Greek mythology Quote by Whitney Johnson

““The opportunity to develop competencies may be handed to us in the form of a crisis, as was the case with Brooksley Born, the first female president of the Law Review at Stanford, the first female to finish at the top of the class and an expert in commodities and futures. Charged with the oversight of the U.S. government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by the Clinton Administration, Born could foresee what would happen if there wasn’t more regulatory oversight in the multitrillion dollar derivatives markets. Yet no one in government or in the financial markets would listen; in 2008 alone, the U.S. market lost about $8 trillion in value. She has since been dubbed the “Credit Crisis Cassandra.” In Greek mythology, Cassandra was given both the gift of seeing the future and the curse of having no one believe her predictions. In the case of Brooksley Born, the attacks by very powerful people were harsh and unrelenting. She was right, while those around her were gravely wrong. Yet, when I listen to Born and read her interviews, there is no anger, no recrimination in her voice, only grace. Brooksley Born never would have chosen this situation. She recounts waking in a cold sweat many a night. She has learned from her trial by fire and we can learn from her. Sometimes we set out to develop competencies, sometimes we don’t. Either way, if we do something enough, we are likely to get good at it. As poet Emily Dickinson wrote, Luck is not chance— It’s toil— Fortune’s expensive smile Is earned.””

— Whitney Johnson