Probably the first time I was a boss was when I was associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Southern California. I was in my early 30s.

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.

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.

the most important thing one can do for children is not accept the limitations they are so willing to impose on themselves.

Bureaucratic systems are not set up to be what we refer to as human service organizations. They were established to collect revenue and maintain law and order and they used a law and order approach in providing family planning services.

My colleagues from the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education are working on participatory public health initiatives in Michigan, and there is much that we can learn from each other. In fact it is essential that we strengthen efforts to learn from each other, and stop considering public health in the third world and in the U.S. as separate intellectual and practical endeavors.

We are trying to discover where this approach could have the greatest possibility of large-scale impact. We have to choose wisely and see where there is greatest interest and need.