Pursue The Passion
902 posts
It was time for Anita Malik to do a gut check. After another meeting with her newspaper employer in which her ideas were shook off a shoulder, Anita sat at her desk and looked at her gifts. She had three college degrees, including the masters in journalism she had gone back to get at USC,…
When Andrew Hasbun decided to try to make it big in the world of television news, he left Los Angeles and moved to Medford, Oregon. Although this seems counter-intuitive, it is in fact the route followed by nearly all who commit their lives to the news. After Medford, Andrew found himself in Jackson, Mississippi, and…
Interview: How To Become a Communications Manager at a Nonprofit My job was okay, but it wasn’t anything that I wanted to be doing. I worked there for almost a year, and then my aunt Patti, who is the reason why I’m working at One Legacy, got very sick. She actually passed away and became…
Interview: How To Become a Writer David Rensin is the author of twelve books, the most recent being a slice of Americana in the biography of Miki Dora. How would you describe your job. How would I describe my job? Basically, as gainful unemployment. My job really is…I write books. That’s the simple explanation. I…
“Is this path the right one? Am I doing the right thing?” These are the questions Scott Foreman, Director of Post-Production for Jobing.com, asked himself when he was 22, working as an unpaid production intern for a television station in San Francisco. Lack of pay did not stop Scott from doing what he loves. What…
Pamela Slim never believed that she could go into business on her own. Now she helps people escape from the cubicle to pursue their passions. After receiving her degree in international service and development, Mrs. Slim set out to save the world. At 23 she was working for a community foundation in San Francisco, yet…
From a young age Mary Gilbaugh knew she wanted to work in professional sports, but her corporate accounting career path took a few bends before her childhood dream would be realized. After running track for two years at USC, Mary confidently entered the world of corporate accounting only to realize the fifteen hour days were…
Interview: How To Become a Public Health Educator I had always wanted to be a school teacher. I got married, had kids, ended up working full time. Six months after I was married my husband was diagnosed with a kidney disease. He was told in six years he would have to have a kidney transplant.…
With the loud engine roar and blades rapidly revolving, a helicopter lands at a school assembly full of awestruck first graders. A man in a captain suit cuts the engine and hops out of the cockpit to wave to the crowd. The school erupts in excitement. Amongst the crowd there is a young first grader…
Interview: How To Become a Wildlife Expert At 22? At 22 I didn’t have a clue. Honestly. I had gone to Silvermine College in Connecticut and then left college early to go to Aspen and do some skiing. Just before I went back to college I was drafted. I ended up going to Vietnam. I…
At 25, with a degree in mechanical engineering, David Kravetz decided he wanted to sell brownies. David, along with his lifelong friend and business partner Eileen Spitalny, moved to Phoenix, found day jobs, and spent many nights in a friend’s catering kitchen armed only with his mother’s brownie recipe and a disturbing lack of experience.…
On our first day of the trip, with the RV puttering along the I-8 freeway between Phoenix and San Diego, Daniel made the desperation call to Aunt Patti at 8pm our time, 10pm Chicago time. Our original plan was to stay in the RV that had broken down twice and guzzled $300 in gas already.…
We met up with Amy in her Southside Chicago loft, to hear her story of how she made a leap of faith from the security of Corporate America, to the exhilarating yet exhausting world of entrepreneurship. While we devoured the best pound cake known to man, the warm and collected Amy relived the events that…
never had a passion for accounting; he even tried to talk me out of going into accounting when I told him my future plans. His passion is New York City. He was in the Yankee Stadium bleachers on the day that Lou Gehrig gave his unprecedented farewell speech. He witnessed and felt the…
On a lazy Saturday afternoon after our awesome interview at Wrigley Field, the PTP team casually strolled up to the highly acclaimed Charlie Trotter’s restaurant in Chicago. Seeing as how this was a restaurant that won the best restaurant in the U.S. in 2000 and was founded in 1987 by celebrity chef Charlie Trotter, we…
Interview: How To Become a Physical Therapist I am a physical therapist at Scottsdale Healthcare. My job title is clinical specialist. It’s a unique position in physical therapy. Physical therapy is a broad career. We are in outpatient orthopedics area. I’m a clinical specialist because I’m board certified in orthopedics. I know that I wanted…
When Troy Henikoff entered Brown University in Rhode Island, he had the dream of designing sail boats for a living. He knew he liked to build and create things, but also knew he needed to enroll in a graduate program. The plan was to go to Brown, get an undergrad degree in engineering and go…
The Road To General Manager At age 18, Billy Beane had more hype surrounding him than LeBron James did coming out of high school. Scouts would flounder to his high school and drool at the opportunity of drafting the 6′4, power hitting sensation. The New York Mets got that opportunity, taking Billy with the 20th pick…
I received an email from Jonna Sotelo, a real estate agent that had come across what we were doing, and referred me to her sister, Nicole, for a possible interview in Chicago. In my exchange with Nicole I learned a few things from our correspondence. 1) She was passionate for making a difference through striving…
When we walked into the Chicago Housing Authority headquarters we wondered if we were in the right place. The unassuming security guard, who questioned the validity of my Arizona driver’s license, didn’t seem to fit what I had imagined of the organization that is single handedly changing the face of public housing in Chicago. But…
As we walked up to Scooter’s on a calm Tuesday evening in the Chicago neighborhood off Paulina, we met with Mary Jane Grinstead, who casually rode up on her bike. Mary Jane is from a small town in Missouri. Over the moderate hustle and bustle of the crowd entering and exiting Scooter’s for their highly…
This morning I woke up and immediately starting thinking about Pursue The Passion, and what else we needed to deliver our message. An idea of a poem popped in my head, and I thought of Michelle True, one of our interviews in Chicago that ended up being canceled at the last minute. So I emailed…
The day before we were to depart for Chicago, I emerged from Trader Joe’s into the blistering triple digit desert heat in Phoenix, talking with Type A’s CEO Anna Belyaev with my phone pinched between ear and shoulder while clutching an armful of groceries. “Uh huh. Yeah. That’ll work. 8:30 Thursday morning at the Westin?…
had a serious problem with alcohol. She had worked for IBM for 17 years in her first real job out of college. She was very successful despite her long nights of drinking, followed up by early morning meetings. For some reason she had no problem fighting off the hangovers and pulling it together…
