Passion's Passion Posted on March 1, 2006 John B. Reid (bio) describes his enthusiasm for research and mentoring.

There was a passion, and early on, it was really a passion to help kids. It was the 1960s in Wisconsin, and that's where I grew up, and it was a very sort of activist time. My motivations changed; my passions changed.

Now my passion is developing early career people, and I just get a kick out of getting people who are specialists in one area like statistics or sociology and getting them into a group and getting them to expand their perspective and to come up with truly good things. Then I get to take credit for it, and it's great fun.

Plus, it's part that, and there's a passion of being with a small group of people, and you really don't have a safety net, because it's all soft money. When you're young, you worry that nobody is going to give you a job because you don't have enough publications, and when you get old, you think nobody is going to get a job because you're too expensive and you're not going to last very long anyway.

Everybody has a reason why they have to depend on each other. There's a certain passion for the group; there's a passion for the kids. Who can not be passionate about helping kids in the child welfare system or the 13,000 kids in Oregon who have one or both parents in the slammer? Passion's passion.

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