About a year ago I found a picture of myself as an employee of the McDonald’s in Blue Springs Missouri back in 1984. Since then I have been thinking about my sixteen-year-old self and what I was dreaming about back then. Where I thought I was going. Who I thought I would become. What I thought my life would be like.

My life since that picture taken at age sixteen has been working in my chosen profession: the restaurant industry. And it has changed my life in so many wonderful and profound ways. It created opportunities for me that I wouldn’t have dared to dream about back then. At age 16, I was excited. I was passionate. I was dreaming. I felt connected. I found a family I didn’t really have at home at the time. I knew I wanted more of all those feelings.

And here I am. All these years later. Still excited. Still passionate. Still dreaming, and hopefully a bit wiser. I consider it my life’s work to create opportunities for others that otherwise might not exist, and pay forward the generous investment that many different leaders have made in my development over the years, and create those same feelings I had at age 16 for other young leaders. And that work has been, and continues to be, very fulfilling...