I would be remiss if I did not have something to say about Steve Jobs - quite a loss to our country and to the tech industry. Despite his reputed mercurial personality and his driving qualities, he does exemplify several very important aspects of positive leadership – particularly when it comes to creativity and vision. Leadership is not just about interpersonal skills – it is much more and Jobs showed this quite vividly.

A speaker I heard this morning suggested that we look at the amazing Apple growth, innovation, and profitability record under Jobs. When Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 (which was fortunate for many of us because Jobs bought the amazing company Pixar and made it very successful during that time period - and his company NeXT formed the foundational software that became the Mac OS X operating system), Apple floundered. But in 1997, following Apple's acquisition of NeXT, the next several years brought tremendous growth and profitability for Apple and also brought the amazing changes to our world that are being touted now at the time of his death. iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad – these things are ubiquitous!

Merci beaucoup Steve.