If I were not a writer, I would spend more time doing the things that I am already doing, which include doing research in physics, teaching, and running a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower women in Cambodia.
At the most fundamental level, it is an honor to serve - at whatever type or size of organization you are privileged to lead, whether it is a for-profit or nonprofit. It is an honor to serve. Starting from that foundation, it is important to have a compelling vision and a comprehensive plan.
We've done education nonprofit through our history, and maybe the profit motive will be helpful.
In the years after the expedition to Chad, I started the Honnold Foundation, a small nonprofit that was my attempt to do something positive in the world. I sought out projects that both helped the environment and improved peoples' standards of living. The more I researched, the more I gravitated toward solar.
Many on the professional Right owe their livelihoods to a large and growing network of nonprofit donor-funded groups and for-profit consulting and direct marketing companies hired by those groups.
I went to high school in Ellicott City, Maryland, and I felt pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. It just took time away from my doing things on the Internet - like creating clans in Quake II or starting a Web design nonprofit. In school, I was just a kid. Online, I had authority.
One thing we're doing with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, the nonprofit I direct, is providing financial support to journalists who were formerly middle-class.
Pfizer's actually teamed up with my nonprofit organization, which is called Adaptive Action Sports. I cofounded this organization in 2005 to help people with physical disabilities get involved in action sports, go snowboarding, skateboarding.
In 2011, I started a nonprofit organization, Venture for America, to help bring talented young entrepreneurs to create thousands of jobs in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Birmingham, Baltimore and other cities around the country.
I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you, but about what you do with what happens to you.'
