It's very important in a leadership role not to place your ego at the foreground and not to judge everything in relationship to how your ego is fed.

Fear of failure is the fuel of achievement. If you weren't afraid to fail, you probably wouldn't be highly motivated to work at the level that most of us have to work at to do well.

Major changes become possible if you work in a participatory manner, listen to local people, diagnose what the problems are, provide training and identify where there are opportunities for mobilizing local resources to take action.

There's nothing worse than a leader who lacks ambition.

Strategies for research and policy development must simultaneously address people's needs, the capacity of programs to provide good quality of care, and the range of technological options available.

If instead policy makers and program managers participate in an interdisciplinary assessment team, make informal visits to local families and have in-depth conversations with local providers and health authorities, the real needs and complex challenges of organizing good reproductive health services become apparent.The first country that implemented this participatory program of assessment, research and policy development was Brazil. I was one of the outsiders who provided support to the initiative.

If I can give a very substantial injection of humanistic thinking into corporations, boy, that would change things a lot.