Mythic VISION

DEREK C. BLASBERG talks to business leader and indomitable culture shifter MELLODY HOBSON about the forthcoming LUCAS MUSEUM OF NARRATIVE ART in Los Angeles and why the STORIES we TELL allow us to not only IMAGINE new WORLDS but REIMAGINE our OWN

- DEREK C. BLASBERG

How old were you when you knew you were a mutant?”

Mellody Hobson asks me as we settle into her home office in Los Angeles for a chat. Hobson, co-CEO of the Chicago-based global asset-management firm Ariel Investments, is one of the most influential businesspeople in America. But I’m speechless. A mutant? Is that a good thing?

Then I’m reminded that Hobson’s husband is George Lucas—the director and filmmaker, creator of the spectacularly intergalactic Star Wars universe, and one of the most imaginative minds in cinematic history. So it can’t be a bad thing, right?

I was this many days old when I realized I was a mutant, I tell her.

“I was five when I realized, I’m not like the others,” Hobson says. “I wasn’t like the people around me. I was a mutant.”

Hobson’s ascent to the upper echelons of the business world is by any measure extraordinary. The youngest of six children, she grew up with her mother and siblings on Chicago’s South Side. They struggled financially, but Hobson was always obsessive about school. “It was the one place I had full control,” she says.

She went on to attend Princeton University, becoming the first person in her family to graduate from college. From there, she joined Ariel Investments, where she’d worked as a summer intern, and rose through the ranks to become its co-CEO while also serving on the boards of companies like JPMorganChase and Starbucks. Today, her influence extends well beyond boardrooms. She is involved in a number of cultural institutions and nonprofits and has been a trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for nearly a decade. In 2024, Hobson also extended her longstanding advocacy for financial literacy by publishing a children’s book, Priceless Facts About Money.