Company Founders

"Ed Sullivan proved his talent as a showman who could attract the best and most timely performers from all four corners of the world of entertainment."

"... My father sold newspapers, then worked in a tobacco factory, and then in a cigar factory, where as an apprentice he came upon his destiny. It was not long before my father got the idea of opening a cigar store with one cigar maker working in the front window, which was not uncommon in those days. The cigar maker, sitting at a table in the window, rolling cigars by hand, was not only functional but was an attraction and an advertisement. Passers-by would stop to watch and perhaps come in to buy. Between his factory job and his own store, my father learned all about tobacco and discovered that he had the gift of recognizing the various qualities of tobacco and of blending them in attractive combinations of flavor. It was his particular genius and became his lifelong vocation. ... His brand of cigars began selling so well that he decided to go out and sell them to other cigar stores. Eventually he gave up the factory job, put more cigar makers to work in the back room of the store, and found himself in the cigar business. It was a short step from there to opening a cigar factory of his own. He made a good product, built a business, and became successful at an early age. In 1896, the year he was naturalized at the age of twenty-one, he had probably become a millionaire."

"I had an early passion for reading, especially for Horatio Alger stories. I went to the public library almost every day, and when I found a Horatio Alger book I had not read before, it was like finding a gold mine."

"Paley, Mister Paley. "He is to American broadcasting as Carnegie was to steel, Ford to automobiles, Luce to publishing and Ruth to baseball," the New York Times had once written. The New York Daily News had called him an electronic Citizen Kane." His reign at CBS, wrote Washington Post television critic Tom Shales, could be summed up as more than five decades of "brilliant brinksmanship, salesmanship, statesmanship, and showmanship.""

"Most educators and students are familiar with Columbia's American School of the Air, which was established in 1930 and today has a weekly audience of millions throughout the school year. These broadcasts, prepared under the supervision of distinguished educators, typify in many ways Columbia's whole roster of educational and cultural programs. In themselves, however, they are a well-planned and cumultative course of education by radio, presented five days a week each autumn, winter, and spring."

"CBS reaped a publicity bonanza from La Cadena de las Americas (Network of the Americas). Fortune magazine devoted six pages to Paley's triumphant blow-by-blow account of his negotiations, filled with lofty pronouncements ("We are far too prone to think of Latin Americans as a mass of black-haired, backward people who owe what security they have, in the midst of their well-costumed revolutions, to the Monroe Doctrine and North American cash")."

"There's no reason to be in the car when the car crashes even if you love the car."

"What bothers me is Colonel Sanders called blacks niggers. I'm like, "I have never used that word." They get away with it."

"I've had over 40 pizzas in the last 30 days, and it's not the same pizza, it's not the same product. It just doesn't taste as good."

"Stay tuned. The day of reckoning will come."

"You're bound to meet a lot of stumbling blocks, and you’re bound to fail at certain things, but the number of times you fail is not the issue, it is the number of times you pick yourself up, dust yourself and continue your journey."

"Relevance itself is wealth, it's a quality and a value. Time buys you relevance, time buys you greatness, time buys you money. So you must stay in the vision and with time, you would reap the benefits."

"Even though your family and friends discourage you, and you know where you're going, keep your focus and surround yourself with positive minds."

"I am a student of literature and history. I believe that art is a powerful tool for us in our society to use, to depict all the things that are going on, and a possible escape for some of us who are traumatized by the things we see in Nigeria."

"So in directing over the past 10 years, I understand how to make a connection with people. This is because what’s often lacking in a lot of productions is the ability to connect. So, once the emotions are not there and people can’t feel what you are saying, you have lost the audience."

"And a lot of men are turning this spiritual institution into commerce and they are using it for personal gains."

"“Finding my passion has really helped me, I go to work not thinking I am working”."

"I'm a woman of faith, but what I found in Nigeria is that a lot of people have increasingly been driven into this crazy love for worshipping men instead of God."

"The resources we have as a Nation is not what is critical, what is critical is the development of the human mind. The creative mind is the most important resource tool in any nation."

"“I followed my passion”."

"Don't be a backup plan. Don't be a power bank that someone uses to recharge and bounce back whenever their relationship gets sour."

"https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-18540650"

"Don't play second fiddle. Don't Be a sidekick. It is better to be alone and find the one who treats you as a priority than stay where you are an option."

"There is no laziness in any business, that wants to succeed."

"It is important to be Cordial and be nice when Relating to people at work."

"“Money is not an end, Value is the end. Focus on adding value to the society and money will follow”."

"I think in the short term, as you will have seen in the last six months, the African Union (AU) and the United Nations have defined their frameworks for peace and security. Again, this is to bring more coordination and coherence, a more efficient way of looking at the results, and get them around the continent. What is important here is to align the AU’s Agenda 2063 and the UN’s Agenda 2030. So, in the short term, we are getting the partnership frameworks right especially on roles and responsibilities."

"The UN’s approach to that, as the secretary general firmly puts it in his vision, is: We have got to look at how we prevent conflicts and once we come out of them, how do we sustain the peace and development. And in the middle of this, we are saying that the SDGs are the frameworks that we need to invest in. There are therefore no quick wins in this discussion. If we are to have sustainable development, we cannot put a band-aid on things. And if you don’t address the root causes, we are never going to have sustainable development. Therefore, we have to go back to the drawing board and we have to be courageous about it; and the UN has to come together and be much more responsive in the way in which it supports countries, in order to move them forward."

"Yes. In the context of many of our countries that are experiencing different types of conflict and humanitarian challenges, it’s difficult to address some of these goals."

"Most certainly, these are challenging times. But I think the ownership and the process that we started to get in this incredibly ambitious framework took into account context and recognised the different complexities of our world today. And also, the context of political upheavals, of conflict, of migration, and of terrorism. It really did take everything into account."

"And what the SDGs tell us is: Let’s take a step back and let’s ask people to set the foundations on which we are building sustainable development. Let’s get them right; let’s take the time to do that and not be in a hurry to fail."

"However, gender parity is at the top of the agenda in the United Nations and everybody buys into gender parity in terms of aspiration. But the realities of how you move men out of positions in order to make room for women to get gender parity is a tough discourse and it has to start at the entry point – into parliament, into jobs, into institutions."

"I think men have to recognise that in every home, the woman has a right to participate in the economy and has the abilities to contribute to that. But that should not be done to the detriment of the home, and it should be a shared responsibility."

"I think we must stop stereotyping some of these issues. The truth of the matter is that there is an evolution of society. At one point, you have one breadwinner, at another point you have more than one breadwinner and a different kind of context and environment. How do we empower everyone to have a role and a place in the home, in the workplace and in society? I think if we do that, we will balance the decisions that we take and we will not be shut out of it."

"In Nigeria, it is quite shocking to see the low levels of women in parliament – both in the Senate and the House. And that we actually have men actively opposing efforts to reduce their capacity. I think here, Nigeria needs to change its strategy and it needs to start on the local level of the parties. Again, I see the great capacity of women in Nigeria to participate, so I don’t think that’s our challenge. Our challenge is the construct and what the male community puts into it."

"We definitely need more women in decision-making and particularly in parliaments. For example in the DRC, they have a constitution that acknowledges parity, but they need the law to effect that. And in addition to the law, they also need to make investments in women, their education, their ability to actually participate in diplomacy and therefore, in the decision-making that goes along. In addition, there are a number of investments that need to be made in line with the laws aimed at empowering women."

"First of all, I think Africa is trying to make those strides that are necessary to achieving SDG 5 (Gender Equality). But the approach to development in Africa has always been ad hoc, and I think we have been pitting some of our greatest challenges against each other in terms of making choices. For example, we will say, Well we have to make a choice between a woman and health. Or a woman and an education budget. And I think this is where we have got it wrong. The fact is that women are an integral part of any investment, be it in health, in education, in agriculture, etc. Africa needs to recognise that our human resources are the biggest asset base that we have, and to ignore investing in 50% of it, is just foolhardy and affects results, as well as the rights that women have in their lives."

"And I think that we have to think and listen to what the leader is saying and doing, rather than judge what’s in the closet."

"As human beings, what we look to is what they stood for."

"And there has to be a huge amount of courage that what you’re doing is shaping the future. I mean, concretely, shaping that future for your people with what you know is the right thing."

"We learn to have pride and independence of one’s being, how that contributes from the inside out."

"When we are talking about women in politics, what we need to see is opening up those opportunities at all levels and institutions and that, I don’t think is happening. Men aren’t just going to step aside."

"You’re not just looking at capacities and skills to connect to the outside world without understanding anything about who you are, and the part that you play in your own ecosystem."

"To begin to build the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy, by putting the digital in front so that we’re not waiting until oh, Africa is ready, or Africa has the resources right at the beginning."

"I think early childcare is not in a classroom, but very much in Africa today, it needs to start with adult literacy and mothers because as African women, and in our cultures"

"I think it’s a real struggle and the response that we are seeing right now is how countries are grappling with what they are going to do about the current order. Let me just underscore here that we are in transition time with the SDGs. As we have always said, it would take a couple of years to transition from the MDGs to the SDGs."

"For the first time we’re not putting a band-aid on the problem, we’re looking at the root causes."

"We are better investing now because we just won’t be able to afford it later."

"We must design a future that is shaped by women and girls that realizes their right and aspirations to a world where equality is reality."

"Innovative instruments including blended finance can all play an important role, but we need to massively scale-up that delivery."