Sabine Heller (chief executive of A Small World) in “The Corner Office”

HellerAdam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Sabine Heller, chief executive of A Small World, an online travel and lifestyle community. She says she has learned the importance of self-education in a career. “If someone has gaps in their knowledge,” she says, “they need to be willing to fill them.”

To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

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Bryant: When you were growing up, were you in leadership roles or doing entrepreneurial things?

Heller: My early years were spent in an interesting and multicultural way, splitting time pretty evenly between Mumbai, New Delhi and New York. I also grew up in a matriarchy. My grandmother was in the upper house of Parliament in New Delhi, and I was trotted off to the Parliament house frequently. Several generations of my family had been very involved in nation-building in India. It gave me a broad perspective and allowed me to think in possibilities, not problems. And it gave me a great deal of confidence as a woman.

When I started going to school in the States, I went into a shell because of culture shock. It took a little bit of adjustment. But then I decided I wanted to make my own money. When I was 14, I started a flier business for nightclubs. I hired some other kids, took a cut and deployed them all over New York. I had about 25 of my friends working for me at one point.

Bryant: Were you in leadership roles in college?

Heller: I went to Davidson, in North Carolina. It had an extraordinary and stringent honor code, and people really stuck by it. I was the head of the council of appeals.

Bryant: What drew you to that?

Heller: There was a high degree of accountability with the honor code. But there were these weird and interesting discrepancies in how different violations were treated. I wanted to fight for the person who was possibly looked over. I’ve always been drawn to advocacy in one way or another.

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Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.comthat he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here.

His more recent book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, was also also published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.

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