How to Change the World by Howard H. Stevenson Alan Wilson has several career options but only one ambition -- to make a difference. After an exhilarating morning of skiing with his best friend Karl, Alan Wilson settled into a booth at the noisy ski lodge. Over lunch, Karl had asked him how things were going. “You mean at work?” Alan said. “Well, yes, at work. And everything.” “OK. It’s hard to believe it’s been five years since my mom died.” He thought how unfair his mother’s death was when she’d given so much to others, especially by founding and running Help and Hope, now a well-established charity. He remembered when they’d been told her cancer had spread; she had taken his hand. “Alan, you are my gift to the world,” she had said. “You will make a bigger difference in it than I.” At the time, he’d been working for the strategy consulting firm he’d joined out of business school, in its pharmaceutical industry practice. And although he believed that work was the best therapy for grief, he had also begun to regret the toll that extensive travel was taking on his personal life. Not long after his mother’s funeral, a headhunter had called on behalf of Grepter, a multinational pharmaceutical firm, and dangled a vice presidency. Alan had decided to take it. “As for work, I can’t complain. Grepter has been very good to me.” “I’m glad,” Karl said. “But it’s so corporate, isn’t it? Are you really happy there?”