Ruth J. Simmons

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

The committee's work is not about whether or how we should pay reparations. That was never the intent nor will the payment of reparations be the outcome. This is an effort designed to involve the campus community in a discovery of the meaning of our past.

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.

There is strong mentoring of women in the academy. Corporations appear more willing to resist affirmative action to advance women, and boards and shareholders are more tolerant of this approach.

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

I often say that shareholders should feel very responsible for how responsive corporations are to the public trust.

I'm the youngest of 12 children. And although I was the youngest, I tried to organize things in my family. When there were disputes, I tried to mediate.

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.