Mellody Hobson

You can teach someone with basic smarts to be smarter; you can't teach cultural fit or personality. But you also want someone who has a passion to win; someone that is all in.

Observe your environment. Invite people into your life that don't look like you or think like you

Black women have a kind of advantage over white women in the workplace. They go in prepared to face some discrimination, so when it happens, they aren't shocked.

I can't tell you how many resumes we get from business schools across the country from black women and black men and Hispanic women, men, etcetera, who say I'm interested in working for your company because they can see someone at the top who looks like them.

The way I go about it is that we should all be inviting people into our lives who don't look like us, speak like us and don't come from where we come from.

Now, race is one of those topics in America that makes people extraordinarily uncomfortable. You bring it up at a dinner party or in a workplace environment, it is literally the conversational equivalent of touching the third rail.

I was desperate to understand money. Not to make it, to understand it. I wanted to know how it worked, and I wanted to know so that I would have enough and would be able to make good financial decisions. That led me to Ariel.

Diverse perspectives lead to a better outcome. There's so much data, when you look at the math, in terms of the investor returns and the shareholder value that gets created from more diverse boards.

As citizens, I'm asking you not to leave any child behind. I'm asking you not to be color blind, but to be color brave, so that every child knows that their future matters and their dreams are possible.

White men make up 30% of America but they hold 70% of the board seats.