Bill Roedy
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE I was born in Boston [in the United States], but grew up in Miami. My parents split when I was three and my mother raised my sisters and me on her own, which was pretty tough in 1950s America. I finished high school before the Vietnam war, at a time when a life in public service was still widely viewed as cool. After the second world war, military service and public service were admirable pursuits in the US. This appealed to me on a personal level but it also made sense economically, because my family couldn't afford to send me to a university. But if you got into West Point [military academy], it was free, so long as you completed five years of service as an officer upon graduation. So I went. By the time I was finishing though, we were entering the Vietnam era, and the country was mired in controversy.
STAYING ALIVE I was always a newspaper junkie so I read The New York Times constantly, which was diametric- ally opposed to the guidance and world view I was getting at West Point. I naively thought the best way to reconcile those divergent views was to go to Vietnam and see it for myself. So while a lot of my classmates were trying to avoid going over at all costs, I decided to volunteer. To prepare myself, I went to Army Ranger School and by the time I got [to Vietnam], I felt I was going to be fairly ready, even though I was only 22. I quickly learned that there's no way to fully prepare for combat; it's an experience like none other. You don't have time to step back and reflect philosophically or strategically - you just try to stay alive. I was assigned as a platoon leader with 40mm tank-like weapons on a truck, which I used to protect about half a dozen firebases along the DMZ [demilitarised zone]. Luckily, I was never injured. Near the end of my stint, I worked for a general and had the op- portunity to travel to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Bangkok. [When] I left Asia, I still had three years left of my service commitment. My specialty in school had been strategic air defence, so I was sent to Italy, where I was retrained to command a nuclear missile base.
PEER PRESSURE Coming home three years later, I felt that life was too short to be a career military officer. I was ready to move on and join the world of work; but, although I had a lot of highly developed skills, I knew nothing about business. So I went to Harvard Business School. My classmates, who were all about 25, complained about the stress of business school. By the time I was 25, I had dodged bullets, commanded hundreds of troops through combat and been responsible for nuclear missiles. I was certainly challenged intellectually at Harvard, but it was hard to take the pressure too seriously.
INSIDE THE BOX During school, all my classmates were interning for high-powered jobs in New York; I went to work for a small local TV station instead, to get a hands-on feel for the industry. I had seen the joy and relief that our little black-and-white box had provided for my mother and great aunt after long days of work, and I was interested in being involved in that. After I finished school, I was offered my dream job at NBC. But walking the halls and trying to get a feel for the culture of the place before I accepted, I got the sense that it was all a bit old. It didn't have the same energy as a young, upstart network I interviewed with - HBO. It was 1979 and no one had even heard of HBO, but I took a little leap of faith and went for it. It turned out to be an amazing experience. HBO was the engine that drove the cable rollout in the 1970s and 80s in the evolution of television. I learned a lot about building a business, which helped later on at MTV.
JET-SETTER I served as chairman and chief executive of MTV Networks International, where I helped to develop MTV into the global network it is today. In 1994, I had to pick the location for the headquarters of MTV Asia. It seems hard to believe now, but at the time we weren't sure which way Hong Kong would go after 1997 - so we went to Singapore. But we've always had a sales office in Hong Kong and I've loved the energy of this city since my first visit, in 1971. I can recall being impressed by the Star Ferry, the low cost of goods, and the warmth of the people. It remains one of my favourite cities. I spent 22 years with MTV - I officially left last January - and in many ways, it was the most amazing gig imaginable. As a businessperson, it was an incredible challenge and opportunity; and as an individual, it was all pretty surreal. I've had the privilege and honour of meeting more than 30 heads of state and just about every major artist and celebrity in the world. I've gone from walking the red carpet in Sydney with 50 Cent to meeting the president of South Korea in Seoul the very next morning. I had an unexpected hour-long meeting with Nelson Mandela in South Africa and then was ushering Pamela Anderson into the Kremlin a few days later. I chronicled these experiences and my theories on how to build a global business from the ground up in my book [What Makes Business Rock].
GIVING BACK I'm a firm believer in the idea that doing good is good for business. I was involved with global health at MTV for quite some time. One of the first big things we did was the Global Business Coalition, which was the first aggregated global business response to HIV/Aids, back in the early 90s. We aligned the brand with HIV/Aids, disaster relief, get out the vote, safe sex, don't drink and drive, preventing human trafficking and a host of other issues. In 1998, I became an ambassador for the United Nations, for its HIV/Aids programme, and I got to address the General Assembly about the epidemic a few times. I now chair two global health organisation boards and sit on five others. The one I'm most excited about is Gavi [Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation], the Bill and Melinda Gates [Foundation's] largest initiative. It just celebrated its first 10 years and has already saved more than 5.5 million lives by giving vaccinations to children below the age of five in the developing world. I've rarely seen something that's so big - in this case, childhood disease and death - approached with such an effective solution. Our goal is to save another 4.5 million lives by 2015. I've retired from TV, but I remain a busy guy.
