We Got Mojo!

About the Book

Thirty-five of my BFF and I decided last year to write snippets of our lives, reflecting on how we used our mojo to survive and thrive. Many of us escaped adversity in our home countries, including the genocide of the Killing Fields in Cambodia, the Cuban Revolution, and the brutal life in the rural mountain villages of Perú. Others in my list of BFF escaped the equally harsh demons of drug addiction, while others survived poverty, racism, war, and all forms of discrimination. However, nothing could stop any of us in our aim to lead a successful life with no sulking. None of us considered success the result of becoming rich and famous; instead, to us, success meant bettering ourselves, bettering the world, innovating where we could, and creating businesses, such as Charles Schwab, EnergySolutions, Yahoo, HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon, parts of the Virgin Group, and many others. We have accomplished our goals through passion, leadership, and perseverance without sacrificing our values, and we continue to do so today. The book contains our stories in our own words, and just like Napoleon Hill did in his famous book “Think and Grow Rich” in 1937, we have analyzed our life trips and derived the twenty rules that we have consciously or unconsciously followed to achieve our individual success. The stories represent three dozen lifetimes of successes and failures, or perhaps we should call them learning steps. Through it all, we have used our mojo to the max and still do so today. We truly got mojo, and these are our stories of inspiration and perspiration.

About the Author

Dr. Raul A. Deju, a native of Cuba who migrated to the United States in his early teens, is the founding director emeritus and a supporter of the Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership (IEL) at John F. Kennedy University in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently a senior partner at Brightstar Capital Partners, a New York–based private equity partnership, and CEO of Deju Management Advisors Inc., an advisory and consulting services firm. He has served in executive positions at the top corporate level (CEO, COO, or Division President) at multiple companies, including International Technology Corporation (now Chicago Bridge & Iron), URS Inc. (now AECOM), Waste Management (both domestically and internationally), Isadra Inc., Headwaters, and EnergySolutions. Dr. Deju has served as an adviser to a prior Secretary of Commerce and a prior US EPA Administrator. He is the author of six other books and over two hundred peer-reviewed articles. His first book, Regional Hydrology Fundamentals, was published in hardback by a major publisher in London and New York when he was twenty-five years old. He was named one of the top twenty-five Latinos in the San Francisco area and received commendations for his Latino philanthropy as well as numerous other recognitions. Dr. Deju has been involved in over $5 billion of equity capital being monetized through various liquidity options.

(Bios of the contributing authors written from the lead author’s perspective can be found at the end of their respective chapters.)