2/3 of our management associates come from our hourly ranks. We put in place academies to help people with education. We've put a dollar a day college program in to help people get college hours if they want to advance their degrees.

On the first day of school, my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name and said that from thenceforth that was the name we would answer to in school. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education.

My dad was a dentist and he moved us across the state of Arkansas to open a dental practice, and then told me to get to work to pay for college and the highest paying job in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1984 was Walmart Warehouse at $6.50 an hour compared to McDonald's at $3.35, so I chose Walmart.

My first job with Walmart was unloading trucks in a warehouse. Then I worked as an assistant manager in a store, and I was lucky enough to get into our buyer-training program. I loved merchandising and had a career path that led me through Sam's Club and Walmart International.

It is unwise to make education too cheap. If everything is provided freely, there is a tendency to put no value on anything. Education must always have a certain price on it; even as the very process of learning itself must always require individual effort and initiative.

The only purpose of education is freedom; the only method is experience.