Mentor memo one: Saint Paul from Ireland

BONO IN CONVERSATION:
Introducing another Saint Paul (Hewson aka Bono) [1]:

Born: May 10, 1960 in Dublin, Ireland, second and youngest son to their Protestant mother and Roman Catholic father. He lost his mom at age fourteen when she collapsed after coming home from her own father’s funeral. He attended an Ecumenical school, the first of its kind in Dublin.

Family: Bono married his high school sweetheart, Alison Steward in 1982 in an Anglican ceremony. They have four children: two girls: Jordan (1989), Memphis Eve (1991) and two boys: Elijah Bob Patricus Guggi Q (1999), and John Abraham (2001) and they are based in Killiney in south County Dublin and spend their ‘family month’ in Eze, France each year.

Occupations: Bono became the lead vocalist and song-writer for the rock band U2 started in 1976 (two years after the death of his mom). They believed that Rock ‘n Roll could change the world and they set out to do just that.

World changing mechanisms started by Bono and his team:
...2002: establishes DATA (debt AIDS trade Africa) with Bobby Shriver and other Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt Campaign activists
What does DATA do?
[www.data.org] DATA publishes international policies affecting Africa and hold the world leaders who make them accountable to their promises regarding;
1)Debt,
2)AIDS, TB and Malaria,
3)Trade,
4)Development Assistance and Millennium Challenge,
5)The Global Fund,
6)US Federal Budget,
7)Commission for Africa,
8)G8 ,
9)the IMF World Bank and
10)the World Summit

...2005: joining in a venture with his wife and a New York based Irish fashion designer began EDUN (‘nude’ spelt backwards)
What does EDUN do?
[www.edun.ie] EDUN shifts the focus of the international world on Africa from aid to trade.
EDUN aims to create/highlight existing factories in Africa, South America and India that serve as examples for employment to developing countries by practicing fair wages, good business ethics which will encourage investment in those and other countries.

...2006: most recently Bobby Shriver and Bono teamed up again to launch another initiative called Product Red
What does Product Red do?
[www.joinred.com] PRODUCT RED raises money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
They have collaborated with companies such as American Express, Apple Computer, Converse, Motorola, The Gap and Georgio Armani who have created products with the Product Red logo and so channeling a percentage of their profits to buying medicine for Africa.

Most recent recognitions:
• nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, 2005 and 2006
• awarded the Pablo Neruda International Presidential Medal of Honour from the Government of Chile in 2004
• named by Time as one of the “100 Most Influential People” in their May 2004 special issue
• named by Time as a Person of the Year along with Bill and Melinda Gates in 2005
• named in the annual honours list as an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2006 as he could not be knighted because he is Irish.

A bird’s eye view through this dialogue between Bono and Michka Assayas and how it reveals Bono's leadership style:

This book tells the story of a young boy who grew up with a frustrated father who lost his wife too early. They lived in a country torn by religion and politics enforced by a colonial regime in poverty which drove most men to alcoholism. This boy joined a band at the age of sixteen and expressed his frustrations through music and art.

One day their band played in a concert that collected money to pay for food needed in Ethiopia. Bono and his wife of three years decided to visit this foreign country and worked in an orphanage together for a month. They discovered that this poor country paid back double of the money their concert generated in old debt to the First World while their citizens were starving.
This experience changed their lives and they started investing their subsequent celebrity status (which they call ‘currency’) to get the reality of Africa into the hearts of the rest of the world.

Bono uses his fame on two basic levels: first on the least spectacular level through all the various groups and organizations they support, they empower individuals by educating them and giving them opportunities to get involved on a personal level. Secondly on the public stage, he works through the various public figures he has come to know through his ‘rock-star-status’ to gain access to world leaders on all the different tiers involved in solving the wide spectrum of challenges that Africa face by introducing them to Africa first-hand and encounter the realities he wants them to help him with.

Bono on his passion: “ You become a single-issue protagonist. You represent a constituency that has no power, no vote, in the West, but whose lives are hugely affected by our body politic. Our clients are the people who are not in the president’s ear. My mouth, because of it, belongs to them.” (p104)

Bono about changing attitudes: “It turns out that a lot of things that you learn from being in a band are analogous to politics, even the so-called nasty old world of commerce, anywhere you’ve got to get your message across. I know much more than you’d expect about these things, just from trying to keep on top of U2’s business. We like to say our band is a gang of four, but a corporation of five. I understand economics. This is not all so difficult. U2 was art school, business school. It’s always the same attitude that wins the day: faith over fear. Know your subject, know your opponent. Don’t have an argument you can’t win. On the African stuff we can’t lose, because we’re putting our shoulder to a door God Almighty has already opened. We carry with us—this is something that’s important—the moral weight of an argument. That’s much bigger than the personalities having the debate. I might walk into an important office and people are looking at me as though I’m some sort of an exotic plant. But after a few minutes, they don’t see me. All they’re hearing is the argument, and the argument has some sort of moral force that they cannot deny. It’s bigger than you, and it’s bigger than them. And history has God on its side.” (p105-6)

Bono about himself: "I'm not saying I'm not good at the penthouse life--but I'm also good at the pavement. That's a source of pride for me, that I'm good at both. I'm good at the high life, I'm good at the low life. It's that middle where I lose it...No, I'm not a celebrity. I'm a scribbling, cigar-smoking, wine-drinking, Bible-reading band man. A show-off [laughs]...who loves to paint pictures of what I can't see. A husband, father, friend of the poor and sometimes the rich. An activist traveling salesman of ideas. Chess player, part-time rock-star, opera singer, in the loudest folk group in the world."

[1] Information assimilated from Kevin Byrne’s biography available at www.atu2.com, Wikipedea and the relevant biography by Mischka Assayas entitled 'Bono in conversation with Mischka Assayas', published by Riverhead Books (2006), 388 pages.

Dear Mr. Assayas and Mr. Hewson:
thank you for speaking this book into life,
it has changed mine forever,
for better.
Leani