Judy Caplan, a registered dietician and founder of Nutrition Ammunition, in Oakton. VA, is a perfect example of passion put on hold, then reinvigorated stronger than before.

“I see nutrition as an entrée into myself,” says Judy. “I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional family and I think I saw nutrition, from a very early age, as a way to nourish myself on the most concrete level. From there, I was able to learn how to nourish myself on many other levels.”

A graduate of the University of Arizona, in Tucson, Judy learned what she calls “Wonder Bread Nutrition,” something she was able to outgrow by reading progressive literature during the late 1960s and early 1970s. She returned to Arizona to get her masters in human nutrition, foods and dietetics, but however benignly, her passion was interrupted.

Wanting to raise a family, Judy put her professional dreams on hold while raising two children, with her husband Dean. As her oldest entered college, a friend asked Judy to speak at her daughter’s boarding school, where the girls had been practicing some atrocious eating habits. The talk went so well that Judy was inspired to write a book. From there, more speaking engagements came, then referrals from doctors and home visits, to patients, and also
accompanying trips to the grocery store, to help teach people how to shop.

Judy exudes energy and love for what she does, and her confidence is encouraging. “There’s nothing you can’t do,” she says simply. “And everything you do do is part of something bigger, later. Everything, the good, the bad and the ugly. It all adds up to something greater.”

Judy’s Nutrition Ammunition can be found at: http://www.gobefull.com/

Darius Monsef IV, founder of the creative color design resource colourlovers.com, has lived and worked all over the world; he is 25 years old. Feeling restless with the peaks and valleys of the freelance design world, Darius decided his life needed to change. After the tsunami struck Thailand in December of 2004, Darius attempted to volunteer in the tsunami disaster area. As an unskilled worker, he was not allowed a position. Not a man to be told what he can and cannot do, Darius bought an open-ended ticket to Thailand, and started the non-profit Hands on Disaster Response, an organization that places unskilled volunteers in disaster areas. This organization has since provided relief in Biloxi, Mississippi, after hurricane Katrina, and in the Philippines. All in all, Darius spent 11 months, out of two years, working in disaster areas.

A compassionate man, Darius speaks of the fragility of life, and how experiencing that fragility hands-on, has inspired him to follow his heart. “Why live for Friday, Saturday and Sunday? Find something that makes you love every day.”

Colourlovers, Darius’ current main focus, has nearly 20,000 members and 500,000 page hits a month. Even away from the non-profit world, Darius is rabidly building a community, to someday take “design trends out of the boardroom,” and put them in the hand of the people. When asked what he would tell his 22 year-old self, Darius says, “Regret nothing. If I hadn’t made every mistake and weathered the lows, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Wayne McVicker knew what he wanted to be an architect early in his life, even in the face of sever colorblindness. Yet when he finally realized his dream, at least partially as a runner for an architecture firm, he found himself disillusioned by the lack of technological openness in the workplace. As he embraced technology in the architecture world, he realized that it was not in fact commercial or residential architecture that captivated him, but rather the architecture of technology and its limitless capacity to change and connect the world.

Wayne took his love for technology to the corporate world, working ten years before stumbling upon a goldmine opportunity in the healthcare industry. Neoforma, Wayne’s startup company, would become the sixteenth most successful IPO on record. It was the first healthcare-dotcom-B2B-ecommerce company, founded in 1996, before the birth of the dotcom boom.

After one of the most successful IPO’s on record, Wayne learned that money quickly earned is just as easily lost. One quote in his book “Starting Something” reads, “I made a few hundred million…I lost a few hundred million.”

But that did not deter him from his goals. In the end, he found a way to learn from his mistakes, rather then dwell on his failures. In 2001, Wayne founded Attainia, a company dedicated to ease the burden of capital medical equipment management on hospitals and other healthcare related industries. The business helps to ensure the equipment need of many service providers, as to allow better care to more efficiently reach the consumer, or patient.

Many people, having lost “a few hundred million dollars,” would probably be inclined to hold that against the world; Wayne used it as an opportunity to start over, helping many more people along the way, and constantly learning from past mistakes.

Marc Fages is the Quality Assurance Specialist of Supplier Quality Management at Amgen, a bio-pharmaceutical company recently voted to Forbes’ list of “100 best places to work for.”

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First off, let me say that if we had an award to give out to a person that has pursued their passion to the fullest extent it would have to go to John Freedman. John was one of the most interesting people that we talked to on our 2006 tour. His story is one in which a passion was identified and built upon in a most unusual and beautiful way.

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