"China traditionally has been a tea-drinking country but we turned them into coffee drinkers."

Howard Schultz

A successful entrepreneur, 56-year old Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO Starbucks in his younger days was determined to win the battle over poverty. He became the first person to graduate in his family.

Schultz's inspiring journey started when he went to Seattle to check out a popular coffee bean store called Starbucks, which was buying many of the Hammarplast Swedish drip coffeemakers he sold. He finally joined the company and was promoted as head of marketing and operations in 1982.

But he parted ways as the owners refused to accept his plans of offering coffee in stores or diversifying into restaurants. Schultz went ahead and started his own coffee-bar business, called Il Giornale.

Interestingly, a year later Schultz bought Starbucks for $3.8 million. As CEO of Starbucks in 2008, Schultz earned a total compensation of $9,740,471, which included a base salary of $1,190,000.