Make it Meaningful

Unorthodox meets Start with Why: how escaping a cult led Debbie Haski-Leventhal to become a ‘professor of purpose’ and master the art of finding personal meaning in life.

When she was five, Debbie’s parents found solace from a family tragedy in joining the Kabbalah Centre, an organisation founded in Jewish mysticism. They immersed themselves in the Centre unreservedly – from its peculiar rituals (rolling in the snow naked to purify their sins) to the beauty of belonging to something greater than themselves. To Debbie, though, it increasingly resembled a cult, and – after years of abuse and living in communes in three countries – at eighteen she left, devastated and isolated, searching for meaning in her life.

Debbie turned that search into her life’s work: today, she is a professor who specialises in finding meaning in our personal and professional lives. In this book, she shares her own and other people’s stories to explore ideas of purpose, impact, values, and resilience.

In the age of ‘The Great Resignation’ and ‘Quiet Quitting’, Make it Meaningful is the perfect guide to finding a more profound meaningfulness in our own lives and jobs.

About the Author

If a fortune-teller told 19-year-old Debbie that she’d one day become a professor of purpose and impact, she’d have asked for a refund. A tragedy led her family to the Kabballah Centre – years before Madonna and other celebs joined it – where she grew up in a cult-like atmosphere until she managed to escape under threat of an arranged marriage. Higher education and volunteering transformed Debbie’s life, and she has since devoted her entire career to studying the pro-social behaviour of individuals and companies. Today, she is an awarded and well-published professor of business management and the MBA Director at Macquarie University, Australia.

With over sixty academic articles, four books and a TED talk, she dedicates her teaching, research, and knowledge to creating impact and enabling others to find meaningfulness and purpose.