All Quotes

"I think in order to empower our women we need 3Es. Encourage them, educate them and empower them economically. What I mean by this is first of all, in society, we have to inspire all our girls and women to aspire to do well. Aspire to dream big and aspire to back it up with hard work. Secondly, we must ensure education for all women because it is normally believed when you educate a man, you educate a person but when you educate a woman, you educate the entire generation"

"Therefore ensuring education for all women is very important. The third one is that we have to empower them economically, by providing them the right skills, by providing them access to jobs, by providing them access to markets - basically all opportunities and requisites to enable them to participate in the economic growth"

"It is a profound honour. This award is the continent’s foremost recognition of individuals and institutions transforming farming from a struggle for survival into a thriving enterprise. For me, it affirms that African indigenous vegetables are central to the transformation of African food systems."

"I don’t believe we can address the issues of nutrition security, poverty, and health in Kenya without relying on African indigenous crops. With a soaring food crisis, and maize harvests predicted to be 16 percent below former years as a result of changing Kenyan weather patterns, the only grains that could adequately replace maize in my opinion would be indigenous millets and sorghum, which are more drought tolerant."

"Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food."

"It is also the fulfilment of a dream I held since the age of ten – that these vegetables would be valued and accessible to all who need them for food, nutrition, health security, and economic empowerment."

"The door closes and our African nations are left outside with tea and croissants while the decisions are being made inside. We must change that"

"A forum like this could help us plan for those engagements so the teams that go can have a proper African perspective."

"...sustainable development, it's very much a thinking of the development part without putting sustainability and I feel that the 'be sustainable' is very silent. So my... my final words would be let us try to put that 'sustainable' back into sustainable development. Thank you"."

"Women having it tougher than men in their careers isn’t anything new globally. Female professionals, especially in India, rarely experience smooth linear progress"

"There are three times when a woman decides to leave (her career), the most common of them being the childbearing years"

"It is expected out of the mother to take the child around for various coaching classes and to wake him (or her) up in the morning with a hot cup of Complan (milk)"

"Given this assumption, a woman has to divert her attention from her career to the children"

"The third reason we found that women are leaving is to take care of their parents or parents-in-law, because geriatric care in India is quite costly. And then at that point, female workers feel absolutely guilt-ridden and…give up jobs"

"I made two-year sabbatical for child and elderly care that could be taken by the employee in three slots. And about two years after we did a survey to see the success of the initiative, we found about 676 women had availed it and one of them even told me that due to this change my entire career has been saved"

"it’s not going to be the same as mine... you’ll have multiple careers and you need to be able to unlearn, relearn, keep learning all the time. So, when I got the Salesforce opportunity, I told myself that I’ve been giving a lot of gyaan, a lot of advice. Here was a chance to do it myself, to have multiple careers"

"And in many cases, where I have to file, for instance, reports, etc., the statute has to come up to show that I have the powers to do this... They said either you go for a change of the Act, but till the change comes through you will be known as Chairman. So I scrapped the cards thinking I had far larger battles to fight at that point. I accepted the term Chairman and went on with it"

"So, you have to really go out of your way to determine what other than monetary incentive you can hand out, what are the right buttons [to push] in order to motivate and inspire people. In the private sector, the simple solution is to throw more money at the problem. Now, that is not always fruitful as you are not really ensuring that the person is developing in the right way"

"You have to be very nimble and agile on your feet to acquire the latest technology, which the private sector could do much more easily than the public sector"

"At the end of the day, you have to realise one thing—that these directors meet the company once in a quarter, or if it’s a big company like Reliance we meet twice a quarter; so in this much time, there is only so much that you can review. Given that is the case, one has to understand that even by looking at what is being presented to you, you are at a disadvantage because the management will only show you what they want to show you"

"So I think the merit of a director lies in being able to ask the right questions and being satisfied that the questions are being answered in as complete a manner as possible. Developing that can take a little time, can actually take up quite a bit of your time, especially in the beginning as you get to know the company"

"Every function earlier used to report to Marc (Marc Benioff, founder & CEO of Salesforce). There was no India head. Going forward, the functional reporting will remain, but there will also be an India-reporting structure. India’s scale is unprecedented; if you have solved for the scale in India, you’ve solved a lot of problems globally.These are the synergies we want to bring about"

"Everyone I talk to say there is now a different way of doing business. And that cannot really be done unless you are empowered with data, empowered with digital platforms and applications. Depending upon how we are in that journey, what are the resources required, the organisation will decide. But we did want to destress our people by saying that in this entire crisis period, you don’t have to keep worrying about that (layoffs). Just worry about keeping yourself and your family safe."

"I have done a few things with Fortune 500 firms, and those have gone well. I have led the digital initiatives in SBI and I realise the value of digital. By bringing me in, they want to display the fact that they are serious about India. It indicates a commitment from the Salesforce management that we are here for good and we want to scale this"

"I used to tell them that in your time, you will have many careers. And one of the things you should be passionate about is learning, unlearning and relearning, and that’s what the new world is going to be like. When this position was offered to me, I thought of walking the talk"

"They have the philanthropic model of 1-1-1, which is giving away 1% of your time, 1% of your products and 1% of your profit or equity to philanthropic initiatives"

"I’m always a little bit of a sucker for a challenge"

"Of course the first initial reaction is to deny everything, and to come out making sure your side… when I saw the way I’m objectified and dragged through the press with all these misquotes and misinterpretations of who I am. If I’d looked a different way or if I was a man, I wouldn’t be objectified this way…”"

"Boris never, ever gave me favouritism. Never once did I ask him for a favour. Never once did he write a letter of recommendation for me. He didn’t know about my asking to go to trips. He only knew me as an extremely passionate entrepreneur of the London tech scene."

"On the bus, he had a book of short stories. I think it was Voltaire, I remember striking up a conversation about classic literature and Shakespeare, we immediately bonded over this kind of mutual love of classic literature and particularly Shakespeare.”"

"Encouragement goes a long way! Recognizing people’s hard work and dedication only makes them want to give more to you and their job. You’re only as good as your employees are so giving them what they need to be their best is only going to help your company in the end. Bosses that are belittling or controlling to make themselves look better only end up hurting themselves in the end"

"I’m a strong believer in business with a purpose. I actually create specific SKU’s that are committed to giving a portion of proceeds to causes such a breast cancer treatment, children’s causes , the environment, Veterans, Puerto Rico to name a few. My company is green conscience and leaping bunny certified. Every bottle someone buys not only helps them feel more beautiful but has a purpose behind it."

"Sometimes the best deals you’ll make are the ones you won’t.” Sometimes moving past disappointment is tough but I’ve come to realize if something doesn’t work out, later on I’ve seen why it was best."

"Never put all your eggs in one basket” Never give too much work to one employee or vendor. It can leave you very vulnerable if something goes awry."

"It is time for Africa to begin thinking and operating as a stakeholder, rather than accepting the ‘victim mentality’ created by opponents of biotechnology. The priority of Africa must be to food its people and to sustain agricultural production and the environment."

"It’s unsustainable to depend on imports. A country depending on imported food cannot grow."

"Let us first invest in high-yielding varieties and bring in investors to put money into irrigation systems and soil fertility, that is make fertiliser cheaper by producing it locally. Then educate farmers on how to store the surplus harvest to avoid losses."

"Then increase mechanisation in ploughing and processing the harvests. For instance, instead of farmers doing manual shelling of groundnuts, they use a machine."

"Companies import because they cannot get timely delivery of adequate and quality supply of required volumes. If we organise farmers into groups and train them in producing huge volumes of adequate produce, we will reduce imports like rice; 80 per cent of rice consumed in Kenya is imported."

"I may not have had any biological babies but I have many children—all those I have helped to survive and grow-up and still welcome me to their villages with glad cries of Mama Daktari. In Swahili, ‘Mama’ means ‘Madam’ or better still 'Mother', and in my heart this is what it means to me."

"OK, meet me tomorrow morning at eight. Sharp. Otherwise I leave."

"In Africa, we bear an inequitable share of perioperative mortality. In my country, Kenya, many hospitals still do not have access to pulse oximetry despite it being an essential device. If you do not have a pulse oximeter, you cannot provide safe surgery for your patient: It’s as simple as that. I am overjoyed to see Smile Train and Lifebox commit to improving pulse oximetry access."

"The faithful bishop prepared to surrender a life which he had spent in the service of religion and his fellow-men, and was attended by several of the city clergy. He died calmly about seven o'clock in the evening of October 10, 1878, greatly lamented by his fellow-religious and by the diocese of Hartford, which had just begun to appreciate his worth."

"I will keep doing it whether you put me in jail, or you kill me. I'll die doing what I believe."

"I tell them my own story—how I grew up, went to school, how I struggled, and how I was mutilated."

"I am from them. I speak from reality. I touch their reality."

"There is no prescription. You make a commitment, then everything you do speaks to you if you are willing to listen. For social change, you must go to the people, to really listen to them and learn from them. It is all about commitment. As a young girl when I spoke to elders, I had to look at their feet, not their faces. As an adult, I stood in front of a congregation of 800 men, women and children. I said female genital mutilation is not prescribed in the Bible or the Koran. So where did the practice come from? Why are we ‘correcting’ God’s work? Everything is contextual."

"When speaking to women about equality, it was a total awakening. When they said they have no recourse if their husbands beat them, I explained their constitutional, legal and human rights. We learned how to link the political, economic and social problems that affect women’s lives. They have the capacity to change. But real change must happen within communities. Everyone must teach each other and learn that what is good for women and girls is good for the community."

"From birth they need equal opportunities to help them understand that their intrinsic value is the same as men. Education is key, even though they are expected to follow in their mothers’ footsteps and perform household chores for their entire lives. It’s working. Just last week we awarded 390 girls with above a 3.5 grade point average. They will go to university. If a girl is given an equal footing, she will find her own space and voice in life."

"Women were regarded as no better than the cows they milked, My mother’s life was a nightmare. I don’t know how she survived. She was a very intelligent, very wise woman, but all her life she was abused and beaten – for nothing. She had her back stooped, her legs broken, her jaw broken, even though she did everything right."