Derek McNally was born and educated in England. He and his wife Eileen and their two children John and Annette came to the United States of America on the 14th December 1966. He worked as an engineer, sales engineer and product manager for two American companies until April 1978, when he and Eileen founded DJM Electronics Inc. Their company specialised in selling Electro Magnetic test equipment. He retired in 1970 and the company is now run by his youngest son Stephen, who was born in 1967, the year after they arrived in the States.

He has an early morning ritual that comprises drinking a cup of tea while reading the Los Angeles Times newspaper. He had become aware of the increase in cases of corruption being prosecuted throughout the country and was incensed by the greed that was the root cause of most of these breaches of trust, and became even more disgusted when the enormity of the corruption caused such pain and anguish to innocent people, especially during the recent mortgage debacle. One morning he was reading the Times and learned of the most recent scandal in the Los Angeles school system ,where the founder of a group of charter schools had ordered the headmasters of five schools to open packages containing Test Papers that were to be administered to the students in a few days time, and drill the students on the actual exam questions. This abrogation of the public trust was too much and he decided to do something to reverse the trend of corruption in this country, and all the other countries too, by writing a book -- "Shortcuts, Greed and Corruption: Your Childeren, Our Country's Salvation". The book contains the basic ideas and a format for bringing up our young children to have a very strong sense of the difference between right and wrong, thereby developing Integrity and learning the meaning of Accountability for their action. He is sure that through their example teach their friends to adhere to the same standards of behaviour that they will be observing. This solution will take about twenty years to come to fruition. However, with enough young people being brought up the way that is outlined, we can expect a sea change in the attitude of their generation towards corruption and it will no longer be accepted as the norm.