I have just read on the Web of Anita Roddick’s death. While I was hardly her great friend, we were pals and spent many hours over the years chewing the fat about most every topic under the sun. She was passionate about so many worthy causes, and used her business and strength-of-conviction for the greater good in a way that can genuinely be called “peerless” in the exact meaning of that word. In my sphere of business, she was a practitioner and vociferous champion of doing business in a way that contributed enormously and directly to society; her causes went from environmentalism to the creation of a “supply chain” that lifted hundreds of thousands out of poverty.
My best personal memories are of her appetite for life—and her constant challenge to me, in a pointed, no nonsense way, to use my bully pulpit to champion the causes which she and we held dear. She was a “for profit capitalist” who used her commercial power to enhance the life of so many, and, indeed, the planet itself.
At just 64, she departed, alas, much too soon.