All Quotes

"So I was absolutely delighted to be offered the job."

"What I love about WaterAid is that while we are absolutely passionately committed to doing everything we can in terms of poverty eradication."

"We think change can often happen through humour, so every year we try and do stuff on World Toilet Day."

"We are good at using humour to draw attention to a serious fact, that girls are dropping out of school because they have nowhere to wash and change when they are menstruating and it’s a really taboo subject."

"I took opportunities and I took risks, and I wasn’t afraid to try different things."

"“Water is my life, my identity, my livelihood. I cannot live without water. Girls miss school when there is no water and school doesn’t stop which means they lose out on education.”"

"That over-dependence has been leading to a lot of violence, too"

"The stories of the sufferings of my people kept coming to my ears and I kept asking myself what I could do to alleviate these challenges that women are having."

"When we started, the idea was alien to many people."

"They said mangroves cannot be planted because we grew up to meet them; so if they are dead now, we don’t know what killed them."

"It’s always nice to be recognised, but I think it’s a recognition for all the good work that the organisation is doing."

"I was a tennis player growing up, that was my obsession. I came on a tennis scholarship to the US and then ended up graduating and doing a masters (in sports management and business)."

"There’s been learnings from all of the roles. My learning has been there are many more similarities and synergies than there are differences. I wanted to take this job because I felt I could make a positive impact right out of the gate,"

"Where I've sort of focused my attention is on the marketing and commercial side. We needed to generate more revenue, so that we could invest in our athletes and sports and new initiatives."

"Driving commercial interest and marketing appeal is absolutely vital because we're dependent on ourselves to generate revenue"

"Last season, we had our best season ever on the snow across all of our sports, and we had record revenues and marketing growth. And I hope this season we will see more of the same. I'm pleased about the progress that we're making, but we still have have a long way to go."

"I look at it as a very virtuous circle. The more participants and fans we can engage with via our clubs and other programs at the grassroots level ultimately brings more strength to the pipeline and the development side of the sport, which ultimately should lead to even more success at the elite level."

"I think that further engagement of broadening the base and providing the right support ultimately leads to more commercial interest, as well, from brands and donors and others."

"Your greatest counsel is your voice within. Some people say it’s your spirit talking, or your gut, or your intuition. Whatever you call that murmuring, it can quiet everyone around you and allow you to tap into your truth.”"

"“There’s nothing more bad*** than being who you are … I am a force of nature in fierce stilettos.”"

"Nobody knew what we were doing. Everybody’s making it up. It’s not called ‘innovation’: that’s the fancy word for ‘making s—up.’"

"Part of innovation is ‘fake it until you make it’. Keep trying things, but it’s not just random thing. I got receipts. I really do know what I am doing … it was partly taking things that I know, and then applying it to things that I didn’t know, and creating something new, some new magic. And having faith that this new recipe was gonna work. And not being afraid that there were some dips. That you can continue iterating on the idea."

"The message is always try to get to the widest audience … As we know, there are ‘niche’ audiences who also need attention—I mean, it’s music, right? It’s like a universal truth."

"You don’t need to be black in order to feel that moment in the ad. You’re with your friends—with Phil Collins! Air Drums! We’ve all been there. You don’t need to be a black woman in order to understand that moment. And that’s the gamble, is that’s the universal truth: We’re human first."

"We have abilities to do more than one thing. We’re complex human beings. I can wear a leather dress and still have an 8-year old and wipe up the eggs that are on her face. Because we can do it all, absolutely."

"The weight of making sure you don’t do anything wrong so that others can follow you. Holding the door open, and it is heavy. It is heavy. It’s heavy because it’s a burden. It’s heavy because of the expectation. It’s heavy because you can’t slip. You can never let the door flip. And if you do, it will shut tight, and then you’ll be on the outside and everyone else will be inside."

"I feel it really difficult to maneuver, because sometimes the things that are given freely, the assumptions that are made when you’re not a black woman—the assumption that, ‘Oh, yeah, you got it. You’ve done this before. Then you have to prove it again and again and again that you actually do know it, that’ you’ve done it, and it’s hard not to be mad about it."

"At the end of the day, you have to bring all of the work—the work that you’ve done that’s more in-depth, tighter, more brilliant than anybody else can bring. Because that’s the only way to ensure that you actually get the next shot, the next chance."

"I curse at home first. And then I go in calmly, [wearing] some kind of bright color to distract. ‘If you want a show, I’ll give you a show. And then you bring all the receipts and you bring the work. At the end of the day, you have to bring all of the work—the work that you’ve done that’s more in-depth, tighter, more brilliant than anybody else can bring. Because that’s the only way to ensure that you actually get the next shot, the next chance."

"I use NOI because I want my clients to have clear, actual concrete measures of progress."

"First of all, let’s count the black women in C-suite positions in Silicon Valley. Do you know any? So an opportunity comes, I must take it. I must take it. Because first of all, I do have something to prove. I have to hold the door."

"(About the MOSE, in Venice) Is the water high? Put on your boots!"

"It is a very long story, in which I found myself completely alone, with my administrations, opposing this project, which was [considered] highly critical from a technical and environmental point of view by a large number of experts."

"No one can look into another person's soul. If a person has truly lost all hope and life has become pure and simple suffering for them, we have a duty to believe them. Politicians and legislators must act on the basis of their own convictions, but they must also be able to draft laws that respect the inalienable freedom of the individual. Our culture has elevated freedom to the highest criterion, and a decision contrary to freedom would have no basis. First of all, it must be verified with the utmost rigor that the request [for euthanasia] does not stem from any form of pressure or necessity, that it is absolutely free."

"We will never achieve the “truth,” but the purpose of seeking its affirmation allows us to approach it, which is already beautiful in itself."

"(About Pontius Pilate) He was neither impartial nor democratic. And he could not understand Jesus."

"Corriere della Sera, July 5, 2007."

"What are we facing today? A mass of individuals who are anything but liquid: they are gaseous! Individuals who, with the disappearance of all forms of social, union, corporate, and political aggregation, find themselves alone. This is what is new. This is what creates the social base for the Trumps, the Le Pens, the Salvinis, and the Grillos. At the root of it all is not only the impoverishment and downgrading of the middle class: there is also mass individualization."

"SVG awaits 'wall of cash' to kick start commitment."

"It is a matter of [...] shifting the focus of knowledge towards what I would call an ethical emphasis: the subject is the subject of life, behaviour, moral feelings – and here the “subject” should also be understood in a passive sense, whereby the self experiences sensations, actions and feelings for which it is not itself responsible, which occur within it and belong to it but are not originated by it, to which it is subject, in fact. So perhaps “active” and “passive” are no longer opposed as we are accustomed to thinking, and the subject-passivity is that paradoxical subject that withdraws but continues to be the intrusive yet necessary tenant [...]."

"Very much to this day, I’m often and almost always the youngest person in the room, in my early 40s, and the only woman. And the only reason why I’m not the only minority ... is because Sean is often in the room with me"

"Sean goes out of his way just to level-set the room. There are so many times where he will introduce me and say, ‘She is the president of Combs Enterprises,’ and the men in the room will say, ‘Are you going to get some coffee?’"

"“I look for information everywhere I go. I really believe that everybody has something to learn and something to teach. So I probably have less, like, formal relationships, whereas I’m seeking out information with every relationship that I encounter."

"I have something I call a clipboard effect. I used to be a party promoter in my 20s, and you could imagine if you’re a young woman and you’re going into nightclubs — I’m like 24 years old — and we used to do these big events, like a thousand people every week. It was something that — not for myself but for all the women that I worked with — I would say, ‘Carry a clipboard.’ And the way that you are carrying yourself to a certain degree — although it shouldn’t matter, is a little bit of a signal to say, ‘I’m here for work.’”"

"“And I have always mentally thought through — What is my theoretical clipboard? — in the conversations I’m having in every room to make it very clear the level of value I bring to the table."

"Were at a little bit of a period of urgency to make this change, so we need beyond mentorship. We need real sponsors. People who are going to put their own name on the line. People who are going to say, ‘Nope. I’m looking at this payroll distribution and I see that Kay is not making as much as John and Jake. That’s not right. We know how much she works; we need to level-set this"

"In over 20 years of working, there’s not that much that has changed. All that we can continue to do is loudly and proudly and unabashedly share the level of value that we bring to the table. There’s a lot of conversation around people understanding that there is a value to it. But when I speak to people, there’s a thought that diversity is some type of charitable activity. Its no"

"Co-viewing is really, really important"

"If you want scale, you have to be careful about how niche you get"

"As an organisation, we don’t sit still…We look at every opportunity, we have huge ambitions for the UK"