DIRECTORY

In the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II, the global economy was transformed and growth rocketed, leading to greater consumption of goods than ever before. Businesses used mass advertising and telecommunications to attract wider customer bases and make greater profits.

A popular Brazilian media mogul and television personality, Silvio Santos was born Señor Abravanel in Rio de Janeiro, the son of Jewish immigrants. He took Silvio Santos as his name after moving into entertainment and becoming host of a television show. In 1981, he set up his own television network, Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão, while continuing to host his own variety program. Santos also set up the conglomerate Grupo Silvio Santos, which expanded into property, hotels, finance, and cosmetics. In 1989, he ran for president but was not successful.

African American Alvin Ailey was born in Texas and moved to Los Angeles in 1942. He began formal dance training in 1949, taught by Lester Horton, who became an important mentor. After Horton died in 1953, Ailey became director of his dance company and choreographed his own performances. In 1958, he founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York, where he developed some of the most influential works in modern dance. Ailey established his own dance school in 1969. An important civil rights activist, he was posthumously awarded the US’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2014.

Born in Gujarat, India, Dhirubhai Ambani emigrated to the Yemeni city of Aden aged 17. He worked as clerk for a trading firm then returned to India in 1958 to start a spice and yarn trading business. He later diversified into textile manufacture as well as other foods. In 1973, Ambani renamed his company Reliance Industries and took it public in 1977. Reliance expanded into a range of fields, including financial services, petrochemicals, plastics manufacture, and power generation. In the 1980s, Ambani officially stepped down but was involved in Reliance until his death.

Briefly the wealthiest man in the world in 2015, the Spanish fashion executive Amancio Ortega started his retail career as a delivery boy and a tailor’s assistant before becoming manager of a clothing store. Ortega set up his first business in 1963, selling bathrobes. In 1975, he launched Zara clothing and opened the first branch in A Coruña, Spain. Zara grew into a global chain with over 1,000 branches and was the most important part of Inditex, which Ortega founded in 1985 as a holding company for Zara and the other brands in his empire. Ortega served as Inditex’s chairman until stepping down in 2011.

Born in Heidelberg, Germany, Dietmar Hopp worked as an engineer for IBM but left in 1972 with four others to form a software company called SAP (Systems, Applications & Products). The firm offered customers accounting and payroll services and would eventually provide businesses worldwide with a full range of software products. After SAP went public in 1988, Hopp served as co-CEO until 1998; he became chairman of SAP’s supervisory board from 1998 to 2003. Hopp has donated much of his wealth to his charitable foundation, involved in sporting, medical, and educational initiatives.

A graduate of Northwestern University in Chicago, Judi Sheppard Missett, was a professional dancer and taught dance classes in the city. In 1969, she adapted her dance classes to target fitness and called them Jazzercise. She relocated to California in 1971, where her Jazzercise classes became so popular she had to hire additional instructors. By 1982, there were over 1,000 official Jazzercise instructors across the US, prompting Missett to franchise her business, which helped make it a global phenomenon. Missett remains the CEO of Jazzercise, which has more than 8,000 franchises.

After gaining a degree in engineering, German Hasso Plattner worked for IBM. In 1972, he cofounded SAP (Systems, Applications & Products), providing software to businesses, and grew it into a worldwide company. In 1988, the business went public and Plattner became vice-chairman of the executive board before serving as chairman of the executive board and co-CEO from 1997 to 2003. He chaired SAP’s supervisory board and started his own investment fund. In 1998, he also founded the Hasso Plattner Institute, focusing on IT education and research.

Born in Shanghai, China, Cao Dewang left school aged 16. From 1976, he worked as a sales manager for a glass factory in Fuqing, southeastern China. He bought the factory in 1983 and three years later converted it to produce glass for cars, which China had previously had to import. In 1987, Cao established Yaohua Automotive Glass Co., later known as the Fuyao Group. Under Cao’s leadership, Fuyao became a world leader in automotive glass production, as well as a manufacturer of other types of glass.

Sudanese-born Mohammed Ibrahim moved to Egypt as a child, then to England, where he gained a PhD in mobile communications. He set up his own software company, MSI, in 1989. In 1998, he founded iMSI-Cellular Investments, later Celtel International, one of the first cell phone companies to focus on Africa. Ibrahim then sold Celtel for $3.4 billion to the Mobile Telecommunications Company of Kuwait. In 2006, he founded the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, targeting political change in Africa.

After holding various roles with Oxfam in the Netherlands, Dutch-born Boudewijn Poelmann founded the media company Novamedia in 1983. In 1991, he cofounded Independent Media, which became Russia’s second-largest publisher of newspapers and magazines until its sale in 2005. Poelmann helped devise and set up the Dutch National Postcode Lottery in 1989, which gives half of its proceeds to charity. Since then, Novomedia has started similar lotteries in Sweden, Britain, and Germany, raising more than $10 billion for charitable causes.

Spanish media proprietor Javier Moll was born in Zaragoza. In 1978, he and his wife acquired the company Prensa Canaria, which owned newspapers in the Canary Islands. From 1984, they began to purchase other newspapers in Spain, changing the name of the company to Editorial Prensa Ibérica. The group embraced the provision of digital news content and also owns two television channels and a radio station. Moll stepped down as CEO in 2015 and was succeeded by his son.

The US inventor Dean Kamen studied engineering at college but left early to concentrate on research in medical technology. He developed a pocket-sized device that delivered precise doses of drugs to the wearer. Kamen launched the company AutoSyringe to make and market the device in 1976 and sold it in 1981. He then started DEKA, a research and development corporation that created key medical devices, such as a portable kidney dialysis machine and the iBOT-powered wheelchair. Kamen’s most famous invention is the Segway, an electronic personal transportation machine he unveiled in 2001. Kamen is also focused on water treatment, developing a purification device called Slingshot.

US businessman Howard Schultz grew up in Brooklyn and, after working as a salesman for Xerox, became a manager for Hammarplast, which made plastic products, including coffee filters. In 1982, he joined Starbucks, a small Seattle-based coffee-roasting company, as marketing director but left in 1985 to start a chain of espresso bars. Schultz bought Starbucks in 1987 and expanded it across the US and Canada, going public in 1992. Starbucks opened its first outlet outside the US in 1996 and now has more than 30,000 outlets. Schultz remained CEO until 2017.