Quotes from Bozoma Saint John

It's very personal to me and doesn't work for everybody, but what I have found in my experience is that when I make pro and con lists, it's usually because I am trying to talk myself out of a good idea or talk myself into a really bad one.

I'm bold in personality, I'm hella tall, and I'm hella black.

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.

I think a lot of women have felt really powerless.

My job is about emotion. My job is about feeling. This might be controversial to say, but I feel like sometimes data gets in the way of that.

Live today as if you don't have tomorrow: my husband was diagnosed and killed by cancer within six months.

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.

It's important to be an ally. You don't have to be a black woman to think we should have more black women in tech.

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.

I'm always trying to do things better than I've done them before, do them faster than I've done them before.

I firmly believe brand stories are complex and multilayer.

Bring your whole self to work because, that way, you can bring full ideas and the wholeness of your unique abilities.

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.

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

Passion should meet your professional life, and I'm a living, breathing testament to that.

Human curation allows you to have the emotion and feel music, because it is a very emotional thing. It makes you feel happy; it helps you when you are feeling sad, gets you pumped up, calms you down.

We have to find ways to create content that folks want to see.

We all know this: Music is such a fundamental part of life.

Risk is the essence of any reward - to try the thing that no one else is willing to try.

I love sleep so much. That's the one thing I won't sacrifice. I really cannot.

I want to listen to my Apple Music on my iPhone. I also want to listen to it on my iPad. I want to play it on my Apple TV; I want to be connected everywhere I go. It fits into the puzzle of everything that is Apple, and, therefore, it should not be seen as some sort of separate entity that is trying to find its way.

Brands mean different things for different generations.

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.

We're complex human beings. I can wear a leather dress and still have an 8-year-old and wipe up the eggs that are on her face.