Jeremiah good morning, everybody. I want to start off by thanking the American Veteran center for this spectacular series of events, and for their Wonderful Service to our country. I also am so impressed with the quality of the young people here today. These young, high potential military leaders inspire confidence in me as a father of four with three grandkids in terms of the future of my kids and grandkids in this country. I also am very appreciative of a special group of the initiative that are here today. Having come from across the country. You have no doubt seen the formal side of peter cuneo in his bio in your program. As a leading turnaround expert, if you go to forbes. Com, they say he is top 10 up there was steve jobs and others. His most notable turnaround was marvel entertainment, which he took out of bankruptcy and sold to disney nine years later for 4. 5 billion. Anybody here a fan of marvel . Every hand. I want to share briefly little more on the personal side, having had the pleasure and honor of working with peter as a partner and as a friend for over seven years. Peter is a patriot, having served on the uss strauss in the vietnam conflict as a Surface Warfare officer, command duty officer, Fleet Officer of the deck, and air intercept controller. After which, he pivoted and completed Harvard Business school, and having emerged from Harvard Business school, having gone to Alfred University, ultimately became chairman of the board of Alfred University and received an honorary degree. Service to the country, business leadership, academic leadership, and peter is also a patriarch. He has been married for 49 years to his lovely bride with whom i have had the opportunity to work philanthropicly. Peter did found what we call a Family Office after exiting marvel, which is intergenerational wealth in which generations work together. That is the work of the wealth and values initiative. Were doing a lot philanthropicly lately for veterans, which is 50 of the foundation, as well as an area we call sports for good. Our mission is to inspire wealth and power to pivot toward giveback. All of those dimensions, hard to imagine one person has done them. Peter has done them wonderfully, and the most important take away, he walks the talk. Without further ado, my friend and partner peter cuneo. [applause] peter thank you all very much. Can you hear me ok . Great. I saw the hands go up for marvel. Now i have to change my entire presentation. I have a feeling we want to talk more about marvel than anything else. [laughter] peter i will talk a little bit about marvel, and i have changed my presentation although not so much for the hands this morning. But because i have been very inspired the last couple of days sitting in on almost all the sessions. There were that certain themes that came out of the sessions that i think i can help reinforce. Every speaker, as you might imagine, i have been doing these kinds of things for 20 years, wants to leave something behind. Something that the audience will remember no matter what. Just one thing. If you can do that, you have been very successful. I will try to do that with all of you today. Think of this presentation not as a Group Presentation but simply as a fireside chat. I want to speak to each of you individually, at least spiritually if not an actual practice. I am thrilled to be here and again, i am always tremendously turned on when i can speak to people that are younger than i. We get to a certain age where we older people get a lot of our energy from younger people. Seeing the bright lights in our future, which i think includes all of you in the room today. The task that i was assigned was to talk about some of the leadership lessons i learned in the military that i subsequently used in civilian life. Im going to do that today. I will use marvel as a model in some cases for things i learned in the military but was able to apply in the future. I am wearing two pins today. I think they are important. The pin on my left lapel is of the National Archives. I have been on the board of the National Archives foundation for eight years. We are having this meeting here today by pure coincidence. I sat in your seats for a long time and seen scores of people here at the podium presenting. For me, it is fun to do a reversal today and be up here. The National Archives is in some ways americas bestkept secret. The National Archives keeps the records of all departments of the government from the beginning. We have 16 billion documents. 6 billion are digital. We have 10 billion documents that are not digital. We have the largest collection of antique maps. The largest collection of film. I think it is 48 million photographs in the archives. We talked earlier today i think about the importance of education and learning history. I always loved history growing up. Its one of the reasons why i went into the military. I will talk a little about that. It is also the reason i am on the board of the archives. Because i love history, i do believe that past is prologue. That by studying history, we can increase our wisdom. Human nature being what it is, it tends to repeat itself. The trappings may be different and the situations may be different, but it will be very important for you to be successful in the future to understand human nature. Whether you are a junior officer, or a star rank, reading people is very important. I learned a lot of that in the navy and i have used that successfully in civilian life, as well. The archives is americas bestkept secret. You are sitting a couple floors down underneath the declaration of independence, the constitution, the bill of rights and a copy of the magna carta. Which is the basis for all english law. Someone said, please get up there and take a look while you are here. It is truly an amazing experience to see those documents. The archives also oversees all 14 president ial libraries. For someone like me who loves history, this is a gold mine, if you will. A great place, a hallowed place, a sacred place for me, and it should be for all americans. The archives are open to all americans, with the exception of some confidential documents, obviously. All americans can come here and take advantage. The pin on my right lapel is also from the archives. We at the foundation raise money to do special exhibits that will first be here. The exhibit is here presently is the exhibit on the 19th amendment, the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote, womens suffrage. If you are going to be here, i think you would learn a lot about the plight of women historically in our country. I would recommend to you that you try to get through that exhibit, male or female. I think you would learn a great deal. Several years ago, we did the 50th anniversary of the vietnam war, of which i am a veteran. The four of us on the board that were Vietnam Veterans got this pin, and i thought i would just wear it that year, but frankly i wear it all the time and i dont think i will ever take it off. This all ties together under this rooftop. I think it is super moving for me to be here today. I want to talk a little bit about my service, why did i go in the navy in the first place . I was from a navy family. My father was a navy officer in the south pacific. In the korean war, he was the ordinance officer on the uss valley forge. My father loved the navy. He wanted to stay in, even though he was way past the age when vietnam came. He wrote a letter to the navy to try to get them to call him back up, even though he was retired. That was typical of my father. The archives has, in st. Louis, the records of 100 million americans that have served in the military from world war i forward. In this building, we have the other military records of all the americans that served from the revolutionary war to just prior to world war i. I have actually gotten my fathers records from st. Louis and i learned a great deal about my father i never knew. My father had a difficult time with ptsd and he died young because of it. To a certain degree as a young kid, i could never understand why he was so unhappy. He was a lieutenant in the new York Fire Department as well. My uncle, uncle roy, he is 96, is one of my heroes. He landed with macarthur, in the Largest Naval engagement in history. I am going to talk about one aspect of that in a little bit. My uncle also served in the navy during the korean war. Growing up, this was part of my life. I loved history. I read a lot of military history. I was moved by it, i watched a lot of the old films, i thought i was john wayne to a certain degree in these films. I might mention a few of them to you. You might actually want to have the same experience i have had. Maybe one for each service. In the air force, i think what really inspired me was a film that i would consider to be and i am in the film business, remember perhaps the greatest movie on military leadership ever made. It was made in 1948 and was nominated for an academy award. It won several awards, and was runnerup for best picture. If you are wondering about it, is a film called twelve oclock high, starring gregory peck. Anyone sitting here involved with the air force, it is the true story of the americans taking on daylight bombing in world war ii over europe flying out of england. It is a turnaround story. I made my career doing turnarounds. Marvel is just one of seven i completed. Taking on difficult assignments when things were chaotic financially, culturally. This is a turnaround film. A particular squadron is not doing well. Gregory peck is asked by his commander to take over the squadron. I really recommend it to you. You may think, 1948, blackandwhite, how good could it be . It is classic. Twelve oclock high, gregory peck. I am requesting you all try to see the film. I use it in my presentations about leadership and i will use the film to start things off. For the marine corps, you might say i am going to talk about iwo jima. Iwo jima is considered the marine corpss finest hour. We certainly we have a wonderful memorial here in washington. But i have a slightly different opinion. For me and all my readings, the marine corpss greatest moment may be the choisin reservoir in north korea. For those of you thinking about the marine corps, you must read the story. It is the korean war, we have driven the North Koreans back basically to the chinese border. The chinese decide it is winter they decide to enter the war and they send millions of soldiers against us in the north. The marines are occupying the area around the reservoir. It is minus 30 degrees. Human waves of chinese come at the marines, it is 10 to one. 10 to one. One of the reasons people maybe dont associate this as a great moment is because this initiated a strategic withdrawal by the marines. They had to fight their way out from being surrounded 10 to one in 30 degrees. I believe this might be the battle in which the marines earned more medals of honor than any other single battle in their history. I am not sure of that but there are certainly many of them, and they did not leave anyone behind. There are a lot of good books about this. Once again, i would offer it to you. For the army, it is of course normandy. I was privileged to make my first visit to normandy three weeks ago. We all know this is the 75th anniversary of normandy and i was very moved. There are 9900 americans buried in the cemetery. If you go, you must visit the beach, if you can call it the beach, where the cliffs go straight up and where the rangers came in and basically shut up grappling hooks and climbed up against the germans, literally on top of them. Germans did not defend Pointe Du Hoc with infantry because they considered it basically impregnable. Nobody could make it up. But the rangers did. The rangers made it in and they fought their way in for about one mile and took positions. The germans counterattacked, the rangers held for two days. They had no food and very little ammunition. When they were finally relieved, out of 220 rangers, there were only 100. Amazing moment. I recommend normandy to everybody. If i sound a little emotional, i am. I think for the navy, this is one of the reasons i chose to be in destroyers, i was lucky i had grades well enough to pick my assignment, and i picked destroyers in the pacific. One reason was a particular battle from the battle of leyte gulf. For the midshipmen who are here, go look it up. It is the essence of what a Surface Warfare officer is. They take off, without getting into too much detail, a situation occurred in which a japanese fleet, that included the greatest battleship ever built, was undetected coming against the beaches where it landed from the north. Only guarding the beaches basically at that point were for destroyers and destroyer escorts and a bunch of jeep carriers and basically the japanese fleet attacked, basically undetected. This is often called the battle of the small boys. The commander of that task force ordered these four destroyers to go right at the japanese, they were about 12 miles away. The guns had ranges well over 12 miles. Four destroyers and escorts went right at the japanese, firing their five inch guns, which had little impact, and launching torpedoes. Four were sunk, they all do they were going to die. One was heavily damaged and survived. The planes from the carriers also attacked like bees. In some cases, they had no armament or ammunition. They just flew to provide the sense there were more attacking than there were. Amazingly, the japanese fleet retreated. I remember that story of the destroyers going basically at flank speed toward the enemy, knowing they would not survive. I was always turned on these stories. When the vietnam war came, there was no question i would go in. I did officer candidate school in newport, rhode island, and in four months, i was an officer. In those days, we got reserve commissions. Very different from the graduates of annapolis and rotc, they got regular commissions. My term of service was going to be three years. I did that on the uss joseph strauss. Callsign fleet fox. It is rare to be on the same ship for three years, but i was. I was a Fleet Officer, officer of the deck, etc. I love driving a ship, we will talk about that later on. The thing i remember the most was the tremendous amount of responsibility that young officers got in the military at the time. I think it is still true today. All of you will get great responsibilities for your age. If you use that properly, you can bring great credit to yourself and to your accomplishments. Very, very important. We are lacking in Leadership Today in this country, i think we all know that. I have the opinion that there are less successful good leaders in our country than ever in our history. I base that on my readings of history and my own personal experience. Lets see if we can work this. I would ask you, i should have asked you before i put this up, to define what you think successful leadership is. I think it is very simple. This is my definition. You notice i mentioned positive goals. There were a lot of leaders in the world who were leaders but not successful. In a way, this is very simplistic. But i think it tells a story. For many years, i have been doing talks around the world. Sometimes they take four hours, sometimes i talk for one hour and then there are three hours of q a because the subject of leadership is so interesting to people. A little bit of history, this started almost 20 years ago when i was ceo of marvel. I was asked to give a speech on leadership to Harvard Business school, my alma mater. I had a long flight to hong kong. We do a lot of business with products in china. I thought, what am i going to say about leadership . Something happened, it was like eight or nine hours straight, i could not stop. I was thinking my whole life through, totally quiet. I came up with 28 what i am calling essentials for successful leadership. Today, it is 32. In the past 19 or 20 years, i have added four. A couple things i think are worth mentioning. I think these are useful to anybody. I dont care if youre in the military, in business, you can be a nonprofit, you can be heading a civic organization, you can be the president of a pta in your town. You can be heading up the sunday school in your church. All of these are fundamental and they work for everybody. I dont care what your background is, what your age is, wether you have money or not, what your Sexual Orientation is, what your color is, what your ethnic group is, what your gender is, it does not matter. I think these are universal principles. Many of these have come from my mistakes. I often say that i remember every gory detail of my mistakes but i remember very little about my successes. And it is true. I try to learn from them. One of the great things about great leaders is they always learn from their mistakes. We will talk a little more about that. They are always very honest about what works and what does not work, and they are always trying to improve. This is not a complete list. It is my list. If you are tasked with doing your own list, it might be different. It might include some of these things, or might include some others. I dont pretend this is the end all. These are written not from 40,000 feet, but from right on the ground. You can get talks, read books by consultants, go to classes in school and talk about leadership often from 40,000 feet. Someone must have a vision, a leader has a vision, and that is fine. You can have vision and be a terrible leader, by the way. That is just one example. I wrote these for somebody who will have to lead people every day. Every day, and motivate them, accordingly. I also think im not going to show the whole list in the interest of time. However, the American Veterans center has the list and it will be happy to provide the whole list. It is two pages, one or two sentences each. I use this to grade myself on a regular basis. Even after all these years. I have had people i have given this to, 10 years ago, call me up and say they still use the list. But if you are going to use the list, you have to be honest with yourself. You dont have to share it with anyone else. Think about the things on the list you are good at, think about the things you are not good at and try to improve them. I am sure you will be able to improve th