USC Dornsife:
Life is competitive — it is not fair, and not everyone is a winner.
Winning requires building trust to enable diverse minds to reach beyond their limits and achieve exceptional feats. With increasing trust, varied experiences, skills and knowledge can coalesce to produce a winning culture that supports courageous decisions based on values — in other words, winning leadership.
Strong leaders were an important presence in my life, starting with my mother, who in 1968 left New Zealand as a single parent with my sister and me on a teaching scholarship to USC. A diverse array of American leaders followed, including war veterans, employers, coaches and teachers, who took leadership roles in my life and showed me that resilience, determination and faith — not entitlement or material wealth — were the source of character, of honor. It had to be earned.
