Steven Hilton, chairman and chief executive of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, on gaining respect when he was working in the family business:

I occasionally came across fellow employees who probably looked at me as a spoiled rich brat who was handed the job on his way up the corporate ladder. When other employees saw that I actually did not receive any special treatment and took my job seriously by working hard, in most cases they would come around and accept me as part of the team.

Antonio Cu & #233;, co-owner and president of the Chivas USA soccer team on a life-changing decision:


Soccer is the most important sport in the world, and is getting bigger every day in the U.S. I know this is a very competitive country; there is so much going on sports-wise. I thought: “What do I want to do with the next 25 years of my life, which are the most important ones?” I told my wife what I had in mind, bringing a soccer team to the U.S., and she was very supportive. I left everything behind in Mexico and moved here.

Adlai Wertman, former investment banker and president of Chrysalis, a local charity that helps homeless people find employment, on the difference between his old job and his new job:


I would say that my easiest day on this job is twice as hard as my hardest day on Wall Street. There are very few people with money who relate to our clients, so we are really a charity. We’re not your alumni association, we’re not your kid’s private school, we’re not the disease someone in your family has or the hospital you’re looking to go into. We’re 45-year-old unemployed, ex-felon drug addicts. None of our graduates grow up and write us $100,000 checks.

Alberto Alvarado,district director of theU.S. Small BusinessAdministration, on going away to college:


When I was attending Yale, and some of my old friends would come around my mother’s home in Boyle Heights, they would ask where I was. She would say, in her broken English, that I was “at jail.” What she really meant to say was “at Yale.” That of course caused some of my old friends to wonder where I really was.

Christopher Thornberg, former senior economist with the UCLA Anderson Forecast, on how public education will affect the future economy of Southern California:

We’re going to end up with a Brazilian economy. I’m doing great. People I work with are doing great. People who are educated are doing fine. And then you look around. We’re going to have the very rich living next to each other with a giant wall. And I don’t want to live in that kind of place and that’s what worries me.

Ronald Altoon, founding Partner of Altoon + Porter and former American Institute of Architects president on the Los Angeles River:


Imagine taking the Los Angeles River from downtown L.A. through South Central. What’s there? Some of the most disadvantaged families in the city, with no access to recreation and lots of youth crime. You could spend the billions to buy the land and turn it into a regional park with the river running through it. You’d regenerate the area, create jobs, and the worst place in L.A. would become a totally transformed place to live. It would be politically courageous.

Kenneth Wong, president of Westfield Group, U.S. Operations, on the changing landscape of the American shopping center:


Australia has a much broader range, with grocery stores, apparel, luxury stores all under one roof. Along the way, American customers have become much more accepting of this. You have the Mercedes owner who pumps her gas at Costco years ago that was kind of a joke. Today,

it’s normal.

Bill Allen, president and chief executive of Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. on how people think about Los Angeles:


Seriously, we need to market the fact that we are the nation’s business capital. Sure, New York may be the financial capital, but if you want to get business done on a global scale, you have to come to L.A. We are the most diverse economy on the planet. When you come into LAX, there is no reference whatsoever to L.A. as a place to do business. If we could put up a sign saying “L.A., the Business Capital of America,” that would make people think differently about this region.

Kenneth Starr, dean of Pepperdine Law School and former special prosecutor during the Clinton administration, on his legacy:


It is what it is and I cheerfully accept the fact that when one is called upon to investigate a very popular and charismatic president of the United States, that assignment will not go unnoticed.

Dr. Linda Li, the only female surgeon on ‘Doctor 90210,’ on people who think the show glorifies the superficial:


Everybody has their own idea of what’s right and wrong for them and we shouldn’t make judgments on superficiality. Nobody has that right, it’s completely individual. I do breast reconstruction for cancer patients; that’s the kind of thing that can’t be argued with. It’s something I don’t do for money; I do for karma points.

Fran Inman, senior vice president of Majestic Reality Co., on her involvement with Los Angeles youth centers:


You never know where you’re going to be a tipping point in a young person’s life. This program has given me more gratification that anything I’ve ever done.

Tim Lappen, chairman of the family office group at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro LLP, on the importance of availability to his clients:


I have six phone lines at my house; I carry a BlackBerry, cell phone and pager with me everywhere I go. I can always be reached and I always respond.

Carol Schatz, president and chief executive of the Central City Association, on being the first woman to head the organization:


There was a little resistance, yes. After all, this was the quintessential good old boys club for decades. With few exceptions, it was all men. But this was 1995 and we were in the depths of the worst recession since the Great Depression. We were hemorrhaging members as Fortune 500 companies were leaving. We had almost no reserves and real doubts about whether we could continue as a going concern. When the times are tough, people who have worked hard and proven their effectiveness, as I had, can rise to the top.

Alan U. Schwartz, partner at Greenberg Traurig LLP who represented Mel Brooks, on his name being used in the Star Wars-spoof ‘Spaceballs’:


Mel never told me he was doing that, and the first time we saw it we practically had a car accident. My wife and I were driving down Sunset and they’d just put up this billboard on La Cienega that said, “Mel Brooks’ “‘Spaceballs’ May the Schwartz be with you!” Aaaaaaah! It was really very sweet. I’d acted in a couple of films, so this was a nice thing he did, because I wasn’t in “Spaceballs.”

David Carter, professor of sports business at the USC Marshall School of Business and sports-business consultant, on how his position in academia has helped his consultancy career:


When I’m in the classroom teaching, not only is it incredibly fun and motivating to be around the students, but most of them are the precise target market for the industry. They are part of the 18- to 34-year-old demographic. My students let me know, months in advance, that the mobile ESPN phone was not going to work.

John Paul Dejoria,owner of John Paul Mitchell Systems, on the shoestring origins of the Paul Mitchell product line:


Well, Paul Mitchell came up with $350. I don’t know where he got his $350 from, but I borrowed part of mine from my mother. I only had a few hundred bucks to live on and when we started the company I happened to have an old Rolls Royce, a very old one, which I’d had for about a year or so, and I’d separated from my wife at that time, so I lived in that car for the first couple of weeks.

David Lizarraga,chairman of TELACU, responds to critics who say the $120 million in revenues disqualifies TELACU fornon-profit status:


The social bottom line is where you do it, how you do it and whom you do it for. These businesses employ 800 to 1,000 people. The greatest social good you do for an individual is the creation of a job. There’s a lot of ways to make a dollar, but we concentrate on things that make a difference, like helping someone buy their first home or building housing for seniors. We decided to stop marching to make a difference by creating something that would provide access to credit. It’s been a great business for us.

Rick Caruso, retail mogul and chief executive of Caruso Affiliated, on what he’d predicted for the Grove:


I expected the Grove to be successful; I didn’t ever anticipate it to be a successful as it is. Our sales per square foot, if you rate it as a retail center, are huge. It’s one of the most productive in the country. It’s No. 2 in the state. The other way you’d rate it, the Grove has become a part of the fabric of this town. The thing I am most proud of is that people feel an ownership. It’s their Grove, their community, their downtown. People are desperate, especially in Los Angeles, to feel like they are part of a place.

-Compiled by Leslie Jones