Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan, and today I'm wondering about resilience and reinvention with Sheila Johnson, who I was on stage with at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Sheila is a total pioneer. She's the co-founder of Black Entertainment Television. She's the first African-American

woman to become a billionaire. And she owns three professional sports teams, but her path to success

was anything but smooth. After being fired from her own company by her husband during a brutal

divorce, she rebuilt her life and created salamander hotels and resorts.

Sheila's book Walk Through Fire, a memoir of love, loss, and triumph, tells the story of growing up

after her father walked out on her family, building media and hospitality businesses from

scratch, and facing down everything from toxic relationships to racial hatred.

Here is my conversation with Sheila Johnson recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Okay, hi everybody. Welcome and let's give a nice warm welcome to Sheila Johnson.

Oh, thank you.

You all are so kind.

I love our little tent in the woods here. We can talk about anything here. No one's listening.

I know. It's just nice and intimate.

Your life really sits at this intersection of art and commerce.

Yes.

I wonder where your life as an artist and an art lover started.

It started when I was very young.

I was nine years old, and I'll give you just a little quick backstory.

I'm the daughter of an African-American neurosurgeon who,

because he was black, couldn't operate on white patients. We were moved around 13 times.

And from all the moving that we did, we settled just outside of Chicago in Maywood, Illinois,

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