Proud that I believe I have the respect of my fellow soldiers. And by soldiers, I mean all the members of the armed forces that I served with. No medal, no nice introduction, no awards could substitute just for the knowledge I have that I’m reasonably well respected by my fellow soldiers. If I didn’t have that, I would have considered this to be a busted career.

That’s difficult for someone to talk about themselves. If I’ve helped improve the game of golf and if I’ve helped improve people’s outlook on life and the game of golf, that would be something that I would be very happy for. I would really like to think that maybe I have left something that other people will look at and say, when people come in back of them, that they have given them the same opportunity that we had. And that means give our kids the opportunities that we’ve had through these years. And if I can do that and leave something along those lines to people, I’ll be very happy for that.

And then in 1974 I started to work on phosphorous chemistry which is the area of which I’m most proud as it turns out. I’m most proud of my work on carbon phosphorous chemistry.

I was fortunate to be born at the right time and to be in the right place when the Women’s Movement came alive. So many things were wrong with the way life was ordered in the ’70s. In many states, women didn’t serve on juries, to take just one example, and there were so many jobs that were off limits to women. People began to realize there was something wrong about that, and women should be free to aspire and achieve just as men are. So I had legal education, and I could use that education to help move this movement for change, for allowing women to realize their full potential, help move that along. So it was that ten years of my life that I devoted to litigating cases about — I don’t say women’s rights — I say the constitutional principle of the equal citizenship stature of men and women. I was tremendously fortunate to be able to participate in that movement for change.

He says: Take your gloves off, Mellody, but use your power for good. He's giving me my hands back. Use your power for good. And I have never - I've used that analogy in all things in my life, something as simple as getting my hands back, using my powers for good in the water but also day-to-day life using your power for good no matter who you are.

You see, researchers have coined this term "color blindness" to describe a learned behavior where we pretend that we don't notice race. If you happen to be surrounded by a bunch of people who look like you, that's purely accidental. Now, color blindness, in my view, doesn't mean that there's no racial discrimination, and there's fairness. It doesn't mean that at all. It doesn't ensure it. In my view, color blindness is very dangerous because it means we're ignoring the problem.

I'd say be just like you. I once had someone tell me that I don't remind them of anyone that they ever met. And I took that as a huge compliment, which meant I was original. And so I would suggest to her that she speak her truth with her life, with her own sense of purpose and pursue her dreams.

silver bullet is probably incentives. I think that if corporate America really said, "you're not going to get your full bonus if you don't have a diverse team working for you," I think we'd see some changes, really, really fast.

And all the while I was growing up, of course, there were just constant conversations about money and money being tight and how are we going to make ends meet and sometimes not having enough money. And it really just made me committed to living a life with much more financial security.

So I started with this idea of could we do private equity totally differently than had been done? One of the major features of what we do is something called demand aggregation, where we go to corporations and what we call the CPO, the purchasing officers of those - chief purchasing officers. We developed a council of Fortune 500 companies.