Contreras-Sweet watched her mother work under horrendous conditions in a chicken packaging plant in order to give her children opportunity. It was a gift that Contreras-Sweet never took for granted, working her way through high school at a jewelry store where she met the office manager for the speaker of the California Assembly. That fortuitous turn led to a job working for the speaker and a chance to get to know every committee in state government, while at the same time completing a degree in political science. Work after college took her from handling government affairs at Westinghouse to opening the Contreras-Sweet Company, an international management-consulting firm, with clients including Disney, Coca Cola, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

From there, in 1999 Contreras-Sweet became the first Latina to hold a cabinet-level position in California under Governor Gray Davis. As Secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing, she managed 42,000 employees and a $14-billion budget. Known as a strong housing advocate, Contreras-Sweet helped increase housing as well as stimulated jobs in California’s economy. She also oversaw departments including the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Corporations, as well as created the first Department of Managed Healthcare. It was during her tenure that she realized there was a large gap in the banking system – there hadn’t been a new bank dedicated to serving the Latino community in California for 35 tears. Thus Promérica Bank was born in 2006 with Contreras-Sweet as its founder and chairwoman and a mission to build family wealth by employing a business consultancy model.

Today, Contreras-Sweet is fulfilling her lifelong goal of building bridges to understanding and equality. As her grandmother always told her, “it’s not the position you hold, it’s what you do with the position you hold.” With that advice, in addition to her business endeavors, Contreras-Sweet has founded numerous organizations and initiatives to create opportunity for others. She is the president and co-founder of FORTIUS Holdings, LLC. a private equity and venture fund specializing in providing California’s small businesses with quicker access to capital. Additionally, she was a founding director of The California Endowment and was the founding president of Hispanics Organized for Political Equality (HOPE), an organization that trains young people to wield political power and broaden their civic influence. Contreras-Sweet serves as a member of the board of the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital and on the Women’s Leadership Board at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Maria Contreras-Sweet lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

1. Learn to be comfortable in front of large groups. He encouraged public speaking and a willingness to get in front of people to talk with passion.

2. Never stop learning. John shared that he is a constant student.

3. Never be afraid to recommend something, even if others may doubt you.

4. If something interests you, make a business of it. Never give up.

5. Don’t just follow a need to be wealthy. John followed his desire to provide for his family first, everything else followed.

6. Look to the long-term opportunity rather than always jumping for the short term gain. Many of his greatest experiences and accomplishments were years in the making.

Sky’s the limit: John Semcken was a Top Gun Navy pilot and an adviser on the Tom Cruise film. Now he’s trying to get an NFL stadium off the ground.

Life has turned out very differently for John Semcken than how it looked from the cockpit of an F-14 fighter jet. Back then he was a Navy pilot landing planes on the decks of aircraft carriers. A 1978 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and, later, the famous Top Gun flying school, his skills and expertise eventually landed him a job as technical adviser on the hit 1986 movie by that name starring Tom Cruise. After retiring from an eight-year stint in the Navy, he worked on several other Hollywood productions including ABC miniseries “War and Remembrance,” based on the World War II novel by Herman Wouk. Today, Semcken, 52, is vice president of billionaire developer Ed Roski Jr. ’s Majestic Realty Co., where he throws around some weight. Semcken was point man on the company’s 1998 development of the $375 million Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. He is currently overseeing Roski’s effort to attract a National Football League team to a proposed 75,000-seat stadium in the City of Industry. The Business Journal caught up with him in his office in the San Gabriel Valley city.

Question: What in the world ever possessed you to become a fighter pilot?

Answer: My dad was a Navy pilot and I grew up wanting to be one my whole life. I went to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, then went to flight school and kept on dancing until I got selected to fly jets. I first came to California when the Navy stationed me at Miramar in San Diego.

Q: What was it like?

A: Really fun. When you’re young, flying an airplane off aircraft carriers is very exciting. I flew almost every day for nearly eight years. It was an exciting part of my life.

Q: What stands out?.

A: I flew off the USS Enterprise in the early 1980s when we were in detente, trying to show the Russians that we were always going to be wherever they were. I guess the most interesting thing that happened was when the Russians shot down Korean passenger Flight 007 in 1982. The Navy sent three carrier battle groups to the Northern Pacific for a month and a hall and we were overflown by Russian airplanes every day. We intercepted them and escorted them out so they knew that they couldn’t get near the ship.

Q: Any scary moments?

A: All the time. There are always moments when things go wrong on airplanes, of course–like running out of gas and having to land on the deck when it’s pitching 30 feet. Once a compressor stalled on the catapult, I lost thrust in one of my engines, went off the end of the ship and sank. Generally, though, I was lucky.

Q: How did you end up being technical adviser on “Top Gun”?

A: The Navy picked me to oversee the movie. There were two of us from Miramar, myself and a guy called Rat who, today, is a four-star admiral commander of the Pacific Fleet. I was the only Navy guy, though, who was there all the time. I helped with picking locations, choreographing some of the maneuvers and writing some of the script. It was lots of fun.

Q: Did you get to meet Tom Cruise?

A: I was with Tom every day for the entire shoot. He was very young. I think he turned 21 the summer we were filming the movie. He had just finished “Risky Business” and this was the first movie where he was the main guy, so he was very focused. He wanted to know everything about how we did things, what language to use, how he would act in certain situations. We talked a lot.

Q: Have you talked since then?

A: I’ve seen him once since then, at a Dodger game, and he remembered me so he knows who I am. During the shoot, I think I was more like their mascot or something.

Q: What got you out of the Navy?

A: In 1986, ABC called Paramount Studios asking who their adviser on Top Gun was. They gave them my name, so ABC called and said they were doing a miniseries called “War and Remembrance” and needed an adviser. My first question was, had they gotten permission from the government because I was a naval officer. They said, no, we want you to do this for us. At first I was hesitant, but when they told me how much I’d be making–more in a week as their adviser than I did in a month in the Navy–I said, well, I could do that. So I got out of the Navy and went to work for Hollywood. It was my first experience in the real world, where you could get fired.

Q: Is that what happened?

A: Well, there was another guy–a Navy captain–who’d been promised a job when he retired. He came in and worked for several weeks and then the producer came up to me and said, “John, you’re going to go a long way in this business but, you know, I can’t afford two.” That was my last day. I worked for a little longer on some other film projects and then decided that maybe the film business wasn’t for me.

Q: So how does a Top Gun pilot end up in real estate development?

A: It was complete luck. Some friends had told me I ought to go into real estate because it would be a good business and I had the personality for it. So I pulled an ad out of the paper, went in and they gave me the job on the spot. I said, “Well, let me go home and think about it.” I was living in an apartment above a garage in Manhattan Beach at the time, and that night I took a run on the strand. When I got back there was this lady sweeping off her back porch, and she said, “What do you do for a living?” I had just finished filming a commercial, so I was working all night, coming home and playing golf during the day. She said, “My husband thinks you’re a drug dealer,” and I said, “No, to be honest I just got offered a job in real estate.” She said, “Well my husband works for a real estate company downtown, why don’t you go see him tonight?” So I went downtown, chatted it up with him and the next day went to work for the Charles Dunn Co.

Q: How did it go?

A: Real estate is 100 percent commission and I wasn’t making much money, so I started a little motivational speaking business on the side. I got paid to give speeches, believe it or not. I couldn’t believe it: I was just telling stories about being in the Navy. After my boss at Charles Dunn left, I went to another company (Gerald Hines Interests) because I was really good at giving presentations.

Q: So how did you end up at Majestic?

A: Later I want to work for Smith & Hricik, which had a plan to build the world headquarters for Unocal downtown. We had a signed lease, but Unocal decided to leave California and terminate it, so our project was dead. That was a bad day because all my income was based on those leases and now we had to find something else to do with the property. We were all Midwest guys who loved hockey: we went to all the Kings games and said, “Well, what if we build them an arena?” So the next thing you know, we’re teaching ourselves about arenas. It was an idea that came out of our project tailing apart.

Q: That was when you met Ed Roski, right?.

A: Yes. We were talking with the then-owners of the Kings when they got into financial difficulty and Mr. Roski and Phil Anschutz bought the team. They didn’t need our property any longer, so we were out. The good news was that Mr. Roski liked me and hired me to work on the Staples Center for him.

Q: So you went to work for Majestic specifically to do Staples Center?

A: Yeah, that’s all I’d been doing for the last several years so I knew everything about arenas and suites and naming rights and club seats. We did all the entitlements and approvals and negotiations for Staples Center and then, once it was approved, went to work on the Coliseum.

Q: I take it you mean renovating it for an NFL team?

A: We spent five years trying to renovate it, but it never worked out. Two years ago the commissioner of the National Football League came out and said they were never going back to the Coliseum, so that’s when Ed Roski came up with this other project that he’d worked on for years in the City of Industry. We had already gotten a (business park) approved, so we just changed it a little bit–took out some elements and added a football stadium–and that’s what I spend most of my time on now.

Featuring intimate and semi-private dining areas, The Pines offers an eclectic selection of mouthwatering food cooked to perfection and presented with award-winning style. Set in a relaxed, modern decor, The Pines is the perfect place for any special occasion or to enjoy an exceptional dining experience. 

Dinner hours are 5:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Reservations may be made by calling (909) 425-4889.

 The Pines is also one of the area’s hottest lounges. With its electric atmosphere, the hippest DJs playing the best dance and romantic music, and genial mixologists preparing the latest drinks with flair and style, it is unquestionably THE place to see and be seen.

 The lounge inside The Pines is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 10:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m. for the 21-and-over crowd. A dress code and cover charge apply.

Take a one-minute survey to learn if you are a tribal leader! Go to: http://www.triballeadership.net/

At $65 per session, you can’t afford not to attend. Join one hundred CEOs and high-level managers as they use the brain trust in the room to find solutions to their toughest business challenges.  The interactive morning sessions are tailored to produce results that the CEO can immediately implement the next day.  We are pleased to announce that our next series keynote is Moctesuma Esparza, well known for his contributions to the movie industry and commitment to creating opportunities for Latinos everywhere.  A partner in the highly successful Esparza-Katz Productions with Robert Katz, Mr. Esparza has worked with stars such as Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, Andy Garcia, Jimmy Smits, Martin Sheen.

Register today. All sessions, held inside The Pines at San Manuel Indian Bingo & Casino, will run from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. with breakfast and lunch included. Our next session is March 25, 2010. Register now to be part of this dynamic morning event.

Special thank you to our Sponsors and Partners: Center for International Trade Development; Chino Valley Chamber; Community Bank; Fontana Chamber of Commerce, Inland Empire Asian Business Association; Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship (IECE) at Cal State San Bernardino; Spaulding Thompson & Associates and Winter Advertising.

Learn more about our speakers, sessions or sign up now

* The Best business seminar I have ever attended!
* The Speakers were Amazing!
*This is EXACTLY what the business community needs!
* I must bring my customers to the next one!
* The business networking and sharing of best practices was very useful!
* I left this seminar with real, actionable tips and ideas to improve my business!

If you missed Session One, DON’T WAIT, register NOW for the November 19th session.

Check out Tribal Leaders co-author Dave Logan on TED to learn more about how critical tribes are today (see link below). Our Session Two Speaker John King is going to be dynamic!

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_logan_on_tribal_leadership.html