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This is impossible,” she said. “I might as well get started.” - Bonnie St. John
" "This is impossible,” she said. “I might as well get started.”
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About Bonnie St. John
Bonnie St. John (born November 7, 1964) is an American former Paralympic skier, author, and public speaker. St. John had her right leg amputated below the knee when she was 5 years old. Despite these challenges, she went on to excel as an athlete, a scholar, a mother and a businesswoman. She is the first African-American to win medals in Winter Paralympic competition as a ski racer, and the first African-American to medal in any paralympic event. St. John earned bronze and silver medals in several alpine skiing events during the 1984 Winter Paralympics. After graduating from Harvard and earning a Rhodes Scholarship, St. John went on to successful corporate career, first in sales with IBM, then as a corporate consultant. She has also written six books, including one each with her daughter Darcy, and her husband, Allen P. Haines.
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Additional quotes by Bonnie St. John
You learn this principle in sports and you rely on it as an entrepreneur. I had to ski at temperatures that were sometimes 50 below zero. There’s not much to like about living in a glacier over the summer. In Colorado, I used to walk a mile to work in the morning at 5:00 a.m. That’s how I supported myself as an athlete. Entrepreneurship is like that as well: you can’t hire people to do all the things you’d like to do. That is a luxury you may have in a larger organization, but you don’t get the luxury of saying ‘That’s not my job’ in a start-up.”
By going through meeting these amazing women who were in these high roles in so many places...they brought their own personality, their femininity, their personality, their quirks to the way they led," says St. John. "And (my daughter) saw, 'Oh wait a minute, so I don't have to become like the men that I see. I should bring my own personality and leadership.' And I think that's one the most important lessons we need to give to the next generation of girls."
As a one-legged athlete, I had to find my own coaches, I had to raise money, I had to organize airline tickets, and I got a scholarship to a ski training school, but I did a lot of the initiative for that so I had to organize it," she explains. "Which I think gave me a lot of strength to be in my own business. I've been at my own business now for twenty years."
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