Devin D. Thorpe:  Championing Social Good

Devin D. Thorpe thinks he is the luckiest person alive. After being “let go” from the best job he’d ever had—as the Chief Financial Officer of the multinational food and beverage company MonaVie—he and his wife ended up living in China for a year where he wrote Your Mark On The World and embarked on the career he’d always wanted yet hadn’t dared dream.

Now, as an author, a popular guest speaker and Forbes contributor, Devin is devoted full time to championing social good. His current life isn’t much like his past.

As an entrepreneur, Devin ran—at separate times—a boutique investment banking firm and a small mortgage company. He served as the Treasurer for the multinational vitamin manufacturer USANA Health Sciences years before becoming CFO for MonaVie. Over his career he led or advised on the successful completion of $500 million in transactions.
Devin squeezed in two brief stints in government, including two years working for Jake Garn on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee Staff and another year working for an independent state agency called USTAR, where he helped foster technology entrepreneurship during Governor Jon Huntsman’s administration.

Devin is proud to have graduated from the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business, which recognized him as a Distinguished Alum in 2006. He also earned an MBA at Cornell University where he ran the student newspaper, Cornell Business.

Today, Devin channels the idealism of his youth with the loving support of his wife, Gail. Their son Dayton is a PhD candidate in Physics at UC Berkeley (and Devin rarely misses an opportunity to mention that).

Isn’t that an amazing smile?  My friend CarrieAnn doesn’t just have an amazing smile, she is an amazing person.  She accompanied me to visit the CICFO Orphanage in April, spending basically the entire, sweltering day there.  She was a non-stop fountain of joy.  Which is pretty much a normal day for her. Today, however, I’ve been thinking about the power of a smile.  I’m afraid that I’m not going where you think I’m going.  A smile is a wonderful, powerful thing that really can make a difference in someone’s day.  We’ve all felt it.  I know I have appreciated a friendly smile at times when I’m nervous in a new place, frustrated and angry over a nuisance problem that I’m blowing way out of proportion, or in countless other circumstances. All that said, I worry sometimes when I see and hear people suggest a smile can make someone’s day or change their world.  The fact is, a smile, all by itself can’t do that. CarrieAnn is the perfect example. If CarrieAnn had flashed that brilliant smile at the kids as she drove by, waving excitedly as she went, the children there would have been rather less impressed than when she came to spend a day with them, playing games, hugging them, talking with them, singing and dancing with them.  Her smile is like a lighthouse beacon that can be seen from great distances, but its real value is that it is constant.  The children loved her because she actually did something for them.  It wasn’t just a smile.  It was a joyous day.  And yes, she changed their lives in a single day.  They’ll never forget her.  They’ll never forget how she made them feel, but it wasn’t just because she smiled. We should all learn to smile like CarrieAnn.  Big, beautiful, full of life, can’t be stopped smiles that are so genuine and infectious that people around us are lifted by our presence, but we should never believe for a moment that a big, beautiful smile magically solves world problems.  Hungry people still need to be fed, lonely people still need a friend, climate change is not slowed and even the sad will quickly return to their sadness if all we offer is the flash of a smile.   The world needs us to actually do something while we smile!   Who else is willing to do something—with a smile?

Isn’t that an amazing smile?  My friend CarrieAnn doesn’t just have an amazing smile, she is an amazing person.  She accompanied me to visit the CICFO Orphanage in April, spending basically the entire, sweltering day there.  She was a non-stop fountain of joy.  Which is pretty much a normal day for her.

Today, however, I’ve been thinking about the power of a smile.  I’m afraid that I’m not going where you think I’m going.  A smile is a wonderful, powerful thing that really can make a difference in someone’s day.  We’ve all felt it.  I know I have appreciated a friendly smile at times when I’m nervous in a new place, frustrated and angry over a nuisance problem that I’m blowing way out of proportion, or in countless other circumstances.

All that said, I worry sometimes when I see and hear people suggest a smile can make someone’s day or change their world.  The fact is, a smile, all by itself can’t do that.

CarrieAnn is the perfect example. If CarrieAnn had flashed that brilliant smile at the kids as she drove by, waving excitedly as she went, the children there would have been rather less impressed than when she came to spend a day with them, playing games, hugging them, talking with them, singing and dancing with them. 

Her smile is like a lighthouse beacon that can be seen from great distances, but its real value is that it is constant.  The children loved her because she actually did something for them.  It wasn’t just a smile.  It was a joyous day.  And yes, she changed their lives in a single day.  They’ll never forget her.  They’ll never forget how she made them feel, but it wasn’t just because she smiled.

We should all learn to smile like CarrieAnn.  Big, beautiful, full of life, can’t be stopped smiles that are so genuine and infectious that people around us are lifted by our presence, but we should never believe for a moment that a big, beautiful smile magically solves world problems.  Hungry people still need to be fed, lonely people still need a friend, climate change is not slowed and even the sad will quickly return to their sadness if all we offer is the flash of a smile.  

The world needs us to actually do something while we smile!  

Who else is willing to do something—with a smile?

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