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).

TakeThemAMeal.com

I recently found the coolest web site I’ve seen in a long time, TakeThemAMeal.com.  This site was created by two of the nicest people I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting-at least by phone.  

Adina Baily and Scott Rogers created the site when Adina jumped in to organize meals for a mutual friend who nearly died needed several months to recover.  The time it took Adina to answer emails and voice mails from family and friends wanting to help, volunteering to provide meals on nights already covered, etc, was taking away from the time she wanted just to spend with her friend, so Adina asked Scott to build the site.

Within a few days, he had it up and running. They hadn’t given much thought to sharing the tool with other people, but before their first friend was out of the hospital, another one was diagnosed with cancer.  Scott tweaked the site to support more calendars for anyone.

So far, Adina and Scott tell me they’ve served up 1.1 million meals on the site and that 25,000 people use it every day.

I’m almost excited for someone I know to get sick!  Wait, we can use it when friends have babies, too, so I’ll hope for that!

And if you need to plan a potluck dinner, try their companion site: PerfectPotluck.com.

There will be more about the TakeThemAMeal.com story in my book, Your Mark on the World, which will be published next month!

How will you leave your mark on the world?

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