If you are the kind of person who listens to conservative advice, you may do okay in life, but you probably won't ever be a fantastic leader. You have to take risks, and you also have to go against conventional wisdom, because conventional wisdom doesn't make for startling advances in society.

Ruth Simmons

Categorized in : Advice Leader Risk

I came to understand the value of education, not just to enable me to make a good living, but to enable me to make a worthwhile life.

Ruth Simmons

value-of-education good-living worthwhile

Fear of failure is the fuel of achievement. If you weren't afraid to fail, you probably wouldn't be highly motivated to work at the level that most of us have to work at to do well.

Ruth Simmons

achievement fuel failure

There's nothing worse than a leader who lacks ambition.

Ruth Simmons

leader ambition

Strategies for research and policy development must simultaneously address people's needs, the capacity of programs to provide good quality of care, and the range of technological options available.

Ruth Simmons

quality people needs

If instead policy makers and program managers participate in an interdisciplinary assessment team, make informal visits to local families and have in-depth conversations with local providers and health authorities, the real needs and complex challenges of organizing good reproductive health services become apparent.The first country that implemented this participatory program of assessment, research and policy development was Brazil. I was one of the outsiders who provided support to the initiative.

Ruth Simmons

team real country

the most important thing one can do for children is not accept the limitations they are so willing to impose on themselves.

Ruth Simmons

accepting important children

The humanities don't belong to some elitist group... knowledge as a whole should be embraced.

Ruth Simmons

groups should humanity

A longer time perspective is needed because we face a daunting task both in an intellectual and practical sense.

Ruth Simmons

perspective intellectual faces

We have emphasized the importance of applied action research because it allows evidence-based policy and program development and a focus on learning. We are also committed to using a participatory approach in which local people, local program managers and providers, local researchers, women's health activists, and national decision-makers play the leading role. International "experts" from technical assistance agencies or universities can make important contributions, but they certainly don't have all the answers.

Ruth Simmons

agency play people

Major changes become possible if you work in a participatory manner, listen to local people, diagnose what the problems are, provide training and identify where there are opportunities for mobilizing local resources to take action.

Ruth Simmons

training opportunity people

There is strong mentoring of women in the academy. Corporations appear more willing to resist affirmative action to advance women, and boards and shareholders are more tolerant of this approach.

Ruth Simmons

corporations boards strong

Nobody had counseled women to expect the changes in bleeding patterns which are typically associated with IUD use, and they received no support from the health clinics with their problems. Because in traditional Hindu culture menstruation is associated with a variety of social taboos, prolonged menstrual bleeding produced conflicts within families.

Ruth Simmons

social-taboos support culture

We wanted to see how access to care can be expanded and service quality can be improved when one uses a participatory approach to program development. We showed that major changes become possible if you work in a participatory manner, listen to local people, diagnose what the problems are, provide training and identify where there are opportunities for mobilizing local resources to take action. In time leaders from other municipalities expressed interest in replication and the project succeeded in expanding innovations to three other areas.

Ruth Simmons

leader opportunity people

If I can give a very substantial injection of humanistic thinking into corporations, boy, that would change things a lot.

Ruth Simmons

giving boys thinking

I was intent on doing something productive and on being everything my parents taught me to be. Their values were clear: do good work; don't ever get too big for your breeches; always be an authentic person; don't worry too much about being famous and rich because that doesn't amount to too much.

Ruth Simmons

taught parent worry

It's very important in a leadership role not to place your ego at the foreground and not to judge everything in relationship to how your ego is fed.

Ruth Simmons

ego important judging

If you want to scale-up, the first thing you have to do is to expand your own team.

Ruth Simmons

team want firsts

It is not enough to give money for demonstration projects. From the very beginning plans should be made for the scaling-up of successful innovations.

Ruth Simmons

innovation successful giving

One of the things we have learned in the first year is that if you want to scale-up, the first thing you have to do is to expand your own team.

Ruth Simmons

team years firsts

We felt that the Gates Foundation looked at our track record and our publications and decided that "this is persuasive; this needs to be done. Let's see what they can do."

Ruth Simmons

records track done