We have a exciting, I guess we could call it a show today.

Just to get everyone on the same page

of what this thing even is.

If you're showing up for the first time

we're doing these live streams as a way to stay connected

during school closures.

When we started seeing the school closures

and now seems a lifetime ago,

but it was I guess it was four or five weeks ago,

we realized that all of us at Khan Academy

with as a non-for-profit with a mission of providing

a free world-class education for anyone anywhere

that we had to step up and we had to figure out

how to support all of you as parents,

as teachers and students as much as possible.

So we started publishing things like daily schedules

to structure all of the content on Khan Academy,

learning plans, teacher-parent webinars

and also this homeroom

and it's a place to talk about everything.

The closures themselves, the economy, COVID virus.

Many times just ask any questions you have.

We have an awesome guest today, I encourage you,

it's going to be Mellody Hobson.

I'll give a better introduction for her in a few seconds.

But feel free and start asking questions

on the message boards

either for myself or for Mellody especially.

I wanna give everyone a reminder, we are not-for-profit.

We are funded primarily through philanthropic donations.

And so if you are in a position to do so,

please think about donating to Khan Academy.

We were already running at a deficit before school closures

and now our traffic is almost three X

of what it typically is.

And you could imagine we're trying to do more

in this context.

So, for us to be able to do the work for folks

who might not be able to afford, anything is appreciated.

I do wanna give a special shoutout

to several corporations who stepped up in the last few weeks

to really especially around the COVID response

Bank of America, Fastly, Novartis, Google.org, and AT&T.

As with that, I'm eager to have as much time

with our guests as possible.

I've known our guests Mellody for some time,

Mellody Hobson is the co-CEO

and President of Ariel investments.

And, there's two things I really I'm eager

to talk to you about Mellody.

One is just your journey to becoming co-CEO

of what I think is one of the most important

investment firms in the world.

And your view of the economy,

we brought it, had a couple of folks

on in the investment management world

and it's just interesting times to put it lightly.

So maybe a good place to start Mellody,

tell us there's a lot of young people watching

who are trying to figure out their life,

what should they do with their life?

Tell us a little bit about your journey.

How did you end up becoming the co-CEO of Ariel investments?

- Well, thank you so much for having me on Sal.

And just know that I'm such a big fan of yours,

as you know, all too well, from the first time

I came to see you I told you I was just enamored

by all the things you were doing to teach so many people

all around the world and I applaud your efforts

and just feel so much gratitude

that you have things like this that exist

for people all over the world.

I'm also honored to be asked to be one of the people

that you interview and to tell my story.

My story I think is the story of many people

around the world in so many ways,

just a story of persistence and really, really hard work.

I grew up in Chicago,

and I was the youngest of six children.

My mom was a single mom

and when I was growing up,

we had a really at times challenging existence,

to say the least sometimes we got evicted,

sometimes our phone got disconnected, lights got cut off.

We'd live in some of the abandoned apartments

that my mom used to try to fix up

and rent for people in order to make a living.

And it is during that time that I became clear

that I was desperate to understand money,

not make it, not have a lot, understand it.

I thought if I could understand money,

I could have a better life

and I really committed myself to that.

When I was 19 years old,

I had the opportunity to be an intern at Ariel investments,

which was this fledgling investment firm,

started by this wondercan named John Rogers,

who started the company when he was 24 years old.

Today, we're 37 years old now.

And after I graduated from college,

I went back and worked at the firm in 1991,

after graduating from Princeton,

and I've only had one job since then.

And I started off on the client services and marketing side

learning everything I could learned about investing

in the stock market, and over time rose up

in the organization.

In May of 2000, I became president,

I went from intern to president.

And then last summer in 2019, I became co-CEO.

It's an amazing story in so many ways,

and I have so much gratitude for the opportunity

I've been given, but most of all,

I have the most amount of gratitude

for what I've been able to learn about money

and investing over this near 30-year career

that I've been doing this

and how that is really put in me a fire

to teach what I know to other people

so that they can have a better life.

- And what's your sense?

What do you think made your trajectory so successful?

What do you think were the traits

that made you a successful investor

and allowed other people to recognize it as well?

- Well, I think the first thing that helped me

was that I always believe

that you have to always be learning, always,

that I ever have felt even today

that I know enough and then I can stop.

And so having that open mind,

some people call it a beginner's mind.

That's a Buddhist concept that your mind is always new,

like a child, and you're approaching everything

from the perspective of a beginner,

allows you to really take in a lot of information.

Ray Kroc who started McDonald's had a quote

that I really liked.

Ray says, "As long as you're green, you grow,

"when you're ripe you rot."

And I really liked that concept

of just staying green all the time and being open.

Not being so convinced that you know everything,

I think that made a difference.

Secondly, a commitment to learning.

We call ourselves a learning culture at Ariel.

We always wanna build on what we learned from before.

So right now being in this global pandemic,

we're building on all the knowledge we learned

in the financial crisis of 2008 and nine.

And then during that period, we built on the things

that we learned in 9/11.

And that we built on things we learned in the crash of '87.

So it's like constantly accumulating knowledge

that will make you better, and building on it,

till you have more and more muscle memory.

And the last thing is just I love the idea of learning

about the markets, talking about companies,

really understanding how money works around the world.

It just really fascinates me.

And so I think it's very important,

you become more successful

at something that you really like.

And I just really love the business that I'm in.

And at the end of the day,

I tell our team that we work with,

we get to make people's lives better

because we grow their money in their pension fund

or their kids college education money,

that's on our mutual funds, whatever it might be,

so that they can have a better outcome.

And that's as fulfilling as anything that anyone can do

as fulfilling as you teaching maybe,

as fulfilling as doctors who are doing what they do.

We feel that our work is that important.

- And we're getting a lot of questions often

from YouTube and social media which is great.

For Aditya Gupta.

And this is a good starter question.

A lot of people are kinda vaguely familiar,

okay, they're these things, these investment funds.

But his question is, what does Ariel investments do?

And maybe I'll extend his question,

What is your day like?

And maybe what is it like when you started?

What does an investment manager and analysts do?

- So let's start off with Ariel investments does.

We are a boutique, independent, money management company,

we manage stock portfolios for big institutions,

so think states, cities, foundations,

whole host of organizations, often pension

but it could be endowment money as well.

And then for individuals,

we have publicly traded mutual funds

that anyone can invest with us,

who has as little as $50 a month to put in our mutual funds.

We buy domestic companies,

US companies that are small and medium sized companies

that are out of favor

but who are strong potential for growth.

And over the years, we've owned everything from companies

that you know, they usually dominate the niche

that they're in.

Everything from Smucker's jelly,

which is in the portfolio right now.

In the past, we've owned things

like Tiffany's, The Retailer and Clorox

the diversified consumer products company.

So you name it, those companies that dominated niche.

We say once you get the customer,

they go back again and again,

small and medium-sized companies.

And then we have international and global portfolios.

International means it's only companies based outside

of the United States

and global means it's companies all over the world,

including the United States.

And those portfolios also seek to invest in companies

that are out of favor.

And that's everything from higher companies

to the version of what you would have in America

with some of our internet businesses

that are based in China, like Baidu.

So, we're looking for these brands and franchises.

And we want businesses that will be able to grow over time,

but we wanna buy them when they're out of favor,

when for whatever reason they've been cast aside.

So as you might imagine, right now, during a time

when the stock market has been so volatile,

there have been a lot of buying opportunities

that have come to us.

So these days, we're super busy.

But when you ask about my day,

I am actually not an investment analyst,

although I am someone whose Rolodex

is used on a regular basis to inform the stocks

that we are buying.

So in this current environment,

I've been on the phone on many occasions

with my co-CEO calling friends in the industry,

talking about what they're seeing in the market

because we can learn from everyone,

including we called his old corporate finance teacher,

someone named Burton Malkiel,

who wrote a book called "The Random Walk Down Wall Street."