Mellody Hobson is immaculately dressed, beautiful – and tired. She is on a week-long Asia-Pacific trip that has been packed with meetings, interviews and conferences. She jokes that she saw “to and from” the airport in Sydney, and there won’t be any time for sightseeing in Hong Kong, either. The day’s engagements include an interview with Bloomberg and a keynote address at AsianInvestor’s forum on diversity.
Yet, when she starts to talk, after we meet in the Mandarin Oriental’s M Bar, she glows. Each answer is measured and meaningful. She is attentive and honest, in fact kind, and everything she says makes sense. After two minutes in her presence, I am an acolyte. And when she quotes from Star Wars, the universally loved creation of her husband, film director George Lucas, I regress from admiration to childish adoration.