A Quote by Irene Rosenfeld

I grew up in business at a time where there weren't very many female role models, and so in the early days, we wore little bow ties like the guys, and we talked about the Army even though we weren't in the Army. And the reality was that wasn't the right way to approach the business world.
You know, back when I was a kid who wanted to be in show business, everybody on TV wore nice clothes. They were very glamorous when they would be on the 'Tonight Show.' All the dudes wore suits and ties and that just seemed like real show business to me.
I was trained in Army Intelligence, but spent most of my army career in the infantry. But like many people of my generation, I was very much caught up in the Cold War, and books and movies about espionage.
Read about a few men who wear (or wore) bow ties as an act of defiance, and check out a tie that makes a strong statement. Bow ties are cool.
So many computer languages try to force you into one way of thinking and Perl is very much the opposite of that approach. It's kind of like a, well, sometimes Perl has been called the Swiss army chainsaw of the internet, but it's more like a Swiss army machine shop. It really gives you a lot of tools, some of which are dangerous, but it lets you get your job done very quickly.
I think the culture today is very, very different from what it was in the '60s, and I feel lucky that I grew up at a time when I had these very strong female role models.
It's really important to have role models, and a lot of the ancients always talked about this. Seneca talked about this, Aristotle talked about this, and in fact, this was my boxing coach's philosophy in college, was that you have to have role models.
My role models in the business were the older guys on my team when I first got there: Gray Scott, Adrian Smith, Roland Taylor. These were the guys who took me under their wing, and really schooled me in terms of what the business was about.
I know I've had many great mentors and role models and guys to look up to; guys I've learned a lot from so I know how to approach being that guy and I've been doing it for a long time.
While I was filming 'Kong' - and I don't play a very capable Army Ranger in 'Kong'; I play a completely different character - but we had a lot of Army Rangers there, former Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs, who were working on the movie with us for the other characters, for the Army guys in the movie.
When I meet someone from the army background, there is an instant connection. We live in the best five-star hotels of the world, but outside my home I will be equally comfortable in any army cantonment or army guest house. Telling my friends that my father was in the army was like telling them that he is the second-richest man in the world.
It's always great for a young guy to have those examples, even though you may not follow 'em right away, it's great to have those guys in the locker room that you could look up to and see the right way to go about your business.
I lived next to Russian soldiers. We had Russian army guys in our house when I grew up. We made lemonade for them; they were everywhere. I had a Russian school. I grew up with Russian traditions, I know Russian songs... it infiltrates me a lot. I even speak a little Russian.
My family was in two businesses - they were in the textile business, and they were in the candy business. The conversations around the dinner table were all about the factory floor and how many machines were running and what was happening in the business. I grew up very engaged in manufacturing and as part of a family business.
My dad was in the Army. The Army's not great pay, but, you know, we moved from Army patch to Army patch wherever that was. The Army also contributed to sending me off to boarding school.
It's like in biological evolution: The population will evolve, even though individuals can't. The same thing happens in the corporate world: The population of business units within corporations evolves, even though individual business units can't. That's because the capabilities of business units reside in their processes and their values, and by their very nature, processes and values are inflexible and meant not to change.
Hollywood is a very male business, and it has in vast portions of it - the whole action movie part of it might as well be the United States Army in 1943 in that the ethics of it are, you know, boot camp and action movies and guns and explosions and all the rest of it, and that - so that means that about 50% of the business is not only pretty much closed off to women, but women don't even wanna be in it!
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