Never Too Old to Get Rich

CHAPTER 13Food, Glorious Food

Doug Rauch, Daily Table

By 2008 Doug Rauch, president of Trader Joe’s, was cooked. He had spent the last three decades – practically his whole career – orchestrating the eccentric California retailer’s speedy expansion to the East Coast, developing its purchasing program and private-label food business while traveling “ceaselessly.” He was just 56. Making money was no longer a priority, and he wanted to tap the brakes and “get off the wheel,” as he put it when I interviewed him for Forbes.

So Rauch “retired” with a scheme to keep active, serving on corporate and nonprofit boards from his base in Newton, Massachusetts. It only took a few months before he realized that he had “too much operational stuff in my blood” to be contented with that.

Rauch had learned about a program at Harvard University called the Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI; advancedleadership.harvard.edu), a yearlong program for executives and other successful professionals, mostly in their 50s and 60s, looking to take on major social troubles or move into the nonprofit world. The handpicked fellows devote a calendar year auditing classes across the entire university, brainstorming with professors and other students, making contacts, and creating their own solo projects.

In 2009, Rauch applied to the program, knowing he wanted to do something that was immersive and had a social ...