Follow your passions when choosing a board invitation.

• Position: DIRECTOR MEMOIR

Ed. Note: "Pete Peterson is a force of nature," said former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in his formal remarks when the Economic Club of New York honored Peter G. Peterson with its Special Achievement Award. The ceremony took place Oct. 16 in New York City. "Your achievements are nothing short of astonishing," Greenspan added. Another former Fed chairman, Paul Volcker, along with Roger Ferguson, president and CEO of TIAA-CREF, presented the award. Corporate CEO (Bell & Howell Corp.), distinguished board member (Sony, 3M Co., General Foods), powerful banker (Lehman Brothers, The Blackstone Group), government statesman (former U.S. Secretary of Commerce), big-issues thinker (chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics)--all that and more describes the life and career of Peter G. Peterson. In 2009 he chronicled his rise from a working-class immigrant upbringing to becoming one of the nation's top leaders in a memoir titled, The Education of an American Dreamer The following passage touches on his board work.

What was really important to me was to pitch in and tryto do something about things. That means trying to enhance or advance situations that I see as worthwhile, as well as trying to change things that I feel need to be changed. That is why I have spent so much time trying to work with or to start various institutions and organizations. These have substantially widened my circle of people who share my intellectual passions. I have been involved in civil rights, in fiscal responsibility and generational equity, in a code of conduct for Congress, in reform of charitable foundations, in longer-term, performance-based executive compensation.

And so at key moments in my life, I often found that people had thought of me for a board position, either corporate or nonprofit, or had given my firm some new business, because they had fought alongside me in one of these battles and, apparently, they had...