I had a chance today to sit down and talk with former Houston mayor Bill White and his wife Andrea yesterday. I interviewed them for a tribute film on some super-philanthropist/activists in the Houston, Texas area. We talked a lot about the importance of empowering our youth through education specifically in the areas of math and science.
And when I left this extraordinary man’s house, all I could think about was how in the heck does someone like this lose the Texas governors race to Rick Perry (a creationist who has held the Austin statehouse 10 years – longer than anyone in history)
Isn’t teaching “creationism” illegal? How can the person holding the highest office in the Lone Star state espouse this kind of anti-science?
Mary Tidlund, one of the featured delegates at the 2010 KIN Global Summit, is the Founder & CEO of the Mary A. Tidlund Charitable Foundation, a charitable foundation that identifies, financially supports and participates in medical and educational programs in Canada and overseas. The foundation also has a mandate to alleviate poverty.
MIPtalk returns from its extended hiatus with this exciting interview with media executive, producer and philanthropist Peter Samuelson. Peter Samuelson has three decades of experience running large media organizations across the media landscape and has produced and managed content teams in every major vertical: film, television, web, mobile, videogames and print. He has produced two dozen motion pictures over 25 years, including “Revenge of the Nerds”, “Arlington Road” and the Academy Award nominated “Tom & Viv”.
This week’s guest is Michelle Kydd Lee. Michelle is the Executive Director of the Foundation at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), a talent and literary agency based in Century City. In this role, Ms. Lee serves as a consultant to clients, executives and corporations on their philanthropic and pro-social initiatives.
Jon Turteltaub had a run in with a gorilla. It was his third trip back to the African continent, a place he had first visited will directing the film Instinctstarring Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr. He was standing with a group of tourists in the rolling hills of Uganda, observing roughly 30 mountain gorillas who had reluctantly come to accept people visiting them.
Adlai Wertman had a very successful career on Wall Street. Born to middle class parents who valued education, he looked at his good fortune as being about “everything but me”. The Wall Street pace and the rewards that came from winning was addictive, but he felt that using his skills just to make money for corporations or for himself was a “remarkably selfish waste of time”. He had a responsibility to changes people’s lives. It was never a question of if, simply a matter of when.
He figured he would stay in the high stakes game until he was 50.
