, Norway’s telecom company. Other projects include solar panel installations, inexpensive eye care and nutritious baby formula.

Nicknamed the “banker to the poor,” Yunus advocates the eradication of poverty worldwide through microlending, believing that credit is a universal and fundamental human right. By assisting impoverished people through small loans and teaching them basic financial principles, Yunus has been able to lift people out of poverty while encouraging them in their own self-sufficiency and to believe in their own dreams and aspirations.

Awarded numerous appointments and prizes for his humanitarian work worldwide, Muhammed Yunus is a member of the United Nations Foundation and has received honorary degrees from universities all over the world. Yunus reminds students to dream of the world they want:

 “The process of imagining a future world of our liking is a major missing element in our education system. We prepare our students for jobs and careers, but we don’t teach them to think as individuals about what kind of world they would like to create. Every high school and university ought to include a course focused on just this exercise.”[4]

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[1] Yunus, Muhammed and Alan Jolis. Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle against World Poverty. New York: Public Affairs. 2003.

[2] Tharoor, Ishaan. Time Magazine. Q & A Muhammad Yunus. Oct 16, 2006. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1546339,00.html

[3] Ibid.

[4] Yunus, Creating a World Without Poverty. New York: Public Affairs, 2008.