Top 76 Quotes & Sayings by Mellody Hobson
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American businessman Mellody Hobson.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
When I wanted the CEO of Starbucks to keep me in mind for their board, I sent him a note rather than calling. I call it dripping: You don't want to be like a faucet full-on; you want to drip just enough that they don't forget about you.
Even though I will never be evicted again, I am haunted by those times and still work relentlessly.
I've been thought to be a flight attendant many many times.
I loved college, I loved Princeton.
I was in the Woodrow Wilson School of international relations and public policy at Princeton. You have to apply to get in, and I did not originally get in. I lobbied really hard and called many people. I just would not take no for an answer.
As citizens, I'm asking you not to leave any child behind. I'm asking you not to be color blind, but to be color brave, so that every child knows that their future matters and their dreams are possible.
When you grow up in America today, most schools don't teach you about money and investing. You could literally take a class in woodshop or auto in high school and not take a class on money.
I have a strong point of view, and that's a double-edged sword. It can be a phenomenal characteristic in terms of getting things done, but it can also mean I will be relentless in my pushing for my point of view.
I honestly think I'm going to rot my brain with all the news. I'm a news junkie.
I take vitamins when I wake up. One of them I need to take is to wake up my brain. It has some caffeine in it, and it stimulates my brain and I'm literally not a person without it.
Norman Rockwell - even though we think of him as a great American artist, in a lot of museums he has not garnered that kind of attention. And it's this kind of accessibility that we're trying to bring - not looking down on any art.
Being aware of challenges doesn't make them sting less, but once you see them, you can assess the best way to handle them.
I believe in civility, inclusion and diversity. I believe that everybody can contribute. I don't believe in labelling and stereotypes. These things are the antithesis of what I believe in and go against everything I love in America. And I do love America.
I can't tell you how many resumes we get from business schools across the country from black women and black men and Hispanic women, men, etcetera, who say I'm interested in working for your company because they can see someone at the top who looks like them.
I think the one thing about the Zoom calls is unlike being in a room with people where you can look away or drift off, I feel like with Zoom, everyone's face is just dead center, head on, there is no drifting. It takes a lot of energy from me.
The average American has 11 jobs in their lifetime, and I've only had one.
The way I go about it is that we should all be inviting people into our lives who don't look like us, speak like us and don't come from where we come from.
The first thing I do after waking up is check my phone for news. I like to make sure the world is still here and understand what happened overnight.
My mother always wanted me to be in the best environment that I could be in. She wanted me to go to the best schools. Every now and again she'd save up enough for us to get a nice apartment in downtown Chicago, but we were never able to sustain it.
Now, race is one of those topics in America that makes people extraordinarily uncomfortable. You bring it up at a dinner party or in a workplace environment, it is literally the conversational equivalent of touching the third rail.
We've got one shot at this life, and to not be productive with what we've been given, to me, is a travesty. I think the biggest waste is when a human life is wasted. It's unforgivable.
Now I know there are people out there who will say that the election of Barack Obama meant that it was the end of racial discrimination for all eternity, right? But I work in the investment business, and we have a saying: The numbers do not lie.
People can be sensitive, so if I need to, I'll suck it up and be more flowery. I'll do what it takes to get the outcome I want. As I like to say, sometimes you have to crouch to conquer.
Diverse perspectives lead to a better outcome. There's so much data, when you look at the math, in terms of the investor returns and the shareholder value that gets created from more diverse boards.
I've told stories about people coming to my office and giving me their coats and requesting that I hang them up and get coffee - which I dutifully do. And then I come in and sit at the head of the table. It's awkward.
I was desperate to understand money. Not to make it, to understand it. I wanted to know how it worked, and I wanted to know so that I would have enough and would be able to make good financial decisions. That led me to Ariel.
Black women have a kind of advantage over white women in the workplace. They go in prepared to face some discrimination, so when it happens, they aren't shocked.
I'd like to see great textbooks, great opportunities for kids to really understand stock market investing, because at the end of the day, they are going to be all they have in terms of creating a life for themselves, a retirement account, and things like that.
Having a financially illiterate society is dangerous, and we have to do something about that.
Sometimes those apartments we lived in weren't finished, sometimes the rooms would be heated by the gas stove, sometimes we would heat our water on hot plates to take baths, and that was very sobering, especially as a child.
I always felt very insecure financially as a child. I was desperate to understand money as a child. I was desperate to be secure. Because I always felt like the rug could be pulled from under me.
When I think of my career and why I leaned in, it comes down to basic survival.
When you're type A you always think you can fix anything. Sometimes there's nothing you can do.
You know, when you're the youngest kid, you kind of get the last of everything.
I found my own orthodontist, my own high school. I set up interviews and did college trips. Despite her incredible concern and caring, my mom didn't have the capacity for that. It was outside her experience, and she knew I was on top of it.
I love Obama. And Michelle. I was so grateful for them. They were such stunning people. We were lucky to have them. They were great symbols for our society.
I've used some of my differences as a way to stand out and to hopefully count and matter - and hopefully create an opportunity for others.
I'm an interested party in obviously the name and reputation of Lucas - because I'm a Lucas, even though I don't go by Lucas.
People feel a great deal of their wealth or lack thereof in their home value. Despite the fact they're living there and not going to sell it per se, it does have a big psychological effect.
I know that my life is a miracle and because of that, I can't think my success is because I was so great at this, that or the other. A lot of things happened and came together. A lot of people went out of their way for me.
I had very big dreams for myself, and I wanted to work really hard, and I wanted to make sure that I didn't leave anything on the field. And that's how I've always lived my life.
Sometimes I feel like I could have been a Depression-era person, just because of my need to make sure that I'm conservative in how I think about money.
There's nothing wrong with being help. But it's very wrong that we presume people of colour are in a subservient position. That's problematic.
Every game is won with patience.
If you exclude a group of people from the boardroom or the leadership ranks of a company, the company is not as good as it could be.
In the spirit of debunking racial stereotypes, the one that black people don't like to swim, I'm going to tell you how much I love to swim. I love to swim so much that as an adult, I swim with a coach.
I grew up going to a school where there weren't a lot of black kids. And so my mother, from a very, very young age, has sensitized me to race.
I've never met Colin Kaepernick, but he's a hero of mine. I'm in awe that he took it upon himself to publicly promote the American values of life and liberty that we all cherish.
You can teach someone with basic smarts to be smarter; you can't teach cultural fit or personality. But you also want someone who has a passion to win; someone that is all in.
On my worst day I always tell myself I'm not in a field picking cotton.
A year's worth of Social Security for an individual is not considered to be below the poverty level, and yet we know that would be extraordinarily tough to live on.
How many people, though, do I meet that I think have talent? Well actually a lot. That's what drives my enthusiasm in the conversation about diversity.
I don't want to be a victim. I want to be a victor.
We cannot afford to be color-blind, we have to be color-brave.
When you feel house poor, you don't buy anything. Housing immediately impacts the job numbers because there are so many housing-related jobs within the industry, and in adjacent industries.
Bravery is not the absence of fear, it is overcoming it.
I grew up in Chicago with a single mother. I'm the youngest of six kids, and my older siblings are much older than me. When your siblings are that much older, you never get to ride in the front seat of the car, you never get the chicken breast.
The role of a board of directors is to be a sounding board for the vision of the company - to hold executives accountable in executing that vision and to ensure a management succession plan is in place.
When people look at all the things I do, they say it's overwhelming, but I don't feel overwhelmed. I get it done. I'm very organized, and it's all tied together.
We don't prognosticate macroeconomic factors, we're looking at our companies from a bottom-up perspective on their long-run prospects of returning.
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