Mostly, I do what I do because it is fun and I get to create stuff. My job lets me combine activities that fascinate me and bring me satisfaction. This includes designing, writing, teaching and a being a student of how people and groups interact and learn. 

Mostly, I do what I do because it is fun and I get to create stuff. My job lets me combine activities that fascinate me and bring me satisfaction. This includes designing, writing, teaching and a being a student of how people and groups interact and learn.

As a child I saw my mother come home from her job in a textile factory frustrated and exhausted having not made an unreachable quota on her shift and more than once having run a needle through her finger. My mother was a hard-working, good problem-solver who also helped to run a family farm. However, in the factory she was an appendage to a machine. I’m not really sure when making workplaces more humane became part of the fabric of my work. I know that underutilization and poor treatment of people is not a factory problem alone. Today I see it in schools, nonprofits, banks among other places.

Almost everyone goes to work somewhere. At work there is incentive to learn to work together, value our differences, express our potential and work towards common goals. Maybe if we can learn to do this in our workplaces, it will transfer to the psyche of our neighborhoods, states and nation. I know that you cannot tell people these things, but rather they have to discover them through their own experiences. However, I think we can design experiences that accelerate the learning.

This essay and portrait is part of a community-art and leadership project called “wdydwyd?” Tony Deifell (KNLP-16) invited his colleagues in the Kellogg Fellowship to reflect on what motivates them to follow their personal and professional paths by answering the question, “Why do you do what you do?”


“wdydwyd?” has reached over 1.5 million people worldwide and it has been used for team-building at Google, Twitter, many colleges and universities, nonprofits and K-12 classrooms. And, according to Wired Magazine, “In Silicon Valley, that question has been the hottest team-building meme since Outward Bound – and it’s spreading.” For more information: http://wdydwyd.com/leadership.


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