Today my guest is David Wright.

Dr. Wright is the 9th President of Indiana Wesleyan University.

Prior to become president, Dr. Wright served as IWU's first Provost and Chief Academic Officer and he helped develop Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University, the School of Nursing, the School of Health Sciences initiative, the Ron Blue Institute for Financial Planning and the National Conversations: A Series of Dialogues About Society's Well Being. Earlier in his career at IWU, Wright led the university's entry into online education and initiated the regional campus development strategy that helped IWU become Indiana's largest private university.

Outside his tenure at IWU, Wright served as dean of the School of Theology at Azusa Pacific University and served in theological education ministries with The Wesleyan Church in England and Haiti.

Wright earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Kentucky and a Master of Arts degree from George Fox University. He did his undergrad at Indiana Wesleyan University.

Dr. Wright grew up in the Philippines where his parents were missionaries. And he’s a pilot.

Now, I’m graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University. Ok,  maybe who’s president at your alma mater doesn’t matter to you, but it does to us. At IWU, we’re a close knit bunch.  And I’ve known Dr. Wright since I was an undergraduate. Our paths have interested occasionally over the years, and I am just so delighted to be able to have this discussion with him today.

Things that struck me in this interview:

"It wasn't like I was idle, but I could never really see the thead, I didn't know what it was becoming..."

Wright talks about at about 40 how he first started to step back and ask if he was taking advantage of the gifts God had given him.

Right at about the age of 40, he began to develop a plan after attending a conference in Phoenix. He began a yearly process of writing and reviewing goals. This process started with figuring out his life mission, his life values, his life goals.

He talked about gathering experiences and being curious -- and how we have no idea how that curiosity and life experiences are preparing 

"My aspirations were not career oriented they were experience oriented."  <--- This is a VERY important line and an encouraging line to me.

"I was hungry for experience, I hated being bored.... I wanted more experiences, I wanted more breadth. I didn't have a sense of what that would come to create in time, but that was my aspiration."

This interview encouraged me in the sense that it reminded me that I still have a lot of life before me. I met David Wright when he was about 40 and I already saw him as successful and then he ends up being president of my alma mater, but it's not like his life was this logical trajectory toward the presidency.

You can find Dr. Wright at http://www.iwupresident.com/ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/IWUPresident