HUMBLED ON PURPOSE begins with scarcely an indication of where its thoughtful and ultimately moving narrative will lead. Author Maggie Michaels DeCan, a successful business executive in Georgia, describes walking away from a seven-figure job offer to do work at a fraction of the salary for a nonprofit organization. All notions of altruism aside, it seems an inexplicable, even perverse decision—until DeCan reveals the unique combination of circumstances that led her to it.
DeCan’s early years were fraught. In 1963, when she was less than a year old, DeCan’s mother killed herself during an episode of post-partum depression. Her father, about whom she writes in a measured though tender and loving way, was a high-functioning abusive alcoholic. He thought nothing of beating his children with a belt for relatively minor infractions—such that DeCan and her siblings took to hiding from him in closets in the family home. At thirteen, DeCan learned the truth about her mother’s death, and what she describes as her “multi-decade journey to deserve my place on this planet” began. This manifested in massive over-achievement, propelled by a need for control.
The loss of DeCan’s father to a heart attack in 1980 only further heightened her need to achieve—her sense of being in permanent “survival mode,” as she puts it. Study at the University of Michigan and a move to Atlanta followed, inaugurating an executive career that took DeCan to Macy’s and several other prominent companies. DeCan is open about the “toxic existence” of those early years of her career, of the steep learning curve that followed, and the important lessons learned about being a good people manager—lessons that carried over into other parts of her life.
However, the sense of needing to do something more led DeCan to transition into the nonprofit sector, and in 2016 she joined the Children’s Development Academy: a nonprofit specializing in early education. Overnight, DeCan found herself working in an entirely different work culture, with different rhythms, needs, and priorities.
The writing style is spry and clinical, with the occasional dose of sardonic humor. Counterintuitively, the least compelling part of the book is the section on DeCan’s nonprofit work: the ins and outs of running the organization, though told with some verve, are simply not as interesting as the earlier material, which not only foregrounds DeCan’s own story but also the vicissitudes of life in a male-dominated work sector in the 1980s. But the rhetorical sweep of the book is unimpeachable, especially the impassioned manner in which DeCan makes the argument—intuitive, heartfelt, and unanswerable—that preschool teachers, whose wages are among the lowest in the sector, should be adequately compensated for their efforts. With cuts to education in America seemingly on the horizon, it is as timely a reminder as any that investing in teaching our children is an investment in all our futures.
In HUMBLED ON PURPOSE, Maggie Michaels DeCan delivers a heartfelt memoir that describes a difficult childhood, a successful executive career, and a fulfilling transition into the nonprofit sector.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader