Growing up, I heard a lot about strength. My dad - a Holocaust survivor - embodied it, though he would never say that about himself. Not only did he survive one of the most horrific events in history, but he never lost hope along the way, crediting acts of kindness with keeping him alive.

KIND had grown from a team of dedicated, overworked generalists to a large, professional organization with specialists who had either come in from outside or had been groomed internally to grow in a focused area about which they're passionate.

Big failures hold better lessons than any success - as long as you are in tune with yourself and are open to learning from them. I can trace every one of my accomplishments to earlier failures that I learned from.

Emotional intelligence is a very important skill set, not just to be happier but also to succeed professionally.

Technology changes all the time; human nature, hardly ever.

I love what I do, and I don't think I'm the guy who can do, like, a movie a year and that's it. I don't know what I'd do! I've already put stuff independently on the Internet cause I'm bored! I just want to keep going!

I don't exclusively talk to people on social media; I don't meet people through Tinder. I try to keep it face-to-face, and to be aware if my phone is sucking me away from the rest of the world.

When I decided to leave the military, I realized that the skills I acquired there were transferable to the commercial world both in leadership and the information technology field. I made the decision to move to Oracle because of its strong leadership role.