Aspire with Emma Grede
Aspire with Mellody Hobson: What I Learned From My Business Hero
Tue, 06 May 2025
Emma sits down with the number one person she looks up to in business: to Mellody Hobson. As Co-CEO of Ariel Investments—a firm managing over $14 billion in assets—Mellody is a powerhouse whose influence stretches far beyond Wall Street. She opens up about her early life growing up on the South Side of Chicago, the youngest of six kids raised by a single mother, and how those beginnings shaped her views on money, ambition, and success. Mellody shares her rare career journey—starting as an intern and rising to president in under ten years, all while staying at the same company for over three decades. Emma and Mellody go deep on what it takes to thrive in male-dominated spaces, why subject matter expertise is the foundation of real leadership, and how negotiating for yourself is non-negotiable. They also talk openly about money trauma, self-worth, and rewriting the financial narratives many of us carry. Mellody’s story proves you can build a legendary career without chasing every trend—by staying focused, staying prepared, and staying true to yourself. This conversation is full of hard-won wisdom on how to stand out, stay sharp, and lead with purpose. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Mellody Hobson and why is she admired?
I'm so excited about today's episode of the Aspire podcast because today I'm talking to my ultimate aspiration. Whenever I'm asked who I look up to in business, I only have one answer and it's Melody Hobson. Melody is the co-CEO of Aerial Investments, a firm which manages over $14 billion in assets.
She was chairwoman at Starbucks and has held board seats at JP Morgan, Estee Lauder, and even negotiated the acquisition of DreamWorks Animation. She is someone whose journey is marked by incredible success, but she's also navigated her path with grace and courage and just an unshakable sense of purpose.
If you ever wondered what it takes to rise through the ranks, not just to the top, but to redefine what the top can be, then Melody is that blueprint. We'll get into her thoughts on how to get promoted, finding the power in negotiation, and how sometimes being underestimated can be your superpower.
We'll talk about money and how she's using her voice and influence to build real ownership, especially for women and people of colour. Melody is a true one-of-one, and I am so excited to share this episode. Welcome to the show, Melody Hobson. Melody, thank you so much for being here today. When I think about someone in business who I aspire to, you are number one, number one, number one again.
No, come on. No, not come on.
Seriously? Yes, seriously.
Right. You know this.
You say that to everyone.
Every time I start, that's my intro. No, I have to tell you, when I decided to do this show, which ultimately the idea is that I get to share the people that I aspire to the most, it was number one you. And I'm so happy that you're here. And we've got a lot of stuff that we're going to talk about today.
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Chapter 2: How did Mellody Hobson's childhood shape her career?
But before we start, I really want to understand a little bit more about your childhood and where you come from. And I know you grew up on the south side of Chicago. I know that you're one of six and you were raised by a single mother. But I'd really like to understand a little bit more about how you were raised and where you came from.
Really, you know, what does that mean in terms of who you are today and how you kind of move through the world?
Me knowing your story, I think you'll understand very well. I grew up in Chicago, youngest of six. My siblings are much older than me. So a couple of decades.
Oh, wow.
So interestingly... I am technically an only child because they say if you have more than five years between yourself and your next sibling, and my next sibling is nine years older than me. My mom was a single mom. She worked extremely hard, but we had a hard existence and not harder than anyone else's, but our own form of challenges where despite the effort, we would get evicted.
Our phone would get disconnected. Our lights would be turned off. My mom used to borrow gas from the gas station to get me to school. And all of those things created trauma. You know, I feel like my purpose came from that trauma. And I think my fire, and I said this recently in an interview, was lit by scarcity. There was scarcity, and it made me very, very, very focused and very driven.
I mean, very. I could sit for hours and work without even looking up. The focus that I have is extreme.
Well, I know that about you. And I think that for so many people, when you come from a place where scarcity is like, it's there, it never leaves. Like it's always around the corner. Do you feel like that now? Absolutely.
No, I used to have those recurring nightmare dreams. You know, people talk about their dream was they didn't graduate from college or something like that. I still, to this day, I wake up in the morning and I look up and I speak words of gratitude or say words of gratitude to myself.
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Chapter 3: What motivated Mellody Hobson to pursue a career in finance?
And so I kind of feel like in my head, I've kind of, I will keep a bag packed for the rest of my life.
And it's interesting. Mine is not the bag packed. Mine is like the account of
to make sure you have some backup money in case anything goes wrong. Yeah, so it's not a bag for me, but it's the same concept.
It's the same concept. Being prepared and having that, not even just emergency mentality, but that mentality that anything can happen, which has proven to be true over and over again in life.
Yeah, in so many great ways. But did you always know that you wanted a career in business? I understand that you were watching your siblings, but who was around you and who gave you this idea that you could have this type of career that you're having? No one. No one.
In my immediate family, I'm the only one who graduated from college. So they aren't like me. We're very, very different. But as I said, I have nothing but respect and admiration and love for the lens through which they allowed me to form a life for myself or an idea of a life for myself. In terms of what I was looking at, nothing in person, but I was reading.
And so I always told people I was mentored by people I never met because I was reading about them. And so the reading is what brought me to have the ideas that I have because I didn't have that real life experience. I didn't grow up with any relationships. I didn't grow up with any entrees. I found all those things myself. And then I was a really good student.
And what I mean by that is technically a good student at school, but I was a good study. So if I had the opportunity to observe something, I would study it really fast. So I would come here, furniture, how you looked, all sorts of things, and then take pieces of it and say, oh, that makes sense, or I want to do that, or look at how this was put together. And so that created an opportunity for me.
But I really spent a lot of my childhood in the library. I used to go to the library on Saturdays.
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Chapter 4: How can simplifying finance empower individuals?
And I was also like, it's paid for. I'm not living above my means. It's perfectly fine. It was pretty. It was tiny. It had 11, 14 foot ceilings, but tiny. It was the tiniest little apartment.
But it was yours and you owned it. I had shoes in the kitchen. When did you buy that apartment?
when I was in 1994. And so I lived there for this long period of time because I really liked this idea of just being very, very, very stable. So the same was true at Ariel. It was very, very stable, but I was constantly challenged with new things. and they always got harder to this day.
And I do think there's so much to be said for someone like you. You've done so many things in your career, but how have you been able to architect that career over the last 30 years? What did that look like for you?
So one thing that I felt very strongly about, and I told this to a lot of young people, first of all, and it's very important, my career is anchored in an expertise. I am anchored in finance. And that is very, very important.
When I looked at the greats, no matter who they were, from Warren Buffett to Steve Jobs to, you name the person, Jamie Dimon, you could look at Walt Disney, you could look at just so many greats. They did one thing extremely well and they went deep. And I tell people, an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less. So that's not my quote. It's a quote that I read.
So you know more and more about less and less. And so think about it. I said, there's a difference between a general practitioner where you just go to the doctor and they're checking you out and brain surgery. So I wanted to be the brain surgeon of my field. How did you choose finance? Because money, I was desperate to understand money as a child.
So that's what I mean by my trauma became my purpose. I really wanted to understand very early on how money worked so that I would not repeat the cycles that I was in. And so really it all made a lot of sense to me. Once I got there, and this is really important, I said, I want to be known for something that I do so well that it distinguishes me.
So in finance, one of the things that I do really, really well is I have a great ability to communicate ideas. And I would read the people who could do it very well. And there was a guy who wrote for Barron's Magazine, which is a weekly financial magazine named Floyd Norris. He wrote the beginning article every week. He was genius, genius writer.
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Chapter 5: What does it take to thrive in male-dominated industries?
to grow and learn in ways big and small that are important to me.
And did you ever worry, you know, because again, having so many people that like work around me in these companies, did you ever feel overwhelmed or like there were things that you didn't want to take on? Or for you, was it always like, I'm taking that, I'm taking that?
Okay. So first of all, we all feel overwhelmed sometimes. And it's, you know, a question of how do you re-anchor yourself to get through it? And I somehow, I can push through and will myself to do unbelievable things. I cannot describe it to you. I can outwork any person.
Give me an example. Like when you say that you can push yourself to do unbelievable things, what does that look like? Because I feel like sometimes you could look at somebody like you and think, you know, well, of course she's like super smart, but it's not just about what you learned and what you've taught yourself. There is something to just sheer work ethic that counts for something.
First of all, it's waking up super early, not making any excuses about all the things I have to get done. It's a lot of travel, a lot of like landing in the middle of the night, waking up super early in the morning.
I love to hear that because I think that at the point you are in your career, you still have to push through things. Oh, I still have to like do that. Yeah.
You still do that level of work. We had a big thing a couple of weeks ago where I had to get something out very last minute. We started off in Florida. We flew to Texas and, And then we were flying to San Francisco. This issue came up. We started on Friday at 3.30 in the afternoon. We needed to get done, which was really hard, by Monday morning.
I told my chief of staff, Serena, and I, I was like, we are going to be sitting at the kitchen table for the next two days. So we went all the entire flight from Texas to San Francisco. We work late into night in San Francisco. We work up, woke up early, very early. I still went to the gym somehow. And then we, but not always. I mean, some, this was a bad run.
Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How can aspiring professionals get promoted and excel?
And ultimately, she's like, no, my name is Linda Frankel and I'm Diane Sawyer's sister. Do you think you can go meet with her in New York? So I go to meet with Diane in New York. And she says, you know, I thought this story was pretty amazing. And I've never seen anyone like you on television talk about money. And I think you could be great. Wow.
And so she asked me, she says, you know, I think you should be on television talking about money. I said, well, I have a job in Chicago. And she's like, if I make it work on my end, will you make it work on your end? I said, you mean do both? She said, do both. We do this one show. We had these young people come in and I was young myself, but they were young.
Right.
So I said, yeah. And she's like, you know what happens when she comes out on her show and she's in the middle of the aisle? Everyone wants to hug her. Everyone. She said they want to hug her. And she said, you want to be someone that someone wants to hug. That's not what I saw. Whoa. Feedback. How'd you take that? I was like, wow. Wow.
Did you recognize what she was saying?
It felt the truth? Yeah. She's like, that's not what I saw. She's like, you could be honest with someone, but you don't have to hurt their feelings.
Oh, that's some good advice right there.
And I remember I never, I mean, I tell you the story like it was yesterday. I never forgot that. It's a great piece of advice.
I wonder how did you get so comfortable being yourself? Because I feel like in your career, you must have been in so many rooms where you were the first. Where does that come from?
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