Remember Michael Milken – the media scrooge of Wall Street during the 1970’s and 1980’s? What happened to Michael after his fall from Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1989? Michael Milken paid dearly - $200 million fine and twenty-two months in prison. What has he been doing since his release from prison? A lot.

He co-founded the Milken Family Foundation, renowned for teacher recognition – the foundation has recognized 2,100 K-12 teachers and principals with $54 million in National Educator Awards.

He established Faster Cures, an “action” tank dedicated to accelerating cures for life-threatening diseases.

He created the Prostate Cancer Foundation, whose competitive research grants to some 1,200 projects worldwide make it the world's largest philanthropic source of funds for prostate cancer research.

He’s been on the cover of Business Week where his quest for cancer cure was featured.

He’s been on the cover of Fortune Magazine under the headline The Man Who Changed Medicine.

He founded the Milken Institute with “a mandate to step outside the box and find new ways to create jobs and generate capital for entrepreneurs both locally and globally.”

The Milken Institute recently published a report on barriers to entrepreneurship. The findings of the authors, James Barth, Glenn Yago and Betsy Zeidman are startling –

A close look at the breakdown of distribution of business ownership by race, gender and ethnicity reveals significant imbalances. Women, for example, are under-represented as majority owners of firms, and the under-representation increases as one goes up the ladder. Much the same can be said of Hispanics, who account for 13.5 percent of the population, but just 7 percent of firms and less than 1 percent of revenues. African-Americans account for 12.4 percent of the population, but only 5 percent of firms and less than 1 percent of revenues. By contrast, for Asian-Americans, the percentages of firm employees and receipts are in approximate parity to the group's percentage of the population as a whole, and they own a share of firm numbers higher than their share of population.

What’s going on here? What are the true barriers and what can be done to tear down the barriers? The report attempts to answer these questions. This is very insightful research.

Pierre Cutler
The Sacramento Executive