BOZOMA SAINT JOHN

Six months after I was born, we moved to Ghana. The first five years of my life were there. In 1982, when there was a coup d'etat, my family left because the government was overthrown, and my dad was involved in politics.

You gotta go with your gut. It will never steer you wrong.

I firmly believe brand stories are complex and multilayer.

Don't let the myths make you believe that women don't support other women.

I'm living out my dreams every day.

I think diversity and having women and people of color in key positions is really important.

I really did enjoy my time at Apple - it's a great company, and I really loved building Apple Music.

If I can be in a position of power and influence, and be able to make my present better, then I want to do that.

You can't control everything.

Working at Uber, I see opportunity and potential.

I think a lot of women have felt really powerless.

I've worked hard for my life. No one gave me anything.

I always do what I'm most interested in first.

We need better corporate environments. We need better workplaces everywhere.

When I was growing up, the brands that were most powerful were people brands, like Michael Jackson or Madonna. They stood for something that, perhaps, wasn't wholly who they were, which then became an image that they sold. That's still a brand to me.

I think it's interesting how you can associate a creative brand with a human being and use some of the good qualities of the human being and make it like a really tangible product that a lot of people can love.

Even now, when people ask me, 'Why did you take the job at Uber?' I say because my gut told me to.

For me, pop culture is very fluid: it's music, it's movies, it's books, it's art, it's tech, it's so many things - and as marketing and brand advocates, we should be able to to take products and services and match them to what's happening in pop culture.

My family moved a lot, so I was always walking in as the new kid.

I feel really proud of the work I did at Apple Music, and I don't take anything away from it that's negative at all.

I bite my nails.

I don't think it's any secret that there's a lack of diversity in Silicon Valley. But that, to me, is actually quite beautiful. It allows me to be fully me because there is no one else to look at and say, 'Oh, I should be more like that.'

It's our job as marketers and brand professionals to nurture the brand and calm it down when it's angry and to encourage when it's trying to grow.

Pop culture and entertainment can be dismissed as surface, but it's not. It's the language we all speak, and it's the connection point between people all over the world.

At school, I could talk about what other kids were talking about. Maybe I wouldn't seem so strange if I connected with them on the level they were used to.