The Pakistani Spectator

1- Larry Ellison CEO Oracle

Over the last 10 years, Larry Ellison  was the highest-paid CEO of a public firm, pulling in over $1.84 billion in the last decade. He is the  sixth wealthiest person in the world.

But he worked his way up with zero family connections and no inherited wealth. Ellison didn’t know he was adopted until he was 12.

Ellison dropped out of the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign after his adoptive mother died. He later enrolled at the University of Chicago, only to drop out after a semester from poor grades. (Ellison’s best friend, Steve Jobs is also adopted).

Ellison ended up going from one odd job to another, with just enough to survive on fast food and buy gas. He eventually got a job at Ampex Corporation in the 1970s where he found his calling. In Mike Wilson’s book “The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison,” Wilson wrote that Ellison and two co-workers Ed Oates and Bob Miner worked on a project that would be the start of the billion-dollar software empire, Oracle.

Ellison once joked that he “had all the disadvantages required for success.”

2- Ursula Burns, Xerox CEO

The Xerox CEO grew up on New York City’s Lower East Side “when it was really bad, when the gangs were there and the drug addicts were there,” she recalled to the NY Times.

Burns’ mother, whom she calls her biggest influence, constantly repeated different sayings to her while she was a child. The mantras included: “Where you are is not who you are.”

Her mother ran an at-home daycare center taking care of other children and also ironed shirts for people in order to allow her daughter to afford to go to Catholic school. Burns is the first African-American woman to run a Fortune 500 company, and has made quite the impressive progression from being a Xerox summer intern in 1980 to the company’s CEO. Burns is glad she never took the advice of her teachers who knew she was a good student but predicted she should just pursue a great career as a nun, nurse or teacher.

3- John Paul Dejoria, Co-founder and CEO of John Paul Mitchell

John Paul Dejoria is every budding entrepreneur’s dream. His hair care company John Paul Mitchell Systems began as a $700 startup from loans.

According to Entrepreneur, he started his first job at the age of nine when Dejoria, his mom, and his brother would wake up at 4 a.m. everyday to fold and deliver newspapers.

But at one point his mom could not support him anymore, and he was sent to a foster home. He was homeless twice before making his fortune, including when he was 22, working jobs from being a janitor to driving a tow truck.

His second bout of homelessness came as a single father. His wife left him and his son and took half of his savings.

Dejoria was left to take care of his 2-year-old son on his own and was so poor he resorted to exchanging soda bottles for change. The turning point came when he got a job working as a salesperson at Redken hair company and was influenced to start a hair company with his friend Paul Mitchell. He is now worth $4 billion.

4- Oprah Winfrey, Media Mogul

Oprah Winfrey was born to unmarried teenage parents. As a child, she split time between her mother Vernita who lived in Milwaukee, Wis. and her father Vernon who lived in Nashville, Tenn. reports the Biography Channel. Her mother was never really around much to take care of her, and Winfrey was abused by several family friends and relatives in Milwaukee.

Winfrey’s first job? According she worked as a “quiet grocery store worker” and was not allowed to talk to customers.

In 1968, she moved permanently to Nashville after becoming pregnant at the age of 14. After her week-old baby died, her father decided to help her turn her life around by instilling strict discipline and making sure that she would get an education, reports People.

She eventually became an honors student in high school and attended Tennessee State University on a full scholarship. Winfrey later transitioned into television, and became Nashville’s first African-American female news anchor.

5- Li Ka- Shing, Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa Limited and Cheung Kong Holdings

Li Ka-Shing is the richest person in greater China and is also the wealthiest self-made billionaire in Asia with a net worth of $21 billion, according to a Forbes report in May 2010.

Ka-Shing is the chairman of two enormous holding companies Hutchinson Whampoa Limited and Cheung Kong Holdings. (His empire boasts gigantic holdings in health and beauty and shipping industries.) At age 15, he was forced to quit school after his father died of tuberculosis, eventually finding work in a plastics factory where he worked 16 hours a day.

After years of working at the factory, he eventually created his own company, building on his accumulated knowledge of the plastics industry. His charity organization, the Li Ka-Shing Foundation, was created in 1980 and has donated a total of about $1.45 billion so far. The foundation focuses on medical care and education — neither of which Ka-Shing received as a child.

courtesy huffpo