The power of decision making, along with grit and determination, is what propels many born leaders. The same could be said of Bruce Nordstrom, the longtime president of the Nordstrom department store chain, who decided to continue the family tradition of joint corporate governance. He understood teamwork from an early age, taking pride in being a company staff member and lining up with fellow workers to receive his hard-won paycheck at the tender age of nine. Two decades later, the young sweeper became president of the retail chain, still playing to win and proving the staying power of his billion-dollar family empire.
Nancy Schuster’s decision to transform a childhood hobby into a career changed her life. She went from a self-described housewife to a staunch self-advocate, participating in crossword tournaments and selling her puzzles to newsstand magazines. And that was before assuming the role of New York Times crossword editor. A lesson learned from a tense racial encounter took civil rights leader James Lawson Jr. on a self-directed journey to India, where Gandhi’s approach helped him find “a better way” to combat social justice issues and impart those lessons to others. William Anders’s determination to use color film to capture the view of Earth while orbiting the moon led to the awe-inspiring “Earthrise” photo, injecting much-needed hope into a fraught political era.
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