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The American Dream Project:
A Message from the Founder

The American Dream Project is driven to change the way we work, live and lead. I am Will Marre. I have been a leadership consultant for 25 years. Over 20 years ago I recruited Stephen Covey to leave his university and bring the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to the public. For seven years I ran the company that later became the largest private leadership training company in the world. We brought the 7 Habits to the world.

That was a good beginning. But only the beginning. Of course, individual lives have been changed, families helped and businesses inspired. Not only by us, but also by thousands of highly competent, motivated consultants who have attempted over the past 25 years to move our business institutions to higher ground. But although we often succeeded at a personal level, we failed at an institutional one.

The recent record of leadership failure in business, government, religion and education reveals that society has reached the limits of its current assumptions. In the 60?s and 70?s the liberal (social) democrats had a free reign to create a Great Society that expired in a stagnant economy and government sponsored ghettos. For the past two decades the Conservative (Capitalist) Republicans have created a consumer society choking in debt, corrupting our legislators while simultaneously making more millionaires and more working poor than ever in our history. How can we have created a society with 4 times the wealth and 10 times the depression than we had in 1960? Is this the best we can do? Are we really out of ideas?

Perhaps the current generation of leaders are. To face the most complex time in human history, perhaps we need something new. A revolution of ideas. A new world view based on a rebirth of ideals that were the inspiration engine for America.

Let me be clear. The American Dream Project is not refried liberalism, it is not new age spiritualism nor is it even socially conscious capitalism. It is something different. Something more.

The inspiration for the American Dream Project started when I was thrust before audiences of 30 to 40 year-old leaders attending programs sponsored by the Graduates Club. Today, the Graduates Club Foundation is a nationwide non-profit organization that provides free educational events featuring the world?s foremost thought leaders to over 1200 business schools and universities.

At the same time, my own leadership clients began to change. They were becoming younger. All my professional life I?ve helped leaders from my father?s generation and then Baby Boomer leaders from mine achieve their dreams. In nearly all cases their dreams centered on success; money, recognition, personal legacy. About three years ago I was flooded with leaders from my children?s generation. CEO?s, senior management in their late 30?s and lots more women in leadership. Both my clients and the Graduate Club audience helped me see a new future.

Leaders of the future have a distinctly different agenda. I am amazed at their dreams. Money, recognition and self-absorbed importance are distinctly less important.

For many, hardly important at all. What matters is meaning, great original ideas, innovation, family and honest-to-goodness improvement of the condition of everyone?s lives, worldwide. I am especially impressed by the fresh ideas of young leaders like Kim McWaters, the inspirational CEO of Universal Technical Institute, a NYSE listed company who has a purpose of educating the workforce of tomorrow. Kim's intense interest in the American Dream Project's vision is powerful encouragement for our mission. Her commitment to purpose, people and profits in her own company is unwavering. She calls it going public and keeping your soul. This is not some misty-eyed idealism. Instead, it seems to be a leadership imperative. There is a great recognition that we are at a hinge point of history. The future will either be very good based on the smart, moral use of technology and communication. We will create sustainable, even self-improving, virtuous cycles of education, innovation, production, consumption and lifestyles. Or, the world will be very bad based on the self angry self-interested exploitation of our world?s last physical resources harnessed to Orwellian technology creating barricaded islands of personal safety in a world characterized by conflict.


What strikes me most powerfully is the critical mass of feeling and opinion that is gathering among younger leaders and refugees from Boomer World who are seeking something more. There is a drive to make the choice to create the best possible future rather than let current assumptions continue.

Over the past 3 years I have spoken to thousands of leaders, professionals of Gen21 (age 15 to 40) and students as well as immersed myself in the social research of our day and it became clear. If a change of world view was going to occur, it would happen at the grass roots.

The American Dream Project doesn?t need a guru with all the answers because no one has them. Rather, it needs to be an organizing network open to all with the energy and creativity to take a stand for the future. It starts with changing our own lives. It starts with changing how we think and the content our conversations. It starts with sharing ideas, trading books, and forming groups. It means standing for something.

I started the American Dream Project with the help of Chuck Fischer, the co-founder of the Graduates Club, which directs our non-profit efforts to distribute free education to students.

The other core members of the initial American Dream team are Candie Perkins, who as a 31 year-old founder of a media communications and design company constantly invents new ways to present the American Dream Project?s message in voice and images that speak to all generations.

Michael Johnson and Nick Nordquist head up Industrial Strength Television, an Emmy Award producer of documentaries. The urgent look of ?Reclaiming Your American Dream? is their vision of merging the medium and the message.

Keith York is the visionary program director of KPBS, San Diego, who not only served as Executive Producer of ?Reclaiming Your American Dream,? but also had the courage to air it. Keith?s commitment to asking questions that makes everyone think harder was instrumental in launching the American Dream Project on PBS.

David Wyman is in charge of the Entrepreneurship Program at the University of San Diego. His vision of student and community engagement in the Project has bee a driving force in enlarging the ways the Project can impact students and leaders at every level.

Many members of the Wharton School of Business Alumni Club are hosting American Dream Project events and are engaging in wider leadership dialogue of the great questions of our time to help create the free student curriculum that will enable tomorrow?s leaders to navigate the tricky terrain of the 21st century.

That?s it. Just a few people with a big idea.

But more are joining daily. Everyone who has a dream is welcome. We can?t hold your hand or tell you what to do. We don?t have time. And it?s not the point. All we can do is provide a framework, ideas and ideals, materials and a meeting place. We have only one agenda. It is simply to improve the world we are creating for our children.