The Person Who Changed My Life: Prominent People Recall Their Mentors

by Matilda Cuomo (Editor), Hillary Rodham Clinton (Foreword by), Paige McKinney (Read by)

Overview

At some point in our lives, most of us have been affected by caring adults whose advice, guidance, and example made a difference. In The Person Who Changed My Life, individuals who have distinguished themselves in their fields write about the men and women who served as their mentors.

Among the contributors in this updated and expanded edition of Matilda Raffa Cuomo's first book are Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Torre, Rosie O'Donnell, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Nora Ephron, Mary J. Blige, Wynton Marsalis, General Colin Powell, and many others. The contributors evoke the people who had a lasting influence on their personal and professional lives and, in the process, show how profoundly a mentor can impact the life of a young, or not so young, person.

The audiobook includes a resource section for readers who are inspired to get involved and become mentors or help start mentoring organizations in their own communities. These moving stories by people who have excelled in their professions through hard work, perseverance, and, most important, the helpful assistance of others, demonstrate the long-lasting impact a mentor can have - and emphasize the importance of passing on the gifts our mentors give us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781531816070
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

In 1987 MATILDA RAFFA CUOMO, former First Lady of New York State, established the first statewide school-based one-to-one mentoring program in New York, which in 1995 evolved into Mentoring USA, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to implementing mentor programs for at-risk children in grades K-8. Mrs. Cuomo lives in New York City with her husband, Mario. They have five children and nine grandchildren.

Read an Excerpt

ALAN ALDA

MAKE DISTINCTIONS

I've had many mentors—teachers, fellow actors, and writers—but there's really only one I couldn't have done without.

I needed to have someone who was there when I made big decisions. And even more, the small ones—because even if they're only a fraction of a degree off, small decisions can add up and move you in a direction you never really wanted to take.

I didn't need a mentor who would pronounce a few words to the wise and then take off for an early dinner. I needed someone at my elbow, working on the deeper stuff.

It wasn't enough to be taught a skill or guided toward a career. From the time I was a boy, standing in the wings watching performers, I knew what my career would be, and I began at an early age to learn the skills of the trade. In fact, that was my problem: I grew up on the stage and I tended to think of other people as an audience. I knew how to make sure they were there for me, but I didn't understand yet how I could also be there for them. I needed to exit the stage door and get out onto the street.

It would take luck to find someone who could open that door. And I was lucky.

While I was still young, my mentor helped me change my thinking. "Make distinctions," she'd say. I didn't understand what she meant at first, but after a while I realized that other people's behavior didn't always need an all-or-nothing response. I learned to distinguish the good qualities in a person from the not so good and cherish the good.

Years later, after that thought had sunk in, I put it this way to my daughter as she graduated from college: "A peach is not its fuzz, a toad is not its warts, a person is not his or her crankiness. If we can make distinctions, we can be tolerant, and we can get to the heart of our problems instead of wrestling endlessly with their gross exteriors." I even saw that it went further than that. "Once you make a habit of making distinctions," I told her, "you'll begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won't come in." None of this would ever have occurred to me if not for the most important mentor in my life.

I was lucky to find someone I could trust enough to let in close. Someone who could accept me as I was and yet see more in me than I knew was there and lead me gently down the long road toward compassion.

When you find someone as profoundly helpful as that, you want to hang on to that person for as long as you can. And I did.

I married her.