I was never sure what I wanted to be "when I grew up," when I was in school or university.

Over time—through research and thousands of conversations with colleagues, clients, educators, and students—I realized I wasn’t unusual. Most students, then and now, leave high school—whether as graduates or dropouts—without a clear sense of direction. Unless they are enrolled in programs tightly aligned to specific professions such as medicine, engineering, accounting, or architecture, the same uncertainty follows many into and through postsecondary education.

 

When I left the Canadian Armed Forces in 1974 to join Employment and Immigration Canada, I still didn’t know what I wanted to be. I joined a unit researching and producing career information, hoping that helping others explore options might help me clarify my own. That uncertainty turned out to be formative.

 

Everything changed when Stu Conger challenged me to create what became CHOICES. What began as an experiment became an international success—and, more importantly, revealed my calling. Given my own prolonged indecision, helping people discover work that aligns with their interests, skills, and aspirations struck me as one of the noblest pursuits imaginable.

 

Career development can change lives. At scale, it can change societies.

 

The connection between career alignment and economic performance is not theoretical. Today, roughly 20 percent of workers report loving their jobs, about the same percentage say they hate them, and the remaining majority sit somewhere in between. Research consistently shows that people who are engaged and satisfied at work are significantly more productive.

 

Even modest shifts matter. If just five percent more Canadian workers found work they genuinely cared about, the resulting productivity gains would amount to tens of billions of dollars annually. That is the power of alignment—multiplied across a nation.

 

Now imagine the upstream impact:
 

What if 25 percent more students left high school with a clearer sense of who they are, what they’re good at, and how learning connects to real opportunity?

 

For decades, I have believed that we should teach what everyone needs to make promising career and life decisions—not simply train students to climb the next rung of an academic ladder. Emotional intelligence, multiple intelligences, character, financial literacy, emerging workforce trends, and self-knowledge often matter more in adult life than much of what is memorized for exams and quickly forgotten.

 

The initiatives I led were not curriculum add-ons. They were designed as foundational infrastructure—to help learners explore identity, values, interests, and lifestyle preferences, and to connect those insights to an evolving world of work.

 

I take genuine pride in the fact that CHOICES, The Real Game Series, and The Blueprint for Life/Work Designs were created, tested, and ultimately deployed across most secondary and postsecondary institutions in Canada through unprecedented not-for-profit collaborations involving education, career, and workforce leaders from every province and territory. Over five decades, millions of Canadians have benefited directly.

 

Educators quickly saw what the research later confirmed: students with a sense of direction, purpose, and agency are more engaged academically. They persist. They care. And when the best minds across jurisdictions collaborate on a shared challenge, the result is stronger than anything any single system could produce alone.

 

I was never interested in thinking small.

 

CHOICES went on to be adopted statewide in twelve U.S. states and in school districts across every U.S. state and territory. Millions of students have used it in the half-century since its launch.

 

Building on that momentum, Canada partnered with the United States to develop The Real Game Series, engaging thousands of teachers, students, parents, and researchers as volunteer co-developers. Joint advisory groups met across Canada and the U.S., and insights flowed in both directions. Ultimately, more than 15,000 Canadian schools and 35,000 U.S. schools adopted one or more of the Real Game programs. Millions of students participated each year—many describing it as the most meaningful learning experience of their school lives.

 

Word spread. Soon, partners from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Greece, and beyond joined the collaboration. National adaptations reached tens of thousands more schools annually. Innovations developed in one country informed releases in others. No other experiential career development initiative has mobilized such a broad, sustained, international community of co-creators—or reached so many learners.

 

I am proud of my service as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. I am proud of CHOICES, The Real Game Series, The Blueprint for Life/Work Designs, Canada Career Information Partnership, Canada WorkinfoNET, and many other initiatives—successful and unsuccessful alike—that were worth attempting. I am proud that other countries modeled their career development frameworks on Canada’s work. I am proud of my contributions to over 70 World Bank career and workforce development missions in Turkey and Romania. And I am proud of and grateful for so many amazing relationships with career development superstars—from practitioners and researchers to policy-makers—that made this work possible.

 

Most of all, I am proud that in finding work that gave my own life meaning, purpose, and relevance, I have helped tens of millions of people imagine new possibilities for theirs.

 

That, to me, is what it means to mobilize the nation’s most critical resource.