Walt Elias Disney

   (a condensed version of the Long Biography) Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago Illinois, to his father Elias Disney, and mother Flora Call Disney. Walt was one of five children, four boys and a girl. After Walt's birth, the Disney family moved to Marceline Missouri, Walt lived most of his childhood here. Walt had...

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Colonel Sanders (KFC)

Colonel Sanders was 65 years old when he received his first social security cheque of $99. He was broke, and owned a small house and a beat up car. He made a decision that he has got to change. The only idea he had was a chicken recipe, which his friends liked. With that idea in mind, he took massive action. He left his home in Kentucky and traveled to many states in the US to sell his idea. He told the restaurant owners that he had a...

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Jerry Yang (Yahoo!)

 His father died when he was only two years. Yang moved to San José at the age of ten years with his mother and brother. He said that even if his mother was an English teacher, he knew only one word (shoe) on his arrival in the United States. Yang is graduated from the Sierramont Middle School, and Piedmont Hills School and he received his BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering at Stanford University, where he was a member of...

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Konosuke Matsushita

  Humble Beginnings Konosuke Matsushita was born into a well-off landowning family in 1894. A decline in the family's fortunes during his childhood meant that Matsushita's education was cut short. At age 9 he became a brazier's apprentice, then a year later a bicycle shop apprentice. He stayed five years at the bicycle shop, picking up basic metalworking skills. At age 16 he went to work in the Osaka Electric Light...

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Akio Morita (The founder of Sony)

After World War II, Japanese companies began flooding the American market with many inexpensive and poorly made products, and most Americans associated the words "Made in Japan" with poor quality. Akio Morita changed that perception by building an international company whose name is associated with innovative and high-quality products around the world. He was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1921. The...

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Soichiro Honda

    Like most other countries, Japan was hit badly by the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1938, Soichiro Honda was still in school, when he started a little workshop, developing the concept of the piston ring.     His plan was to sell the idea to Toyota. He labored night and day, even slept in the workshop, always believing he could perfect his design and produce a worthy product. He was married by now, and...

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Dame Anita Roddick (The Body Shop)

In Brief: Born: 23 October 1942 Died: 10 September 2007 Married: T. Gordon Roddick, 1970 Children: Justine 1969, Samantha 1971 Grandchildren: Maiya Hopi 1994, Atticus-Finch 1998, Osha Sophia Bluebell 1998 Education: Maude Allen Secondary Modern School for Girls, Littlehampton; Newton Park College of Higher Education, Bath Career 1962-76 Library of International Herald Tribune, Paris Teacher of English and History, England Women's...

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Pierre Omidyar (eBay)

 Synopsis Iranian-American economist Pierre Omidyar is best known as the founder and chairman of eBay, the online auction website. Omidyar graduated from Tufts University in 1988 with a degree in computer science and worked for both Macintosh and Apple before founding eBay. By the end of 1998, the company boasted 2.1 million members and generated $750 million in revenues. ...

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Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com)

 Synopsis Entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bezos had an early love of computers and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. After graduation, he worked on Wall Street, and in 1990 became the youngest senior vice president at the investment firm D.E. Shaw. Four years later, he quit his...

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Henry Ford (Ford Motor)

  Henry Ford: Early Life & Engineering Career Born in 1863, Henry Ford was the first surviving son of William and Mary Ford, who owned a prosperous farm in Dearborn, Michigan. At 16, he left home for the nearby city of Detroit, where he found apprentice work as a machinist. He returned to Dearborn and work on the family farm after three years, but continued to operate and service steam engines and work occasional stints in Detroit...

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Sam Walton (Founder of Walmart)

Founder of Walmart Walmart as we know it today evolved from Sam Walton’s goals for great value and great customer service. “Mr. Sam,” as he was known, believed in leadership through service. This belief that true leadership depends on willing service was the principle on which Walmart was built, and drove the decisions the company has made for the past 50 years. So much of Walmart’s history...

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Steven Paul Jobs (Apple Macintosh)

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California. His unwed biological parents, Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, put him up for adoption. Steve was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, a lower-middle-class couple, who moved to the suburban city of Mountain View a couple of years later. Paul Jobs and his son The Santa Clara county, south of the Bay Area, became known as Silicon Valley in the early 1950s after...

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