Dr. Mark S. Albion

As I've pursued a career these last 30 years, the essential question for me has been: "How can I be a Marxist and still own a Jacuzzi?"

My dream has been that I and the next generation of business leaders – the generation our planet has been waiting for – would find a path to lifetime happiness ("Making a Life, Making a Living®," Warner Books, 2000), find our right livelihood ("Finding Work That Matters," Sounds True, 2002), and find a way to have a significant impact on making the world a better place for all ("True to Yourself: Leading a Values-Based Business," Berrett-Koehler, 2006).

You see, I never really lost the ideals of the '60s. I just wanted material comforts, too. While I detested Western capitalism – witnessed by my 15-month backpack around the world after college – I returned to doctoral work at the West Point of Capitalism, and even became a marketing professor there.

I received my 15-minutes of fame in the mid-80s, started my own businesses, and even got a hug from then President Ronald Reagan, who taught me that when you make people feel good about themselves, they will do almost anything for you. Even so, as a fast-track "conflicted achiever" unhappy in his work, I found out, as the great philosopher Lily Tomlin once said, "The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat."

My middlessence, my search for meaning, continued as a professor and entrepreneur at Harvard Business School until I finally realized that life may have no meaning. Or worse yet, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove. The 1980s had values that what counted is what could be counted. I was part of that, too, but it didn't work after awhile. So I exited in 1988, looking to bring my values to work – looking to move from a world with lots of belongings to one of belonging.

By this time, my family was growing, with my wife, Joy, since 1981, and two daughters Amanda (1987) and Nicolette (1991). http://www.twbookmark.com/authors/35/1817/photo_gallery9255.html

They were happy when Dad was happy ("What does Daddy do?"... "I think he types."). I had some business successes, some failures; we bought a big house, almost lost the big house, but somehow I just kept climbing that ladder of success, wrong by wrong (thanks, Mae West). I realized, as another great philosopher, Sophie Tucker, knew, "I've been rich. I've been poor. Rich is better." Or as Bob Dylan sang, "Money doesn't talk. It swears."

In this search for significance, I learned that the shortest distance between two points is always under construction. Through socially responsible business networks like Social Venture Network, Businesses for Social Responsibility and one I co-founded for MBAs, Students for Responsible Business – now called Net Impact - I began to make a life my family and I were proud of. I just couldn't figure out how to make a living at it.

Experience is a marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. I was now leading two separate lives as businessman and social contributor. E. B. White said it perfectly: "I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

Fortunately, all of this led to an official speech on socially responsible business at the United Nations in June 1996 and a follow-up "hug" from Mother Teresa, who attended the speech. (She would fall ill two weeks later.) It is said that we do not remember days; we remember moments. That was my moment.

In 1997 I rediscovered my roots as an 8-year old writer – roots I had conveniently forgotten for nearly 40 years (for a video of that remembrance, click here).

I began the book I first tried to write when I was backpacking around the world: "Making a Life, Making a Living®," which became a New York Times Business Best Seller in January 2000. The morning I learned of the honor, I told my wife, who responded as any good wife would, "Congratulations, honey. Can you pick Amanda up after ballet today?" Or as Amanda said to me at March 2006 family dinner, "If you won the Nobel prize, daddy, I wouldn't love you any more than I already do."

The writing continued as I wrote dozens of articles for Fast Company and other magazines, but most importantly my decade old monthly ML2 e-newsletter, which services 87 countries. And so did my ongoing involvement with our MBAs, primarily through Net Impact (http://www.netimpact.org), as I spoke at over 100 business schools on four continents.

I am no longer living a deferred life plan. I can now integrate my passion -- writing, speaking and challenging young people to lead business lives of service -- with making a living. With the support of my CEO mother (happy she is not the only breadwinner), my wife (happy I am out of her hair so she can focus on tennis), and my daughters, I am living a life I only dreamed of through the accomplishment of others.

Today, the answer to my 30 year-old question is clear: "We are all angels with one wing, able to fly only when we embrace each other." And how do I hope to be remembered? I hope as, "He loved."