We cannot lower the mountain, therefore we must elevate ourselves. -Todd Skinner

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• We cannot lower the mountain, therefore we
  must elevate ourselves. -Todd Skinner

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HEATHER WHITESTONEMISS AMERICA

• The first Miss America with a disability on
  September 17th, 1994.
• Deaf since eighteen months old.

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• After contracting a virus, her mother
  accidentally dropped a pile of pans on the
  kitchen floor and Heather did not flinch.

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• Throughout her childhood, Heather barely heard
  the voices of discouragement that hearing people
  often hear.
• She did not hear the doctor telling her family
  that she wouldnt develop past a third grade
  level.
• She never heard the voices who said she could
  never dance ballet, let alone speak.

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• Determined to live a normal life, she attended
  regular public school.
• The only deaf student.
• Helen became Heather's role model.

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• Could not keep up with her class work.
• She asked to attend a special school
• Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, she
  moved two grade levels per year.
• Caught up and returned to Alabama to graduate
  from public high school with 3.6 GPA.

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• Jesus her biggest role model and influence in her
  life key to all of her success.
•                     

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• Financial problems, she competed in pageants to
  earn scholarships.
• Decided to compete for Miss Alabama.
• Twice, made it to the Miss Alabama, but came in
  second.
• Ready to quit, family and friends encouraged her
  to try.
• It had taken Heather six years to correctly
  pronounce her last name, so she knew winning Miss
  Alabama was possible.

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• She became the first woman with a disability
  crowned Miss America in the pageants 75-year
  history.
• She always believed the biggest handicap is
  negative thinking and
• People handicap themselves by concentrating only
  on the negative instead of the positive.

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• STARS FIVE POINTS
• a positive attitude,
• a goal,
• a willingness to work hard,
• a realistic look at your problem and
• a support team.

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Willie Gary

• Born in Georgia
• The sixth of 11 children
• The family lived in shacks. No shoes.

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WILLIE GARY

• Grew up in a poor migrant family
• Beat the odds to become a multi-millionaire-nation
  ally renown attorney, who is known for giving
  back to the less fortunate.

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• Raised in migrant farm communities in Florida,
  Georgia, and the Carolinas
• Unwavering desire to receive an education.
• Florida All-State High School football player and
  received an athletic scholarship.
• Admitted to the Florida Bar and opened first
  black law firm in Martin County.

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SUCCESS

• Became a millionaire, within two years of opening
  law firm, Willie Gary was a millionaire.
• Reputation and nickname as "The Giant Killer"
• Won lawsuits against Disneyland and
  Anheuser-Busch.

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• 40 million settlement with Florida Power Light
  over electrocution of seven rural Palm Beach
  County residents.
• 500 million jury award in 1996 from Loewen
  Group, a Canadian funeral home company he sued
  for breach of contract.

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• Firm employs 150 people, including 21 lawyers,
  eight partners, two investigators, dozens of
  paralegals, a medical director and a public
  relations specialist.
• Represents more than 7,000 clients, including two
  groups of more than 2,000.

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CHARITIES

• Given away 10 million to Shaw University,
• 100,000 to help build a new Baptist church in
  Indiantown

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LIFE IS GOOD!

• Owns two private jets the Wings of Justice and
  the Wings of Justice II,
• Several cars, including two Rolls Royces

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• Forbes Magazine listed him one of top 50
  attorneys in the United States,
• Believes religious beliefs have awarded him
  throughout his life.
• He is the father of five children and husband to
  one wife, Gloria.

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David Neeleman

• Began JetBlue Airways in 2000 with 130 million.
• Focused on customer-oriented, low-fare airline
  Became first low-cost airline since deregulation
  in 1978 to quickly become a major carrier, with
  more than 1 billion in revenues

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MOTTO

• Key to success is employee happiness and
  customer service
• His motto "Bring humanity back to flying."

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• American of Dutch descent,
• Born in Brazil.
• Did Mormon missionary work in slums of Rio de
  Janeiro.
• Mission required him to live with the poor.
• Lessons he learned inspired his airline's
  corporate culture.
• Inequities of privilege and poverty influenced
  him.

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• Respect for the individual customer is motto
• JetBlue tries to eliminate differences that
  affect how customers are treated.
• Offers only one class of seats.
• Corporate office, no reserved parking, and same
  coffee served on airline.
• Neeleman takes a business flight, he serves
  drinks with the flight crew.

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• Set up a crisis fund for JetBlue employees. Every
  worker can donate voluntarily from their paycheck
  to the JetBlue Crewmember Crisis Fund.
• Funds disbursed to employees when a crisis
  strikes elderly parent or sick child.

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ADHD

• Known as relentless innovator introduced
  electronic ticketing, computer reservation system
• Adult learned he had ADHD

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• Credits learning difficulties as source of energy
  and creativity, and the ability to think
  differently.
• When I was growing up in the 60s, not a lot was
  known about learning disabilities and ADHD,
  Neeleman said.
• But thanks to the support of my parents and
  teachers, Im proof that being learning disabled
  doesnt have to hold you back. Sometimes I even
  think its an advantage.

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• Views his disability as distinct advantage
• Believes should be viewed not as disability, but
  opportunity to discover some special talent and
  to harness and use it.

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Fannie Flagg

• Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
• Best known book, Fried Green Tomatoes at the
  Whistle Stop Cafe.
• Wrote screenplay for Fried Green Tomatoes.

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• Dyslexic.
• Challenged as a writer because she "was severely
  dyslexic and couldn't spell, still can't spell.
  So I was discouraged from writing and
  embarrassed."
• Writing career on hold for much of the 1970s, but
  overcame her fear and completed several novels
  and screenplays.

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Benjamin Carson, MD.

• Born September 18, 1951
• Neurosurgeon
• Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery
• at Johns Hopkins Hospital when he was 33 years
  old.

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DR. CARSON

• Born in Detroit, MI.
• Mother 3rd grade education
• Married at 13.
• Parents divorced when he was 8.
• Mother stressed education, while working 2-3
  jobs.

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• Benjamin and his brother fell behind in school.
• In fifth grade, Carson was at the bottom of his
  class. His classmates called him "dummy" and
  developed a violent, uncontrollable temper.

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• Mother determined to change her childrens lives
  
• Limited television watching
• Refused to let them outside to play until
  finished homework.
• Required to read two library books a week and to
  give her written reports on their reading
• She could barely read what they had written.

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• Shocked classmates identified rock samples
  teacher brought to class.
• Recognized from one of the books he had read.
• "It was at that moment that I realized I wasn't
  stupid."
• Continued to amaze classmates and within a year,
  at top of his class.

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• Read avidly on all subjects.
• Determined to become a physician, controlled
  violent temper.
• Graduated with honors from high school,
• Attended Yale University.
• Medical School of the University of Michigan,
  where his interest shifted from psychiatry to
  Neurosurgery.

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• Excellent hand-eye coordination and
  three-dimensional reasoning skills made him a
  superior surgeon.

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• 1987, Carson made medical history when he
  separated Siamese twins, joined at the back of
  the head.
• Previous operations failed, killing both twins or
  only saving one.
• After 28 hours of surgery, with a staff of
  seventy, Carson's operation successful.

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• South Africa 1997, led a 50-member team in the
  successful separation of 11-month-old Zambian
  twin boys, joined at the head.
• Twins did not share any organs but did share
  intricate blood vessels.
• Rehearsed with a computerized, 3-D virtual
  workbench.
• Operation lasted 28 hours.

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Ladan and Laleh Bijani

• 2003, Carson member of surgical team worked to
  separate conjoined siblings .

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• Twenty-Nine year old law graduates
• Doctors refused
• Depressed
• Turned to doctors in Singapore and Dr. Carson.

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• Twins impressed the world with display of
  courage, bravery, and sense of humor.
• Doctors tried to talk out of operation but
  willing to accept the risks and face dangers.

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• Both died after a 50 hour operation.

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PRESTON TUCKER

• Visionary, innovator, and entrepreneur
• Total of 51 were built, of which 47 still
  survive.

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• World War II ended, Tucker believed American car
  companies making unsafe cars that cost too much.
• Wanted to design an automobile that would
  incorporate numerous safety features and save
  consumers money.

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Tucker automobile included unknown safety features

• Cushion-edged crash chamber,
• four-wheel braking traction for panic stops,
• safety glass popped out in the event of a crash,
  a
• collapsible steering column, aluminum,
  fuel-injected engine
• seat belts
• Chassis had a steel reinforced V-shape front so
  that unless you hit someone head on, you would
  deflect to one side. Tuckers car had
• three welded roll bars to protect the passengers
  in case the vehicle rolled over,
• steel bulkheads in the front and rear to protect
  against front and rear collisions, and a
  wraparound safety frame to protect against side
  collisions.
• Tuckers was one of the first cars with
  independent suspension to reduce the risk of the
  driver losing control of the steering.6
• center headlight that turned with the steering
  wheel, thus enabling the driver to see at night.

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Threatened

• Established car manufacturers considered Tuckers
  car a threat
• Car built for a fraction of cost because
  incorporated an aluminum, fuel-injected engine
  and safety features, some of which still not in
  todays automobiles.

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• 1947, Tucker produced prototype in 50 cars.
• Inability to supply dealers with vehicles
  contributed to indictment on 31 counts of fraud.
• Tucker acquitted, a lack of public confidence
  kept him from resuming production.

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Front
Back
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• Recent Tucker sales include
• No. 1038, a dark green car 577,500.
• April of 2005, Tucker No. 1029 461,500
• September 2005, formerly owned by the filmmaker
  George Lucas No. 1003, sold at auction in for
  385,000.

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PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

• Born three months after his father died.
• Mother remarried.
• Abusive stepfather.
• Excelled in school.
• Undergraduate degree at Georgetown University.
• Rhodes Scholar.
• Yale Law School
• 42 President of the U.S.

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Sonia Velasquez, the philanthropic journalis
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JAMES EARL JONES

• Among most well-respected professionals in the
  entertainment industry.

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BACKGROUND

• Born in 1931, in Mississippi and raised by
  grandparents.
• Stuttered as a child, so severe he refused to
  speak aloud.
• Remained functionally mute for eight years until
  he reached high school.
• Credits high school teacher, who discovered he
  had a gift for writing, with helping him.

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• Teacher believed forced public speaking would
  help him gain confidence
• Insisted he recite a poem in class each day. "I
  was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first
  year of school was my first mute year, and then
  those mute years continued until I got to high
  school."

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• Appeared in numerous film and television projects
  throughout the 1970s.
• Turning point Star Wars as voice of Darth
  Vader's black helmet.
• Voiceovers for CNN and King Mufasa in Disney's
  The Lion King

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• Graduated from the University of Michigan.
• Enrolled in the ROTC at Michigan and an Army
  officer stationed in Alaska.

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• Scary Movie 4 (2006) (uncredited) .... Narrator
• The Benchwarmers (2006) (voice) .... Darth Vader
• The Magic 7 (2006) (TV) (voice) .... 5-Toe
• Kingdom Hearts II (2005) (VG) (archive sound)
  .... Mufasa
• The Reading Room (2005) (TV) .... William
  Campbell
• Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
  (2005) (voice) (uncredited) .... Darth Vader...
  aka Revenge of the Sith (USA short title) ...
  aka Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith (USA DVD
  box title) ... aka Star Wars Revenge of the
  Sith (USA promotional title)

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SUE GRAFTON

• New York Times bestselling author Sue Grafton
  published in 28 countries and 26 languages.
• Books in her alphabet series, begun in 1982,
  bestsellers with readership in the millions.

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• Daughter of a mystery writing attorney, who wrote
  three novels.
• She wrote her first mystery, A Is For Alibi, in
  1982.

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Why she started writing

• Started writing mystery novels as an escape from
  her screenwriting life, which she hated.
• Her 6 year bitter divorce and custody battle,
  left her awake at nights "thinking of ways to
  nuke the guy...The problem was, I knew I would
  never be able to carry it out in real life...I
  really am a law-abiding citizen.

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• Her fantasies about how to murder her ex-husband
  led her to think of murder mysteries and soon she
  created private investigator, Kinsey Millhone and
  the alphabet series A is for Alibi, B is for
  Burglar, C is for Corpse, et al.
• She left screenwriting permanently after G is for
  Gumshoe published.

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Her Novels

• Self-disciplined, she writes every day in her
  home office. And she dresses up to go to work.

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Philosophy

• Like her protagonist, Kinsey Millhone, she
  believes that you should take responsibility for
  yourself and when tragedy strikes, pick yourself
  up, dust yourself off and look for the next
  challenge.

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Stephen Hawking

• Born 1942
• Theoretical physicist and professor at Cambridge.
  
• Known for significant contributions to the field
  of quantum physics and black holes.
• Wrote the runaway bestseller A Brief History of
  Time, which stayed on the London Sunday Times
  bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

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• Severe disability and a quadriplegic by motor
  neuron disease (specifically, amyotrophic lateral
  sclerosis), he has had a successful career for
  many years, and has achieved status as an
  academic celebrity.

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• Good but not exceptional student.
• A tutor said his mind was completely different
  from all of his contemporaries.
• Popular.
• After arriving at Cambridge, struck by the motor
  neuron disease, known as Lou Gehrigs Disease.

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• 1985 contracted pneumonia.
• To help him breathe a tracheotomy performed.
• Lost his natural speech ability and uses an
  electronic voice synthesizer to communicate.
• Voice synthesizer has an American accent, no
  longer produced.
• Asked why he has still kept, Hawking claimed has
  not heard a voice he likes better and identifies
  with it.

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• Hawking's belief that the average person should
  have access to his work led him to write A Brief
  History of Time
• It became a documentary in 1991.

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MADAM C.J. WALKER

• "I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of
  the South. From there I was promoted to the
  washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook
  kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into
  the business of manufacturing hair goods and
  preparations....I have built my own factory on my
  own ground" Madam Walker, National Negro
  Business League Convention, July 1912

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Orphaned

• Born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 on a
  Delta, Louisiana plantation, he daughter of
  former slaves.
• She transformed herself from an uneducated farm
  laborer into of the twentieth century's most
  successful, self-made women entrepreneurs.
• Orphaned at age seven, she often said, "I got my
  start by giving myself a start.
• She and her sister, Louvenia, worked in the
  cotton fields. At 14, she married to escape abuse
  from her cruel brother-in-law, Jesse Powell.

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• After the birth of her daughter, her husband died
  two years later.
• Moved to St. Louis to join her four brothers.
• Working for as little as 1.50 a day, she managed
  to save enough money to educate her daughter.

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• Friendships with other black women, members of
  St. Paul A.M.E. Church and the National
  Association of Colored Women, exposed her to a
  new way of viewing the world.

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Beginning of an Empire

• During the 1890s, suffered from scalp ailment
  that caused her to lose most of her hair. She
  experimented with many homemade remedies and
  store-bought products.

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Madam C.J. Walker

• Married Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis
  newspaperman.
• Changed name to "Madam" C. J. Walker and founded
  her own business, selling Madam Walker's
  Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and
  healing formula.
• Claimed revealed to her in a dream. She did not
  invent the straightening comb.

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• 1910, settled in Indianapolis
• Built a factory, hair and manicure salon and
  training school.
• Contributed 1,000 to the building fund of the
  "colored" YMCA in Indianapolis.

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• Expanded company to Jamaica, Cuba, Costa Rica,
  Panama and Haiti.
• By 1919 Walker employed 3,000 people at the
  factory and had more than 20,000 agents.
• Organized agents into local and state clubs.

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1917 - Madam C. J. Walker Hair Culturists Union
of America convention in Philadelphia. Reward
agents for their business success and to
encourage their political activism. "This is
the greatest country under the sun," she told
them. "But we must not let our love of country,
our patriotic loyalty cause us to abate one whit
in our protest against wrong and injustice. We
should protest until the American sense of
justice is so aroused that such affairs as the
East St. Louis riot be forever impossible."
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The Estate

• Moved to New York involved in Harlem's social
  and political life
• Special interest in NAACP's anti-lynching
  movement fought for a federal anti-lynching law.

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Death

• Died at age 54 and considered the wealthiest
  African-American woman in America and first
  African-American woman millionaire. 

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Alberto R. Gonzales

• Born August 4, 1955
• 80th Attorney General of the United States
• First Hispanic to serve in the position.

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• Born in San Antonio, Texas
• Second of eight children, and they lived in a two
  bedroom house, which for many years did not have
  hot running water or a telephone.
• Parents children of immigrants from Mexico with
  less than a high-school education.

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• Honors student at MacArthur High School.
• Enlisted in the United States Air Force, serving
  for two years before being accepted to the United
  States Air Force Academy.
• 1977 transferred to Rice University, earned a
  degree in political science
• Earned Juris Doctor (J.D) degree from Harvard Law
  School.
• Only one of his siblings to finish college.

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PEOPLE WHO HAVE FAILED

• Henry Ford went bankrupt five times before he
  became an automotive industry leader.
• Walt Disney's first cartoon production company
  went bankrupt.
• Oprah Winfrey fired from her television
  reporter's job because she was "unfit for tv."

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• Life is a series of trial-and-error experiences.
  We are taught something by a teacher, and then we
  try to do it ourselves. The first time we do it
  we probably don't get the results we want. So we
  try again, and again, and again. With practice we
  get better.

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• Then we push ourselves as we try to do something
  that's a little bit more difficult. As we
  succeed, our expectations increase, and so does
  the satisfaction that comes from the feeling of a
  job well done.

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• You didn't get the date you wanted. You struck
  out with the bases loaded.You didnt make the
  grade you wanted. You didnt get into the college
  you wanted. There was a glitch somewhere. You
  failed. SO WHAT!You don't win every game. You
  aren't going to hit a home run every time you're
  up to bat. You don't always get what you want.
  Failure is OK. It's part of life. It should be
  expected.

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You don't feel sorry for yourself. You don't mope
around. You pick yourself up and do it again and
again and again until you get it right!
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Failure is as much a part of life as success.
Losing is as much a part of life as winning. The
most important thing to think about is how can
you ensure that you won't fail in the same way a
second time. REMEMBER You just can't fail the
last time you try.
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Learn From Your Failures

• When you experience failure, take some time to
  reflect upon what happened. Write down the
  answers to these questions
• Why did this happen?
• What could I have done differently?
• How can I do it better next time?
• What changes should I make in my strategies?
• What can I do to improve my planning and
  preparation? Study these answers. Analyze them.
  Then go out and do it better the next time.

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Five Symptoms of Fear

• INDECISION You can't make up your mind. You
  don't know if you should or shouldn't do
  something. So you do nothing!
• DOUBT You're not certain as to what you should
  do. You can't make up your mind. You're
  apprehensive.
• WORRY You feel anxious. You're not sure you made
  the right decision. You don't feel confident.
• PROCRASTINATION You put things off till later.
• Don't allow these six symptoms of fear to keep
  you from achieving your goals.
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• Reprinted with permission from "Jeffrey Mayer's
  SucceedingInBusiness