Welcome to The Art of The Impossible, a weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces of content which I hope will both inspire and embolden you.
PODCAST
Thank you to all those who listened to Series 12 of the podcast. I will be taking a short break before I start Series 13 with some more seriously GREAT guests!
In the mean time, feel free to join me interview TED’s Chris Anderson LIVE at the stunning Kindred - get your tickets here.
And don’t forget, I have started to share some of my interviews on my YouTube channel, including one of my favourite interviews of all time - with Kelsey Hightower, which you can watch here.
QUOTE
Use the difficulty… to your advantage. Michael Caine
INTERVIEW
I am such a huge fan of Robert F. Smith - an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners. He graduated from Cornell University with a chemical engineering degree and from Columbia Business School with an MBA, before working as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.
Four years ago, whilst delivering the commencement speech at Morehouse College, he pledged to pay off the ENTIRE $34 million of student loan debt of all of the members of the 2019 graduating class. Watch it here.
In this interview at Yale, Robert discusses his origin story, working at Bell Labs and the lessons he learned there, as well as more on tech, community and giving back. Watch here.
BOOK
The Fly Girls Revolt: The Story of the Women Who Kicked Open the Door to Fly in Combat by Eileen A. Bjorkman
I am always fascinated about those who disrupt a field or industry, and with International Women’s Day coming next month, I thought I would share this book from Eileen A Bjorkman who I have followed on Twitter for a while. She is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel with 700+ hours of flying time as a flight test engineer in 25 different types of military aircraft, primarily the F-4, F-16, C-130, and C-141.
The Fly Girls Revolt is the untold story of the women military aviators of the 1970s and 1980s who kicked open the door to fly in combat in 1993—along with the story of the women who paved the way before them.
In 1993, U.S. women earned the right to fly in combat, but the full story of how it happened is largely unknown. From the first women in the military in World War II to the final push in the 1990s, The Fly Girls Revolt chronicles the actions of a band of women who overcame decades of discrimination and prevailed against bureaucrats, chauvinists, anti-feminists, and even other military women.
Drawing on extensive research, interviews with women who served in the 1970s and 1980s, and her personal experiences in the Air Force, Eileen Bjorkman weaves together a riveting tale of the women who fought for the right to enter combat and be treated as equal partners in the U.S. military.
Although the military had begun training women as aviators in 1973, by a law of Congress they could not fly in harm’s way. Time and again when a woman graduated at the top of her pilot training class, a less-qualified male pilot was sent to fly a combat aircraft in her place.
Most of the women who fought for change between World War II and today would never fly in combat themselves, but they earned their places in history by strengthening the U.S. military and ensuring future women would not be denied opportunities solely because of their sex. The Fly Girls Revolt is their story.
Buy the book here.
FILM
INVESTORS: A Master Class
I really like the documentaries Honeypot does and this one is no different.
Investors is a 30 mins “master class” where Honeypot explores the people and money behind some of Europe’s tech unicorns such as Spotify and Zalando.
It asks questions of successful investors and founders like, What makes a billion dollar idea? When is the right time to raise Venture Capital? What makes a great founding team? How to talk to a VC? What does a great pitch deck look like? What does the future of the tech industry look like? It also goes into more detail about startup pain points such are recruitment and funding.
In this docu, you’ll hear from the following investors and founders: Emma Tracey – Co-Founder & Ex CEO of Honeypot and Angel Investor Claude Ritter – Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Cavalry Filip Dames and Christian Meerman – Founding Partners at Cherry Ventures Jonathan Becker – Partner at Headline Staffan Helgesson and Simon Schmincke – General Partners at Creandum Johan van Mil – Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Peak.
Watch it here.
Thank you for reading the newsletter and for listening to the podcast, and if you enjoy them, please do share with your network - my goal is to have these stories reach as many as possible so that others can be inspired too. And if you have two minutes, please do leave a review for the podcast - it would mean the world to me and helps others to find it too.
Danielle