Academic Career

In a compilation of fascinating stories, Dr. Jim Webb shares a view of visionary leaders who defied the odds to create extraordinary, lasting results in diverse environments. While guiding listeners on a journey through some of the world’s finest institutions and the influencers who produced and directed radical improvements, he shines a light on a variety of these exceptional leaders. Innovators Who Changed the World profiles the history of those who created, built, and guided organizations and people through transformation and changed the world in the process.

Fabian Videla’s story could be your story. Breaking the Mold teaches you how to build and run a successful business with particular emphasis on the construction industry. Born in Argentina, Videla moved to the USA as a penniless young man. Through dedication and hard work, he applied the lessons taught to him in his childhood and young-adult years, changing his position as a local handyman to the CEO of a conglomerate with interests in construction, trading, and software companies on three continents.

The AM Best Business Trilogy in a three-book series has its roots in the idea that all stories have context. When AM Best Chairman, President, and CEO Arthur Snyder III started this project, his goal was to tell the complete story, with all the layers peeled back one by one. The Man: A Biography of Alfred M. Best is the story of a brilliant man whose unflinching dedication to independence of thought and transparency in business sparked an entire industry - and whose personal tribulations humbled and strengthened him. Through it all, Alfred Best remained the eternal optimist.

As a fledgling doctor, what would you choose: practising medicine in rural India or going abroad in search of financial security? How would you face the people who depend on you if your wealth is wiped out in the stock market? How would you pursue a dream project, knowing the many challenges that lie ahead? In Excellence Has No Borders, Dr, B.S. Ajaikumar, an oncologist, answers these questions in an inspiring and fascinating narrative. He details how he has made cancer treatment accessible to all and created a chain of world-class cancer hospitals across India.

Here is a bold new history of economics, the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built a rigorous social science without peer.

During Wall Street's last big bull market, there were brokers in $3,000 suits, billion-dollar IPO's, and 30-year-olds making $100,000 a month. And then there was Louis Pasciuto, who came from Staten Island at the age of 19 and discovered one indelible truth about himself: He was born to steal. This is the astounding, true story of the rise and fall of this fast-talking, street-smart wiseguy, as well as the insidious ways the Mob infiltrates, then controls, Wall Street.

¿Cómo una chica de Mississippi se convierte en millonaria? A través de una combinación única de coaching, visión personal y anécdotas, Pat Fortenberry comparte las lecciones que aprendió: cómo experimentar el crecimiento, mejorar la fuerza personal y convertirse en una mejor líder, ofreciendo una mirada honesta a las experiencias y valores clave que ha absorbido en su negocio Mary Kay de treinta años.

Na década de 1980, Vicente Falconi, então professor de Engenharia da UFMG, começou a cruzar o Brasil para apresentar a empresários conceitos inspirados na eficiência das companhias japonesas e que eram praticamente desconhecidos no país.

This is the story of Jim’s Group, as told by its founder. An account of how a $24 business became one of the world’s largest franchise chains, with more than 4,300 franchisees (and rising). It is an unusually frank and honest account, showing the human weaknesses and mistakes as well as the successes. This is a very different guide to business success, drawn not only from Jim’s experience but the lessons he has drawn from contact with thousands of successful (and some less successful) franchisees and franchisors.

Recounting the pivotal moments that helped launch Ruth Zukerman as the breakout star of the boutique fitness world, Riding High is a reminder that the greatest success stories often start in the unlikeliest of places.

If many of your organizations have become more democratic, more resilient, more adaptable, and more transparent, it is because Warren Bennis has provided much of the intellectual and ethical fuel over the past half-century to our most influential and successful leadership experts and practitioners. Still Surprised illuminates how the world-changing ideas of Bennis and his colleagues resulted from the searing crucible of their own encounters, events and experiences.

Following a deadly car crash, small-town lawyer Lance Cooper risked everything to battle one of the most powerful auto corporations in the world to get justice for a young woman. A fast-paced, journalistic account of tragedy turned to triumph, despair to hope, Cobalt Cover-Up is an inspirational, thoroughly compelling, and victorious listen.

Raise the Bar, Change the Game is the beautifully written autobiography of an entrepreneur. Rarely do you have a biography where personal humanity is intricately interwoven with the business successes and failures that occur when someone takes a road never before traveled; in this case, through the newly-fallen Soviet Union.

Risk and Return is the story of one man’s return to Africa - a journey that begins with a search for self-fulfillment, which then evolves into an entrepreneurial adventure filled with tribulations, triumphs, and many life lessons that will keep listeners engaged from start to finish. In a casual conversational voice, the author, Yomi Jemibewon, gives an honest, often hilarious and sometimes sobering account of what it feels like to chase a dream under highly uncertain circumstances.

Barry Becher and Ed Valenti set the stage for today’s infomercials with their now-famous television techniques. Their zany commercials - advertising such products as the Miracle Painter, Armourcote cookware, and, most famously, the Ginsu® knife - captured both the imagination and pocketbook of the American public. And they became millionaires in the process. But wait, there’s more! You’ll learn how to get a better price on anything you buy, how to get better service anywhere, even how to get easily get bumped from coach to first class on an airline.

Minutes before Brian Walsh, then just a teenager, heard his beeper go off, calling him to help put out another fire, he was on top of the world. An hour later, after a freak flashover and confusion that sent the junior firefighter into the inferno against regulations, Brian had suffered such profound burns to his face that he was unidentifiable to his fellow firefighters. Nearly everyone expected him to die that night. He did not. In this stirring autobiography, he tells his incredible story, sharing the lessons that only tragedy could teach.

Reed Hastings is one of the world's foremost business leaders. As co-founder, chairman and CEO of Netflix, he has built one of the largest media and entertainment companies on the planet, with an estimated personal net worth of $3.6 billion. A notable philanthropist, he has served on the boards of Facebook, Microsoft and a number of non-profit organisations. This concise but detailed biography provides an overview of Hastings' career trajectory, providing insights into his success.

We’ve all had moments of feeling like we didn’t belong, but imagine being born into a world where fitting in was never an option. Michele Sullivan, who has a rare form of dwarfism, shares how her physical posture taught her the most effective relational posture with others, which helped her become one of the most powerful women in philanthropy.

In the early 20th century, young Ganga Bhishan Agarwal, aka Haldiram, gained a reputation for making the best bhujia in town. Fast-forward a century and the Haldiram’s empire has a revenue much greater than that of McDonald’s and Domino’s combined. In Bhujia Barons, Pavitra Kumar manages to tell the riveting story of the Agarwal family in its entirety - a feat never managed before. It begins in dusty, benign Bikaner and traces the rise and rise of this homegrown brand which is one of the most recognized Indian brands in the world.

If Crazy Rich Asians and a Greek tragedy had a literary offspring, it would be the spitting image of Why Should Guys Have All the Fun? The true story of resolute immigration lawyer and activist Loida Lewis, Why Should Guys Have All the Fun? begins with Loida's adventure-packed Philippine upbringing. A torrid love affair with brilliant, irascible financier Reginald Lewis follows, as does regal living in Manhattan and Paris, and gut-wrenching loss, all before Loida shockingly commandeers a multibillion-dollar, multinational conglomerate and leads it with aplomb.