Category: On the Move

It’s her turn now!

She is the most powerful woman in Hollywood. She is respected by all in the film industry due to her hard work and diligence. George Lucas named her as his successor for Lucasfilm in 2012 and she was selected to sit on the Board of Governors and Board of Trustees of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

In total, Kennedy has produced or executive-produced more than 60 movies. She has 120 Academy Award® nominations, 25 wins, and her movies have grossed over $11 billion US worldwide. Among her credits are four of the highest grossing films in motion picture history: Jurassic Park, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and The Sixth Sense, as well as the now not-so-nerd classics such as the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Gremlins.

It is not all science fiction. In fact some might say her more serious work takes her into the category of legend-maker. Moving, engaging and memorable dramas like Lincoln, War Horse, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Diving Bell and the Butter y, Munich, Seabiscuit, Schindler’s List and The Color Purple have taught us all more about ourselves and each other than many other artistic expressions. Her animated motion pictures like The Adventures of Tintin, Persepolis, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time, have inspired the young and the young at heart.

The best with the best has been proven over and over in the teaming up of Kennedy with many celebrated directors, including Spielberg, Scorsese, Eastwood and Bogdanovich and of course her latest smash hit with J.J. Abrams, The Force Awakens, cinches it. Before Lucasfilm, Kennedy was the CEO of The Kennedy/Marshall Company, which she founded in 1992 with director/producer Frank Marshall, and in 1982 she co-founded the phenomenally successful Amblin Entertainment with Marshall and Steven Spielberg.

“I met all these guys when they were big, powerful guys,” she said, setting the words “big, powerful” in air quotes. “ The great thing is, at whatever point they decided they were powerful, they always empowered me. So I never felt like I was in the midst of something that wasn’t a balanced relationship.”

– Kathleen Kennedy

TURNING SCIENCE FICTION INTO FACT

He is a dreamer, a schemer and one of the most powerful and innovative people on this planet. Originally from South Africa, Musk immigrated to Canada then the US, where he has since made his home as one of the movers and shakers in Silicon Valley.

is personal net worth has reached 12.5 billion. e visionary PayPal co-founder, Elon Musk, is taking us into the future. He is the founder and brains of the electric car company Tesla Motors and the energy providing company SolarCity.

e basic premise of both companies is to help combat global warming. In the same vein, his prototype public transportation system ‘Hyperloop’, is ready to be tested. Its goal is to span hundreds of miles, using low air pressure, with ‘capsules’ in ‘tubes’ that will transport people at up to 800 MPH.

He is also the founder and CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). SpaceX is the rst privately funded space exploration company to create a liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit, successfully launch and recover a spacecra , send a spacecra to the International Space Station, and send a satellite into geosynchronous orbit.

His latest market achievement: lithium-ion batteries made available to consumers and utilities. And up next? In late December of last year, Musk successfully launched 11 satellites into orbit and successfully returned its 15-story booster rocket, bringing him that much closer to creating his giant global high-speed internet provider with up to 4000 satellites and ful lling his dream of establishing a Mars colony with a population of 80,000 by 2040.

“It will be important for Mars to have a global communications network as well,” he says. “I think this needs to be done, and I don’t see anyone else doing it.”

THE MAJOR FILMMAKER OF THE MOMENT

In 2015, Alejandro González Iñárritu took home the Oscar for Best Picture, as well as Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for the movie Birdman. This groundbreaking comedy-drama film takes a stunning look at fame and a fading star that’s presented as though the entire movie were shot in a single take. González Iñárritu produced grand, spectacular, star-powered cinema – a cosmological blockbuster – that makes us ask again what cinema can do and can be.

Collecting the award for Best Picture, González Iñárritu said: “Ego loves competition, because for someone to win, someone has to lose. But the paradox is that true art can’t be compared, can’t be labeled, can’t be defeated. My work and the work of my fellow nominees will be judged only by time.”

Previously González Iñárritu was nominated for Amores Perros and Biutiful in the foreign language category and for director and producer of Babel. The Revenant, which he co-wrote with Mark L. Smith and starring Leonardo DiCaprio will be released worldwide in 2016.

“Birdman came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.”

 

Antoine Arnault and family are the definitive global fashion family. Groupe Arnault is the majority shareholder in Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the luxury goods conglomerate which runs Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Fendi, Veuve Clicquot, Tag Heuer and Guerlain to name but a few of the 60-plus brands that fall under its famed umbrella.

As the son of Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, Antoine has big shoes to fill. It is fitting that his first chief executive role is at Berluti, where he is in the process of recasting the luxury shoemaker into a global luxury world renown ed menswear label.

Antoine started in the advertising department at Louis Vuitton in 2005 and worked his way up to head of communications. He is credited with conceiving the wildly successful Vuitton ad campaign featuring Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali and Bono, using the iconic luggage in extraordinary settings. Often forced to justify his accelerated ascension through the company he describes himself simply, “We work hard. We were raised with real values about the importance of work and respect for the people.”

Larry Page and Sergey Brin Global Game Changers

The mythos of the two Stanford students, who in 1998 created a search engine that changed the world is well-known. Today Google is an internet searching behemoth and Larry Page and Sergey Brin are two of the wealthiest men on the planet.

Google has expanded exponentially venturing into areas like drone delivery, pharmaceuticals, and autonomous cars.

“We try to invest …,” says Brin, “in the places where we see a good t to our company. But that could be many, many bets, and only a few of them need to pay off.”

Reflecting this diversity, Page and Brin have restructured, with Alphabet acting as a parent entity that controls several companies. Page, as Alphabet CEO, runs Google, the healthcare division Calico, the smart home appliance division Nest and more. Brin, Alphabet’s President, is directing special projects at Alphabet X, (formerly Google X); its top secret innovation testing division where the high- tech gadgets are created.

Page and Brin make it a priority to use technology to better the world for all. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet’s Google division, explains how a recent breakthrough in their Arti cial Intelligence program could be, “… literally, game changing — and the ultimate winner is humanity,” with solutions for “… bigger challenges like climate change and cancer diagnosis.”
Despite all they have already accomplished, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are brilliant innovators at heart and they are just getting started.