Stories help us to develop cognitive flexibility, strengthen our epistemic muscles. It is an intellectual growth but also a spiritual one. It changes us deep inside. Stories rehumanize those who have been dehumanized.

We have been able to continue reactively where the pace of change has not outstripped our ability to react to it, but increasingly this is not the case and the pace of global change is pivotally now balanced with our ability to react, and soon will have a greater momentum than that.

Success is as very personal benchmark – it's what the individual wants. To understand success, you have to know what makes you happy… not what makes your parents, spouse, teacher or children happy… but what makes you happy.

The absolute biggest risk out there I can identify would be if something went really wrong with China as it is so important to the BRIC and global economic future. Luckily, I think it is a small risk.

He had the grit and determination to go, to tell that story, and to tell the world what was happening. His experience shaped me – and shaped my own mentality of being tough, resilient, picking myself up from disappointments, and continuing to move forward.

Speaking about the demand side… we have skills and techniques in drug prevention and thousands of advisors have been trained by our programmes around the world to work in the community at school level, especially with children. Children are the most vulnerable group, and we must do our utmost to protect them.

The majority of US Equity HFT is employed in the strategy of liquidity provisioning, also known as electronic market making. Historically, such a service was provided by NYSE specialists and NASDAQ market makers but, with the advent of decimalization, human specialists and market makers were no longer able to keep up with the liquidity demands of investors and automated technology became necessary for this function.

We assume that the person in front of us is essentially a broken version of us. When you realise that the person opposite you is not a broken version of you, but a very different kind of person, it forces you to take their perspective seriously.

Many people say that if you're the brightest person in the room, you're in the wrong room – that's totally right. You need to bring in people with much more expertise than you to take the business forward. I started out making shoes by hand – I'm a shoemaker, not an intellectual.

That experience [of being tortured] has altered my whole life. You can never be the same person and anything you do is in reference to that moment. I have never been able to pass it.

I fell in love with the process first – they sometimes call it the grind. I fell in love with movement, with training, with everything between the competitions – and falling in love with that was instrumental to me because now, when things don't go right, and I feel vulnerable or emotional, I can dip into that state.

If you always make one thing your excuse or let other people drag you down because of something like your gender, it will become your prophecy. You just have to keep fighting.