The suitability of a role model depends, in part, on the admirer’s perceived commonality with the model, who should provide an image of an ambitious yet realistic goal. For example, Laird suggests that, Benjamin Franklin served as the role model for countless nineteenth-century white businessmen, including notables such as Thomas Mellon, B.F. Goodrich, and Frederick Weyerhäuser. Laird suggests that the lack of commonalities between potential role models and would-be admirers helped perpetuate barriers to American minorities and women as they tried to advance in a business world dominated by white men, thus spurring late twentieth-century efforts to develop suitable role models for these groups.[1]