Upside: Michael Dadashi

Michael Dadashi is the Founder and CEO of MHD Enterprises and Infinite Recovery. Clean and sober since 2009, Dadashi replaced his old attitudes with a new set of principles that motivated him to extend the same life-saving second chances he had received to others struggling with addiction. He started by employing other recovering addicts at his e-­waste recycling business, MHD Enterprises, which he has owned for more than a decade. Defying just about every possible conventional hiring practice, Michael Dadashi grew the company to a multi-­million-­dollar enterprise, which Inc. magazine named the 28th fastest growing private company in the U.S. in 2012 and the 61st in 2013.