Role Model Assessment

'''Who do you admire in the world? Why?''' Elon Musk.

He is an incredibly successful self-made serial entrepreneur whose vision go far beyond the bottom line of his companies. Most rich billionaires you hear about are motivated money, but Musk's motivation stems from his ability to change the world. One of the greatest traits about Elon Musk is his relentless pursuit for the betterment of humanity. All his venture are truly innovative for its time, but importantly, aimed to solve a difficult societal issue.

Are they solving problems, creating new solutions, technologies, changing the world, making a difference, in a way you admire?

As a leader, he is fearless in tackling some of society’s biggest and most challenging problems, including global warming and sustainable energy production. I admire his work ethics and tolerance for risk. Many times, he risked everything he had in order to build his businesses (Tesla and SpaceX were all at the brink of bankruptcy at one point).

'''Do some research into their background - how did they get to where they are? Are there marked shifts in their path & work?'''

He studied Queen’s University for two years and then transferred to University of Pennsylvania. Musk had an entrepreneurial mindset from an early age and founded many companies with his brother. An early milestone for Musk was being apart of the dot-com boom and founded a company called X.com, which eventually merged with PayPal and Elon Musk became its CEO.

'''If you think of what this person or organization has achieved, what seems to define success? Have they had multiple successes? how have new initiatives or projects built on older ones?'''

For Elon Musk, success for him would be the amount of impact he had made in on humanity. PayPal changed the way people transferred money, Tesla introduced innovation technology for electric cars, SpaceX revolutionized space travel. Despite having multiple successful ventures, Musk remains modest and invests the earnings he made from previous ventures into his new one.

Frank Zhang

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