Risk is the essence of any reward - to try the thing that no one else is willing to try.
— Bozoma Saint John
I'm a natural optimist.
Part of innovation is, fake it until you make it. Keep trying things, but it's not just the random trying.
I am very competitive - with myself and everybody else. I'm petty, too.
I was born in Middletown, Connecticut, while my dad was getting his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and anthropology at Wesleyan University.
There's no more exciting moment for me as a brand strategist than a turnaround.
I've always been a black woman in corporate America. I've faced my share of issues.
I don't see a utopia anywhere for me.
I don't expect anyone who doesn't look like me to fix my problems.
Music inspires some feeling in you. That's the same way I think about Uber.
You can't control everything.
I really did enjoy my time at Apple - it's a great company, and I really loved building Apple Music.
We all know this: Music is such a fundamental part of life.
I want white men to look around in their office and say, 'Oh, look, there's a lot of white men here. Let's change this.'
I don't have to be an engineer to understand we need female engineers.
I want to be something that is worthy to be bragged about.
I want things to be great for people of color and for women.
I don't curse in front of my daughter. Well, sometimes.
We only get better by telling our real story. That's the only way to be.
We're complex human beings. I can wear a leather dress and still have an 8-year-old and wipe up the eggs that are on her face.
As a first-generation American, my parents expected that I would go on to have pretty tactical higher-education-type jobs - doctor, lawyer, engineer. Those were the three options. My dad was not at all open to the idea that there would not be a higher education in my future.
My family moved a lot, so I was always walking in as the new kid.
If our employees are wearing the Uber sweatshirt to the grocery store, that would make me feel great.
Because my husband, Peter, died young, I've already faced the scariest thing in my life. Now I live out the dreams for both of us.
We need better corporate environments. We need better workplaces everywhere.
I always do what I'm most interested in first.
Don't let the myths make you believe that women don't support other women.
For me, pop culture is very fluid: it's music, it's movies, it's books, it's art, it's tech, it's so many things - and as marketing and brand advocates, we should be able to to take products and services and match them to what's happening in pop culture.
I think diversity and having women and people of color in key positions is really important.
I love Apple Music. I helped build Apple Music. It will always be a very, very big part of my life and part of the journey.
Even though society has come a long way in correcting the inequalities between men and women in the workplace, it still has to be said that women are oftentimes subconsciously playing to the gender roles which we are taught from birth.
It's important to be an ally. You don't have to be a black woman to think we should have more black women in tech.
Marketers sometimes get caught in this lie that you must talk to people only in the voice that they recognize.
Bring your whole self to work because, that way, you can bring full ideas and the wholeness of your unique abilities.
I think that people are innately good.
Mentors are like friendships.
I'm always trying to do things better than I've done them before, do them faster than I've done them before.
Six months after I was born, we moved to Ghana. The first five years of my life were there. In 1982, when there was a coup d'etat, my family left because the government was overthrown, and my dad was involved in politics.
I'm bold in personality, I'm hella tall, and I'm hella black.
I've never run from a job; I've always run to another one.
I firmly believe brand stories are complex and multilayer.
We should all be allies to ideas or people or initiatives that we don't necessarily have a real knowledge in.
You gotta go with your gut. It will never steer you wrong.
At 13, I learned what it meant to walk into a room and not care what everybody thinks of you.
I feel really proud of the work I did at Apple Music, and I don't take anything away from it that's negative at all.
Being a black woman in America and the world and in corporate situations is something to be celebrated.
The number of African Americans in Silicon Valley is dismal. It's not up to one company - it's up to the entire industry to make sure that we are moving the conversation forward. Sometimes those walls of competition need to come down so we can move the entire industry forward.
My job is about emotion. My job is about feeling. This might be controversial to say, but I feel like sometimes data gets in the way of that.
I can't be in an environment that is not conducive to me as a black woman.
At school, I could talk about what other kids were talking about. Maybe I wouldn't seem so strange if I connected with them on the level they were used to.
