"the point is that the future is unpredictable, and should be approached
with passion rather than career-minded worry"
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From: bill.vilberg@gmail.com [mailto:bill.vilberg@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 5:20 AM
To: Vilberg, William R.
Subject: seattletimes.com: "Somebodies" share their keys to success
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"Somebodies" share their keys to success Full story:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2002410355_peterhan01.html
By Tyrone Beason
Seattle Times staff reporter
Physicist and Washington native Douglas Osherhoff never really had much
self-confidence, but his work earned him a Nobel Prize anyway.
Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller was once obsessed with being
rich but found his true mission after he decided to give away his
fortune.
And former Clinton cabinet member Donna Shalala originally wanted to be
on the other side of the table, reporting the news rather than making
it.
If these great achievers can find their career groove and realize their
calling in life, surely there's hope for the rest of us. That's the
underlying message of Peter Han's new book, "Nobodies to Somebodies: How
100 Great Careers Got Their Start" (Portfolio, $22.95).
The book distills interviews Han conducted with 100 leaders from Fortune
500 companies, politics, science, the arts and letters, as well as
nonprofits. Among them are local dignitaries such as former Gov. Gary
Locke, former U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn and former Sen. Slade Gorton.
Han, a 31-year-old Microsoft licensing and pricing supervisor who lives
in Seattle, said he wrote his first book in response to his growing
sense that there was more to life than finding a good job, making money
and sitting pretty, and that even those common markers of success
required certain traits and habits.
"I definitely wrote it for all of my friends looking around for the
meaning of life," Han says. "I was really interested in what people
who've made that journey have to share with young people."
Interestingly, many of the subjects Han interviewed endured the
self-doubt, rejection and false starts that can litter anyone's rise to
the top. Random encounters, risky career switches and physically
changing your environment can be just as pivotal as having good mentors,
handing out business cards and following a strict life plan.
Actor John Lithgow couldn't find work as an actor in New York City when
he started out, so he accepted an associate art director position in
Baltimore. Then two weeks after taking the job, he got an acting offer
from a New York theater company and guiltily decided to scrap his
Baltimore plans. Less than a year later, Lithgow won a Tony Award for
"The Changing Room," just three weeks into his Broadway debut.
As Nobel-winning physiologist John Sulston put it: "Science is a random
walk, and I guess most things that are worth doing are the same -- the
point is that the future is unpredictable, and should be approached with
passion rather than career-minded worry."
Gorton, for example, picked Seattle out of an atlas when the Illinois
native and Columbia Law grad decided to practice law in the city.
Sometimes, the book suggests, your values -- not just your job or your
home base -- need to change.
Fuller, of Habitat for Humanity, had been so obsessed with money that he
used to estimate how much he made each minute of the day in his diary.
But he told Han that his spirituality and his marriage suffered because
of that fixation. As he thought about how to save his marriage, Fuller
had an epiphany.
"The decision was made one night in a taxicab. I just had this
revelation to give our money away," Fuller says in the book.
In the past three decades, Fuller has donated much of his fortune to
charity and his organization has built homes for more than 180,000
people.
"I think some people do miss their calling!" Fuller tells Han. "And as a
consequence, they go through their lives like Thoreau said, 'leading
lives of quiet desperation.' Because if you miss your calling in life,
you're never really totally happy."
Early life experiences shaped other subjects in the book. Sierra Club
President Larry Fahn remembers witnessing oil spills on the coastline
around Santa Barbara, Calif., as a kid, and he knew even then he'd work
in conservation.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Shalala finished two years in
the Peace Corps and wanted to get a job as a journalist. "I couldn't get
a job," she says. "The New York Times wasn't hiring. ... So I started
out being an academic."
But the diversity and unpredictability of the subjects' experiences in
Han's book beg the question: How do these great achievers know they're
currently doing their life's most meaningful work?
Seattle native and Delta Airlines CEO Gerald Grinstein, for example, is
presently struggling to steer his airline clear of potential bankruptcy.
Was he better suited to his previous incarnation as a big-time Seattle
attorney?
Two of Han's role models are maverick CNN founder Ted Turner and former
president George H.W. Bush, whose diverse background as a Navy pilot,
businessman, diplomat, sportsman and leader of the free world has
inspired Han.
"The independence of spirit, the well-roundedness, those are things I
look up to," Han says.
Han, who grew up in Houston, describes himself as a Type-A personality
("I was president or vice president of six clubs!") who earned
straight-As in high school and attended a Grade-A college, Harvard.
In short, Han was very likely to succeed. And he did.
Han was helping start high-tech ventures in Seattle while still in his
20s.
Since moving to Seattle seven years ago, he also has become fascinated
with triathletes. Han's wife, Meredith FitzGerald Han, is an experienced
long-distance runner and has competed in triathlons herself.
Han is currently at work on a documentary profiling four triathletes as
they compete around the world, called "What It Takes," which is due out
early next year.
He considers both the book and documentary projects "portraits of
excellence," excellence being a pursuit unto itself in his world.
"It's a curiosity about what makes these people tick," Han says. Han's
wife said he barely sleeps, and she's given up trying to figure out what
makes him tick, how he manages to coordinate a day job at Microsoft and
all the outside work.
Han says he isn't sure either, but he knows where he stands on the path
to becoming a big shot.
"I'm a long way from the people in my book," Han says with a laugh. "I'm
an eager nobody trying to become somebody."
Tyrone Beason: 206-464-2251 or tbeason@seattletimes.com
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