Mellody Hobson

So I started with this idea of could we do private equity totally differently than had been done? One of the major features of what we do is something called demand aggregation, where we go to corporations and what we call the CPO, the purchasing officers of those - chief purchasing officers. We developed a council of Fortune 500 companies.

I remember the day. It was just such a big day. It happened to be the same day that I got to be on the cover of Forbes. And I remember just being so overwhelmed by the opportunity that we had at hand, that we had closed this $1.45 billion fund - first time - probably in the top five of first-time funds ever that had been closed.

We would constantly have to move because we couldn't quite afford the places that we were living. And sometimes we got evicted. And it was just very, very difficult as a child to try to understand that.

That moving a lot really committed me to stability and committed me to ... being in control of my destiny. That was something that was very important to me. And it also made me very conservative about money.