People occasionally ask me why I continue.
It is a fair question.
Career Communications Group has been part of my life for nearly fifty years. Jean reminds me that we have enough to live comfortably. She worries about me because she has lived every sacrifice this journey has required. Dr. Lydia Thomas reminded me recently that Jean is simply trying to protect me.
She is right.
Jean has earned that right.
But there is another truth that I cannot ignore.
I never started Career Communications Group to make money.
If money had been my objective, there were countless opportunities over the past five decades to choose a different path. Building magazines, conferences, educational programs, and workforce initiatives dedicated to expanding opportunity was never the easiest business model. It was simply the one I believed mattered most.
I started Career Communications Group because I wanted to change the world.
Perhaps that sounds ambitious. Looking back, I realize it was. But I also believe that meaningful work should be ambitious. If we are fortunate enough to be given gifts, talents, and opportunities, they should be invested in something larger than ourselves.
When I look back over these fifty years, I do not measure success by revenue or balance sheets. I measure it by the engineers who discovered their purpose because of BEYA. I measure it by the students who became scientists, executives, entrepreneurs, researchers, military leaders, professors, and inventors after someone opened a door for them. I measure it by the partnerships that connected talent with opportunity and by the countless lives that changed because someone believed in another person's potential.
I know we have made a difference.
I know we have changed lives.
And I believe those lives have gone on to change the world.
I also believe that none of this happened by accident.
My faith has always been at the center of this journey. I believe that God places each of us on this earth with gifts, opportunities, and responsibilities. I believe I was given a mission, and that mission has been to prepare people for lives of purpose through education, technology, and opportunity.
That mission did not end with the personal computer.
It did not end with the Internet.
It does not end with BEYA.
Today it continues through artificial intelligence and the future of work.
That is why I cannot simply walk away.
Not because I fear retirement.
Not because I cannot imagine doing something else.
But because I still believe the mission continues.
Artificial intelligence will redefine our economy, our educational system, and our society. It will create extraordinary opportunities, but only for those who are prepared. If there was ever a time to invest in people, to mentor young leaders, to strengthen our educational institutions, and to build pathways into the future, it is now.
That is why we are launching AI NEXTGEN America.
It is not about replacing what we built over the last fifty years.
It is about ensuring that what we built continues to serve the next generation.
I also believe something else.
I believe in you.
I believe there are thousands of leaders across this country who have benefited from opportunities created by parents, teachers, mentors, employers, churches, communities, and organizations that believed in them before they believed in themselves.
Now it is our turn.
History does not ask whether we were successful.
History asks what we did with our success.
Did we build only for ourselves?
Or did we build something that outlived us?
That is the question I ask myself every day.
And it is why I continue.
Not because I have to.
But because I still believe that together we can change the world.