BOTTOM TO TOP

Rich parents' kids may have a rich beginning, a good going and generally a rich ending too. Poor parents' children in all cases may have a poor beginning, in most cases a troublesome going and in many cases a poor ending too. This seems to be a universal theory. However in exceptional cases some sparkle may be found. We shall go through some such realities.

Howard Schultz

Starbucks executive chairman and former CEO.

Howard Schultz is the one who could grow up from humble beginnings. Raised by his truck driver father and stay-at-home mom in a Brooklyn housing project. Schultz described his family as "pretty much destitute." Howard Schultz was the first in his family to go to college. He worked in a housewares company for a short while and then he was introduced to a small coffee chain in Seattle that he eventually purchased and transformed into the Starbucks empire.

Ursula Burns

Xerox chairperson and former CEO

Ursula Burns was the first black female leader of Fortune 500 company when she became the chairperson and CEO of Xerox in 2009. This become more impressive when you take her challenging childhood in the projects on Manhattan's Lower East Side. She told about her once: "I was black. I was a girl. And I was poor." Her mother raised three children on a salary that never exceeded $4,400, Burns revealed to CNN. She had studied mechanical engineering at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute before starting out as a Xerox summer intern. Now, the newly minted Uber board member has "more money than my mother would have ever imagined, and I still don't judge my success by that, " Burns says.

Tracey Armstrong

CEO , Copyright Clearance Center

Started as a clerk at Copyright Clearance Center at the age of 21.

"I started here as a clerk and did that job for close to one year. I cannot stand being bored, so, in my spare time, I wrote a tri-fold marketing brochure and brought it to marketing. They used it and asked me to do more projects." Says Tracey. "In 1996, I was 28 and customer service manager when my boss called me at home (I was on leave for family reasons) and asked me to come in. There was a big,  bet-the-company tech and infrastructure project that wasn't on time or on budget, and they asked me to manage it. I said yes, and it became on-the-job MBA."

She could find the cause for the delay and sorted out the problem in 18 months. And the success of that project has largely driven their success as a company.

(Indebted to the article on business tales by Morey Stettner)

To be continued ......

KV George

kvgeorgein@gmail.com