It was a Florida summer, just after my second year of college, that I developed an understanding of “Total Compensation.” I didn’t know it at the time. I only knew I had landed the coolest job in the world!

As a young child, one of the games that we would frequently play in the neighborhood when we had a gathering of children of diverse ages and athletic abilities was “Follow the Leader.” It could be as simple or complex as we wanted it to be...