Had lunch with one of my Silicon Valley Black Chamber of Commerce board members. Very interesting man. Stories you dont here much in the Black community. He was a software and hardware engineer from MIT. He worked at IBM as head of one of the divisions. He had an idea to build database tools. He went to the VP of all the software divisions in New York and told him what he wanted to do. The VP liked the idea but realized it didnt fit IBMs model so they funded him to start a whole new company under the umbrella of IBM. He grew the company from inception to $500M as its CEO. Shortly after he decided to retire. Hes 65 now. All the time Im listening Im thinking I shouldnt be the board chair you should be. He shared with some very sound advice about managing the board. I appreciated his direction. Turns out hes also an athlete who got a scholarship to play football and continued playing pick-up basketball games until his age caught up to him at 64. Hes now 65. So he only stopped just last year. Great Story. Great Man.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 17:26:15 +0000
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