Peter Georgescu, Chairman Emeritus, Young & Rubicam

Jim Sinegal is the son of a coal miner and steelworker. He grew up with a firsthand view of the realities of human labor and the difficulties of making a living through decades of sustained hard work, in his father’s life and then in his own. What has endeared him to me the most may be that he’s also a CEO who, at one point, has told unhappy shareholder activists to take a flying leap. He’s the founder of Costco, one of the most successful retailers in the world, in an industry that’s as tough as it gets. Few companies anywhere operate in an industry with lower margins. Costco is a public company, so it has no choice but to deliver top performance for shareholders. And yet, Sinegal founded the company with four simple, key principles: