Dev Aujla, BA'06
Dev Aujla is the founder of DreamNow, a charitable organization that works with young people to develop, fund, and implement their social change projects.
Dev has also worked for leading companies that do good and pay well like GOOD/Corps and Change.org. His work and writing have been featured in numerous media outlets, including the Globe and Mail, CBC Newsworld, and the Huffington Post. Aujla divides his time between Toronto and New York. Dev was the keynote speaker for Alumni Western's 2010 Last Lecture.
In February 2012, Making Good, co-authored by Dev Aujla and Bill Parish was published. With unemployment among new college grads estimated to be as high as 54%, and some 8.5% of people out of work in the US, so many young Americans are resigning themselves to jobs that simply pay the bills. Yet there is still a deep desire to do something good for our world.
Making Good is the What Color Is Your Parachute? for the Facebook generation.
Written by two charismatic, young entrepreneurs, Dev Aujla and Billy Parish are at the vanguard of discovering how this generation will rethink, reimagine, and rebuild the world around us. They have been recognized for their work in Vanity Fair, Salon, and Rolling Stone.
For three years, Parish and Aujla interviewed hundreds of Millennials and distilled their experiences to give readers real advice on how to build thriving, meaningful careers while making money at the same time. They conducted the interviews across a wide range of fields to show that jobs can be found doing good in every profession.
The authors also draw heavily on their own experience working in the areas of green energy and community organizing to illustrate their points. Their prescription boils down to acknowledging your passion, figuring out who is rebuilding your industry to make it smarter and more sustainable, and finding or creating the job that you really want. Making money and doing good are no longer separate spheres. They are coming together. The solution to our jobs crisis is the same solution to our ecological and social crises -- creating jobs that do good.
Making Good provides numerous exercises, designed to help others devise a personal pathway out of the jobless wilderness. Parish and Aujla urge their peers to follow their dreams, with the added benefit of reducing unemployment and hopefully spurring wider societal progress. There isn’t one right way to get a job, of course, so the authors provide general rules, exercises and thought experiments to help individuals realize their true potential and value in the changing workforce.
From alternative energy to food to education, Making Good outlines how to find opportunities to affect change and make money. These opportunities are not just for entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies: Making Good shows how any person can achieve financial autonomy, capitalize on global changes to infrastructure, and learn from everyday success stories—providing the skills and insights this generation needs to succeed.
