Writing the title to this blog post gave me a chuckle as it reminded me of the cult movie Airplane!. In one scene weighty reading materials are being distributed by the airplane attendant who ultimately hands a passenger a leaflet entitled Great Jews in Sports, suggesting this is a rarity.

As a young professional in the fast paced world of communications consulting I often come across many great business leaders. As a Jewish professional living in San Francisco, third among U.S. cities in Jewish population (behind New York and Los Angeles), I was given a rare opportunity to meet one of the great Jews in business, Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO of Yahoo!.

Invited by the Jewish Community Federation I attended a Business Leadership Counsel breakfast featuring Mr. Terry Semel as the guest speaker. During the breakfast he discussed what it takes to be a leader in business and outlined many qualities. One in particular caught my attention, teamwork. He explained business, like sports, can have its superstar but without a team nothing is sustainable. With this I drew an understanding as to why Mr. Semel is CEO of Yahoo!. As the world converges online, Yahoo! has continued to develop relationships and partnerships that help to make it one of the leading global Internet communications companies of our time. It takes a leader who understands the concept of teamwork to bring many moving parts together as one. 

The speech encouraged me to approach Mr. Semel after the breakfast and I was greeted graciously and with a firm handshake. Thank you, Mr. Semel, for being an inspiration a leader and a great Jew in business.

-Josh Gershman