The never-before-told story of Pixar's improbable success.

"Hi, Lawrence?" the caller asked. "This is Steve Jobs. I saw your picture in a magazine a few years ago and thought we'd work together someday."

After Steve Jobs was unceremoniously dismissed from Apple, he turned his attention to a little-known graphics art company that he owned called Pixar.

One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained lawyer and Silicon Valley executive to whom he had never spoken before, in the hope of persuading Levy to help him get Pixar on the right track.

What Levy found in Pixar was a company on the verge of failure. To Pixar and Beyond is the extraordinary story of what happened next: How Levy, working closely with Jobs and the Pixar team, produced and implemented a highly improbable roadmap that transformed the sleepy graphics art studio into one of Hollywood's greatest success stories.

Set in the worlds of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the book takes listeners inside Pixar, Disney, law firms, and investment banks. It provides an up-close, first-hand account of Pixar's stunning ascent, how it took risks, Levy's enduring collaboration and friendship with Jobs, and how Levy came to see in Pixar deeper parallels that apply to all aspects of our lives.

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In 1994, out of the blue, I received a phone call from Steve Jobs to see if I had any interest in running Pixar’s business. Over the next twelve years, I served as Pixar’s Chief Financial Officer, a member of its Office of the President and later as a member of its board of directors. During this period I developed and put in place the strategy that would transform Pixar from a money-losing graphics company into a multibillion-dollar entertainment studio.

I then took a break from corporate life to pursue my passion for eastern philosophy and meditation. I came to see the power of these ideas for realizing our potential as individuals and for creating human-centered organizations that foster creativity, dignity, and excellence.

In 2016, I released my first book, To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). The book is An Amazon Best Book of 2016 in Business and Leadership and A Fortune Magazine Best Book of 2016. The New York Times described it as “enchanting…Mr. Levy has quite a story to tell” and Fortune Magazine called it “An epic tale of Levy’s quest to balance the competing interests of the quiet artists and technologists who created Toy Story and the mercurial entrepreneur who controlled their professional fates.”

I recently published an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled Finding the Healthy Tension Between Being Confident and Collaborative. I speak regularly on the Pixar story and these topics including talks at Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, Pixar and Google.

My education includes a law degree from Harvard Law School. After moving to Silicon Valley in the 1980s and starting the first technology transactions law practice, I became a partner at the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati. From there, I joined Electronics for Imaging as its chief financial officer and vice chairman of the board, a company I took public before joining Pixar.

In 2003, together with four co-founders, I created a non-profit called Juniper Foundation that focuses on bringing Indo-Tibetan meditation practices to contemporary life. I teach meditation weekly and continue to write and speak on a range of topics including creativity and innovation, collaboration, realizing our potential, and building human-centered organizations.

I live in Palo Alto, California with my wife Hillary. I am an avid reader, with a wide range of interests including philosophy, anthropology, and science fiction, and I love to exercise and enjoy the latest in pop culture with my family. Here’s one quote I love, from Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind:

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- https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M69IZ5Y/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0
- http://lawrencelevy.com/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrence-levy-2a2186a9/

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