I was never going to be one of Nobel prize winners.

In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, my grandfather got me a job at a local messenger company working on Wall Street. I was lucky enough to have been in the business during a stock market boom but just before the fax machine appeared on the scene, let alone email and the Internet. As a result, the messenger business was booming.

CEOs are no different than the guy in the mailroom. They all have to learn how to manage better the risk created by our increasingly risk-shifting world.

I believe that only a subset of us is meant to lead. The rest want to follow.

During that time, I began writing and designing the propaganda that we distributed to the students who we were trying to convince to join us.

I got to carve through the streets of New York's financial district and discover the awesome feeling of being part of a system where, the harder you worked, the more of those scarce resources you earned! I never looked back.

There is a direct line between the communications work I did to protest tuition increases at my school and what I do today. Plus it had one other benefit...it got me kicked out of college!