PBS高端访谈:对于这个企业家来说挑战越大贡献越大（在线收听）

DAME STEPHANIE SHIRLEY, Founder, Freelance Programmers: You can always tell ambitious women by looking at the shape of their heads. They're flat on top from being patted patronizingly. And I'm sick of it. I was an unaccompanied child refugee who came to this country on the Kindertransport in 1939. I was 5 years old. And it was, indeed, a very traumatic 2.5-day journey across Europe. And it has driven my whole life. That's who I am. And even 75 years later, I still feel that need to justify my survival. Going into business was really not a natural for me. I'm really much more interested in public service. But I had come across the glass ceiling in a very good employer, and said, I'm sick of being patronized as a Jew, patronized as a woman, I'm going to do my own thing. I suddenly had this idea that I could set up a company that was a company of women, a company for women selling software, which, at that time, was given away free with the hardware. So, everybody laughed. You can't sell software, and certainly not as a woman.

I had such difficulty with this double feminine name of Stephanie Shirley, Shirley being my marital name. My dear husband suggested that I use the family nickname of Steve. And so I started signing my letters as "Steve Shirley." And I began to get some response. And I would be through that door and shaking hands with somebody before they realized that he was a she. Women's careers are often linked with our child rearing. Our only child, Giles, was a lovely baby. And I know every mother says that. But then, at 2.5 years old, he lost the little speech that he had and turned into a wild, unmanageable toddler. The bombshell diagnosis was that he was profoundly autistic, and he never spoke again. So, that tragedy really drove the second part of my life and why I now work in autism, not computing. I have funded a whole lot of medical research into the causes of autism. I can talk with other parents about autism, because I have been through the hell that they're going through. I like to do new things. I'm a starter of things. I like to make new things happen. The more successful an organization or a project, the less I become interested and the less I have to contribute. So, I'm an entrepreneur. My name is Dame Stephanie Shirley, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on making things happen.

Freelance Programmers创始人,斯蒂芬妮·雪莉夫人：你可以通过头部形状观察来辨别哪些女人心怀壮志雄心。他们趾高气昂，自以为高人一等。这一切我已经厌倦。我是一个孤儿难民，1939年，在Kindertransport的帮助下，来到了这个国家。那年，我五岁。而此次横越欧洲的旅途历时两天半，的确非常痛苦。但它却开启了我的整个生命。那就是我。甚至75年后的今天，我仍然觉得有必要为我的生存做出一些解释。经商对我来说本非天然所驱。我真的对公共服务更感兴趣。但是我在一个很好的雇主那里遇到了自己的瓶颈，我说：“我厌倦了作为一个犹太人，作为一个女人，被别人屈尊俯就，我要做我自己的事。我突然有了这样一个想法，那就是我可以成立一个由女性组成的公司，由妇女来进行软件销售的公司，那个年代，只要购买硬件，软件可以获得免费赠送。所以大家都笑了。你卖不了软件，当然女人就更卖不了。斯蒂芬妮·雪莉这个女人味过重的名字，给我带来了很大不便，雪莉是我的丈夫的名讳。我亲爱的丈夫建议我使用史蒂夫的家庭昵称。所以我开始把我的信，签成“史蒂夫·雪莉”，于是，我开始得到了一些回应。我会穿过那扇门，在他们意识到他其实是她之前，与他们握手。妇女的事业常常与养育子女有关。我们唯一的孩子，吉尔斯，是个可爱的孩子。我知道每个母亲都这么说。但后来，在两岁半的时候，他突然不再牙牙学语，转而变成了一个狂野失控的孩子。诊断结果是他严重自闭，这个诊断犹如重磅炸弹，从此他缄口不言。所以，这场悲剧真的掀开了我生命的新篇，这让我开始从事自闭症相关工作，而放弃计算机领域。我已经资助了很多关于自闭症病因的医学研究。我可以和其他父母谈论自闭症，因为我已经经历过了他们正在经历的地狱生活。我喜欢尝试新的事物。发起新的事物。创造新的事物。一个组织或一个项目越成功，我就越不感兴趣，也就越不需要我为之做出贡献。所以，我是一个企业家。我叫斯蒂芬妮·雪莉夫人，这是我今天的Brief But Spectacular，关于做事作为。