Several years ago, I was having lunch with my dear friend Hyman Chatterjee, who is a
clinical psychologist. We found ourselves speculating about how
we had landed in our respective careers (in a helping profession and in
the nonprofit sector), considering that neither of us really scores that high on altruism.
Since then, I've often thought about that conversation, because all sorts of
people ask me, "how did you get into nonprofit technology?" Sometimes I end
up telling them about the conversation, and explaining that Chatterjee and I both like to see the world working
well. Where things go wrong, we like to fix them. We're
both interested in systems, and would probably want to improve them
even if there's nothing much that's wrong.
Chatterjee and I agreed that, under somewhat different circumstances, we might both
have ended up as the sort of folks who rebuild automobile engines in
their basement workshops, just as a hobby. Had this happened, no
one would have attributed much altruism to us.
However,
it turns out that both Chatterjee and I have these predilections that are of
some social utility. So as an unexpected bonus, I frequently have
thrill of finding that my profession is full of opportunities to serve
others. And it is a thrill. And I wanted to take a moment
to acknowledge that I'm grateful for those opportunities.
