>>Ray Chambers: It is an honor and a pleasure
to be here. So thank our host, Eric and Larry
and everybody at Google.
I'm humbled to be speaking in the same program
with Gene Sharp and Justice O'Connor and Secretary
Reich, my good friend Richard Branson who
inspired me to become part of the founding
group for the elders. And I hope Richard speaks
about them when he's being interviewed.
I'm going to try and pull some things together
that you've heard today. You've been exhorted
to do something, get involved, run for the
school board, be like Cory Booker.
And they've asked me to tell my personal story,
which isn't that exciting other than I hope
it encourages you to understand that if I
could do these things, so could you.
So I was in the investment business. I had
one of the earlier private equity firms, Wesray
Capital. My partner was Bill Simon, the former
secretary of the Treasury. And we did such
leverage buyouts as Gibson Greeting Cards,
Avis Car Rental, RKO Pictures, Atlas Van Lines,
Wilson's Sporting Goods. And this was in the
beginning of the '80s. And we were earning
a return on equity that exceeded 700% per
year.
So we were really at the top of our game,
at the top of Wall Street. And Bill came into
my office around 1985 and said, Isn't this
great? We've earned more money than we ever
thought possible. We're achieving recognition.
And you don't look happy, Ray.
And I said, you know, I'm not happy, Bill.
I thought if you had financial independence,
your family, good health, you'd be automatically
happy. And so he said, Well, what would it
take for you to become happy? And without
thinking, I said "If we could lose it all
and do it again." It was the wrong thing to
say to Bill Simon.
[ Laughter ]
And he said, you know, you need a vacation.
[ Laughter ]
But from that day on, I felt there was something
missing. And many of you perhaps have experienced
the same thing. But I didn't know what it
was. And I thought maybe it would be sharing
some of his wealth, as Mr. Batista said, with
those less fortunate. So I got involved with
the Boys and Girls Clubs of Newark, the same
city that Cory Booker is the mayor of, where
I was born.
And I really got involved in the lives of
the kids. And so many of them had stopped
learning by the time they were in fifth grade,
so out of sheer desperation, knowing nothing
about what to do, no expertise, my wife Patty
and I in 1987 adopted 1,000 of these minority
children, ages 5, 6 and 7 and agreed to pay
their tuition through college.
Well, we learned --
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
We learned much more from them than they learned
from us. And I recall the first meeting of
the READY program, 27 youngsters, 6 and 7
years of age were meeting with our board of
trustees. And they were all dressed up nicely,
said their READY pledge, said all these other
things they were taught to say. And we asked
them a bunch of questions. And the teacher
said, Children, would you like to ask the
board of trustees anything?
And this one young, handsome man said, "I'd
like to compliment the board on how nice they
look today."
[ Laughter ]
I said, Wait a minute. I have to get to know
this youngster. His name was Autife. We invited
him to our house. We were having a dinner
before a golf outing to benefit the Boys and
Girls Clubs. And Autife was there and Fuzzy
Zoeller, who is somewhat of a comedic golfer
was there. And he introduced himself to Autife.
And he said, What's your name? Autife. How
old are you? He said, As a matter of fact,
I'm going to be 8 years old tomorrow. And
Fuzzy said, Well, here's $5. Happy birthday.
It took Autife about ten seconds to realize
he had the seed for an entrepreneurial business.
And he went to the next guest and said, Mr.
Walsh, I'm going to be 8 years old tomorrow
and Fuzzy gave me $5. By the time we stopped
him, he had collected $82 from our guests.
As you might imagine, he has become an integral
part of our lives.
And several years later, I was taking him
and his older sister -- Autife's father died
in prison. He was there for murder. His mother
had children by four different men. And I
was taking him and his older sister to buy
sneakers.
And Autife was calling me "daddy." And although
the social worker said that's not a good idea,
I allowed him to do that. But his sister said,
Why are you calling Mr. Chambers "daddy,"
he is not your daddy? Autife explained to
her, My daddy died. And I asked Mr. C if I
could call him "daddy," and he said yes.
Isn't that right, Daddy? I said yes. So he
stuck his tongue out at Teesha.
He let 30 seconds go by, he said, Now that
we got that straight, Daddy, are you old enough
to have a will?
[ Laughter ]
And I was starting to feel that void in my
life fill in. It was a sense of my letting
down my barriers and getting to know somebody
like Autife.
But the stories you heard from Cory today
were so true. I experienced much of the same
thing. And he talked about mentoring, being
a big brother, being a caring adult in somebody's
life.
We would have picnics, and we would match
children up with volunteers and that was by
far more important than any money I had put
in trust for their education.
And on this one picnic, a little boy by the
name of Durick met a volunteer by the name
of Mike. And they talked about going to see
the Yankees and the Giants and the Rangers
play. And they were together an hour and half.
The following Monday we lost touch with Durick
because his mother had been arrested for selling
drugs. And three months later, the program
found him. He was living with his grandmother
in another part of Newark.
And he came back to the program. And two weeks
before he was reconnected, he had to write
a paper about the most important person in
his life. It was Mike. Can you imagine? He
only met him for an hour and half. He was
so thirsty, so hungry to make a connection
like that, that that was the most important
person in his life.
And we went on to help rebuild Newark. And
what I learned in business, you need a plan,
a budget, a good board to oversee the plan
and the budget and the best CEO. Well, Newark
didn't have the best CEO as its mayor.
So 16 years ago, a young, handsome, fresh-faced
young man came into my office. He was in his
second year at Yale Law School. And he said,
I'd like to come back after law school and
start a non-profit organization to work on
education. And I said, We don't need any more
NGOs in Newark. We need a new mayor. And that
young man was Cory Booker, and he is our mayor
today. And we have the best CEO we could ever
hope to have.
[ Applause ]
We built a world-class performing arts center.
And in order to further redevelop the city,
we had the idea of building a sports arena.
The governor insisted that our group had to
buy the New Jersey Nets and the New Jersey
Devils to do that. So we did that. And we
were losing a ton of money.
And so we merged it with the New York Yankees,
and I became a 50% owner with George Steinbrenner
of the that was not mean equal ownership.
[ Laughter ]
So at that point, I was learning from Deepak
Chopra about how to feel good and winning
isn't everything and getting engaged with
other people. So I sat down with George, who
was my partner and just a great guy. And I
said, you know, George, it is more important
to be loving than right. In fact, it is more
important to love than to win. And he looked
at me and I said, He's listening to me. I
think maybe I got across to George Steinbrenner.
And he looked for about 60 seconds and he
said, "Ray, show me a good loser and I will
show you a loser."
[ Laughter ]
We took this mentoring idea nationally when
President Bush, 41, asked me to be the founding
chair of the Points of Light Foundation. We
created the National Mentoring Partnership.
As cory said today, that's the single most
important thing we can do with inner city
children. And everybody here today can be
a caring adult through their business, individually.
And in 1991 when we started the National Mentoring
Partnership, we had about 250,000 mentors
in the country, big brothers, big sisters.
And we learned that a youngster at risk who
only has a mentor for 12 months is 50% less
likely to skip school or abuse alcohol. So
with that data, as Eric spoke this morning,
we then set out to create as many mentoring
relationships in the United States.
And over the last 20 years, Colin Powell joined
us and formed America's Promise. And we know
that the World Bank said that for every youngster
who's on the wrong path, if we can put them
on the right path, we save the taxpayers of
the United States $2 million during his or
her life time. So we've gone from 250,000
mentors in the United States to over 3 million
today.
And that saved the U.S. taxpayers over $1.5
trillion. Colin became a good friend. And,
after all of our worlds were changed by September
11th, Colin said during the World Economic
Forum in 2002, the only way we could have
peace in the world is if we could level the
playing field. And I said how would we do
that? So we researched. And we found these
millennium development goals. They're eight
goals signed on to by 192 nations. And they're
quantifiable, much like mentors were quantifiable.
And so we set out to see if we could make
a dent in achieving the millennium development
goals. So I connected with Professor Jeffrey
Sachs, who was the U.N. advisor on the millennium
development goals. And we set up a nonprofit
entity called "Millennium Promise" to try
to help the world achieve the millennium development
goals to try and level that playing field,
as Secretary Powell had said. And Jeff had
the idea of taking the millennium development
goals realtime into two millennium villages
in Africa and quadruple the crops, taught
the people how to build their own school and
clinics. And we then went ahead and built
84 villages in 10 African countries involving
400,000 people. When we were in the middle
of our work, I was introduced to the devastating
disease of malaria. It was something I knew
nothing about five years ago. And I saw these
children in malarial comas. And it turned
out that over a million children a year under
the age of 5 die from malaria. And they die
within 30 hours of getting bitten by a malarious
mosquito. And to watch a 2-year-old or a 3-year-old
dying in a coma is just completely unacceptable.
And I found out that these $10 insecticide-treated
mosquito nets really work. Because this mosquito
only bites after 10:00 at night, and you can
get three children under a net. And there
are 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa where
over 95% of the deaths from malaria occur.
Now -- and, again, relating to you and exhorting
you to follow those requests to get involved,
I used some business ideas. I brought together
a partnership of Unicef, WHO, the Gates Foundation,
the World Bank, the Global Fund to fight AIDS,
tuberculosis, and malaria. And we brought
together many of the presidents of the African
countries. And we came up with one plan. And
we knew we had to raise $5 billion to buy
enough bed nets to cover everybody in Africa.
So, using business ideas, I brought Peter
Chernin in as my co-chairman, who was then
the president of News Corps, which owned Fox.
And we did an American Idol show called "Idol
Gives Back." And we raised $86 million in
one night. But we got 50 million people to
become aware of malaria. We recruited the
National Basketball Association, Major League
Soccer. And we started to raise the visibility
of malaria. $10 buys a bed net, saves a child's
life. Well, we raised $5 billion. And, at
the end of last year, we covered 800 million
people in Africa with bed nets. And we're
predicting zero deaths from malaria by 2015.
[ Applause ]
>>Ray Chambers: Thank you. So this is from
a person who didn't know anything about malaria.
Didn't know anything about mentoring. I feel
so much better today. That void in my life
has somehow been filled in. And Deepak can
explain it tomorrow. How you get there.
But I also got involved with Ashton Kutcher
who, when he was in his race to become the
first person to have a million followers on
Twitter, committed that, if he won against
CNN Breaking News, he would donate $100,000
to buy bed nets. He won, he donated the money.
Went on the Oprah show the next day. She committed
$200,000. He went on the "Larry King Live"
show with P.Diddy. And they were so excited
they called me at home. And Patty said, "Who's
on the phone?" I said, "You won't understand
who this is."
But then we carried on with Ashton and others.
And we reached 200 million people every time
we issue a message for malaria. What you can
do with technology, not just with malaria,
but all these other diseases and challenges
to connect the world, you know, the thought
of each of us, all of us, and the fact that
we are one and that we feel so much better
when we come out of our cocoons and our shells
and we actually reach out to help somebody
else, I don't think that business is meant
to be an end of itself. I think business is
so important, because it's the catalyst that
raises the tide and all the other boats rise
with that tide. But I think it's a means to
an end. And I would really encourage you to
reach out, get involved somehow, recognize
that, with all I've done and how good I feel,
I knew nothing about any of these undertakings
before I started.
So we had a saying at the Points of Light
Foundation that I'll leave you with. "Do something
good. Feel something real." Thank you very
much.
[ Applause ]
