Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, I know it's hot.
(audience applauds)
Thank you, President Eisgruber.
It is really such an honor to be with you on this occasion.
Families, as a mom of four,
including a Princetonian who's here with me today,
I can begin to imagine how proud you must be
of your graduates.
Faculty and staff,
I hope you are feeling so fulfilled
about the role you've played
in supporting these young people.
And Class of 2022, congratulations,
let's hear it for you and each other.
(audience applauds)
I would be tempted to call you all an activist generation.
You're graduating at a time when threats to the wellbeing
of people in the planet are more visible than ever.
Your generation in particular has been so active
weighing in about what justice requires.
You're more committed to diversity, equity, inclusion
and sustainability than any that has come before.
And so it's tempting to call yours an activist generation.
But looking out at you as soon to be graduates
it's premature to define you.
It's the choices you're about to make
and that you'll make in the coming years
about what to do with your time and energy
that will define you.
So I am grateful to have the chance
to talk with you at this pivotal juncture,
the commencement of your journey beyond Princeton's walls,
an occasion that for many will mark the first moment
you've felt discretion over what to do with yourselves.
I'm thinking back to my own graduation 33 years ago.
Right after the ceremony
my parents drove me to New York City and dropped me off.
I had two trash bags of clothes, a lamp, a futon
and a room in an apartment that I was going to share
with other recent grads.
Living off a seed grant,
I was going to spend my summer trying to work my way
into the offices of educators, potential donors
and anyone else who could help
get Teach For America off the ground.
No one would be more surprised than I would've been
at that point,
if you had told me that I would still be pursuing
the same mission 33 years later.
I'm so grateful for the lessons
I've fallen into along the way
that has enabled this journey.
And now, for the chance to share them with you
in the hope that they'll be helpful
in informing your own choices.
So as you've heard, my path began with my Princeton thesis.
This said, I'm not the role model thesis writer
President Eisgruber likely thought he was getting.
I had not given a moment's thought
to what I would write about
before late fall of my senior year.
I was in a deep funk,
which among other things had led me
into some sort of denial that I would need to write a thesis
in order to graduate.
I was in this state of mind, this malaise,
because I simply could not figure out
what I wanted to do after I graduated.
I'd applied to the sectors recruiting
us liberal arts graduates at the time
but was searching and searching for something else.
I knew that by nature I was going to work relentlessly
at whatever I did.
And I just really wanted to make sure
that all that work mattered.
At some point, I began fixating on the idea
of putting my energy into the field of education.
I had grown very conscious that it was my education
in a strong public school system
and then at this fine institution that had led me to feel
a sense of freedom and that the whole world was open to me.
I'd also become increasingly aware
of the inequities in education at Princeton of all places,
because I'd seen here how differently prepared students were
to do well and thrive based on where they'd come from.
So I looked into teaching in New York City public schools.
I didn't have much hope that this would be a possibility
for a public policy major like myself,
but I discovered that in fact it would be possible
if I'd waited until after Labor Day,
the system would realize how many vacancies it had
at which point it would relax
the typical licensure requirements.
One day in November of my senior year
this led to an inspiration.
Why weren't we being recruited to teach as aggressively
as we were being recruited to work in banks?
I had a deep sense that I was not alone,
that thousands of other graduating seniors
of all different backgrounds and all different majors
were also searching for meaningful postgraduation pursuits.
Wouldn't teaching be the one
that most called on our leadership
and gave us the most immediate path to impact?
I couldn't stop thinking about the power of this idea,
for the sake of children and young people who need
every additional committed teacher and for our country,
which would benefit from leaders
shaped by experience working in urban and rural communities.
This was at the very least the answer
to my growing recognition
that I really did need a thesis topic.
(audience laughs)
The more I researched, the more obsessed I became
and at the end of it all
I produced a 177-page thesis, making the case
for creating a national teacher corps with a forward
about how I'd become determined to make it happen.
And so I can now thank the thesis requirement
that had at one point seemed so unimportant to me
for providing the answer to my search
for a meaningful postgraduation pursuit.
Thank you, Princeton.
I found my way to seed funding, a team of other recent grads
and ultimately thousands of others
who were also inspired by this idea.
From the start,
my days were not all fun and joy.
In fact, they have often been excruciating and stressful,
comprised of a humbling learning curve and challenges
that would put me far outside my comfort zone,
but never has there been a day in this work
when I have doubted that what my colleagues and I were doing
was worth it.
I feel so grateful for the revelation
that had sent me into that malaise,
about the importance of aligning our career paths
with the issues we care about.
For your generation that is more aware of and passionate
about tackling injustice than any before,
my hope is that you'll recognize
that your time is your biggest asset
and that driven by your values and the purpose
of shaping a better future
you will be intentional and conscious
about where you put your energy.
In this era, there's more attention than ever
especially among your generation
on personal wellbeing and finding balance.
What I've seen is that the highest form
of wellbeing is the exhilaration
that comes from immersing ourselves in things that matter.
The path to happiness is not balance per se
but rather congruence between the values we hold most dear
and where we spend our energy.
Now, lest you think that I had it all figured out
upon my graduation,
I have to admit that I didn't think
I would be working on this for long.
Blessed with the naivete of a 21-year-old,
I figured we'd build the equivalent of the Peace Corps
in two to three years.
And then as it became clear
that I had completely underestimated what it would take,
I figured somebody else would be much better suited
to enable this to thrive anyway.
A few years in, I got a big job offer.
I was so excited. I envisioned myself taking it.
But tortured over the decision,
I brought together some of our founding team members
to deliberate it.
I still remember the conversation,
at Cafe Lalo in New York City.
Over the course of the afternoon,
my friends and colleagues talked me into staying the course
at Teach For America.
They pointed to the signs that we really were onto something,
that this work of ours was making a real impact for students
and that it was also changing something in the teachers
and leading them to go on to challenge the unjust systems
in which they were working in really important ways.
And yet we all agreed,
we were very, very far from living into our potential.
Doing so would take a lot more time.
I think back to that conversation with so much gratitude.
It led me to settle in at Teach For America
to stop contemplating ways out and onto the next big thing.
Settling in enabled me to go on a deeper learning journey.
I began thinking beyond the day-to-day challenges
that were more than enough to keep me busy
and considering what we were learning
in classrooms and communities.
I began spending more time visiting teachers
who were having a particularly transformational impact
and realized that we could see patterns across them
that would enable us to better train
and support other teachers.
With time, I learned from Teach for America's alumni
who are leading whole schools,
having a transformational impact and pioneering innovations
to address the massive gaps in the system.
Over the years, as I grew in my sense
that with enough leadership
we really could solve these systemic inequities,
I would begin exploring what it would take
to shift the outcomes for kids across whole communities
and how to develop the leadership
for that kind of transformation.
One of my own sons once told me that if he'd met me
10 years into this endeavor,
he might have been a little disappointed.
Given the start I got putting my thesis into action and all
he would've assumed I would've made more of myself by then.
But it was really that decision to focus and go deep,
that was the difference
between creating a nice boutique organization
and building something that would have a shot
at making a meaningful impact.
There's an instinct among ambitious and driven people
like ourselves to manage our career paths
through a constant search for more and better.
I'm so grateful for the push from my colleagues
that led me to recognize that sometimes more and better
comes not from moving up and on, but from going deep.
I hope you two will have the fulfillment
that comes from the pursuit of deep impact
rather than the pursuit of impressive resumes.
Don't wait to consider these questions.
Over these decades, I've seen that our society's injustices
are solvable but they are also massive and complex,
and it takes a lot of time to make a meaningful impact
in the face of them.
So the path of no regrets is to start early.
Whatever disappointment it might have been to my son
15 years into this work, I still had my head down.
I was working to make Teach For America bigger and better.
One day I found an accomplished social entrepreneur,
Shaheen Mistri, waiting for me in my office.
She told me that she ran after school programs in India
had met some Teach For America alumni teaching in them
and was determined that her country needed
a Teach For India.
She asked me to visit her, and on that trip,
I saw that the circumstances
of marginalized children in India
were more similar to the circumstances
of the most marginalized students in my own country
than of India's privileged young people.
The solutions to these inequities
would be much more shareable across borders
than I had ever considered.
I had never before thought about the relevance
of Teach For America's approach for the rest of the world,
but within one year we heard from people
in 13 different countries who were thinking about it.
Today, Teach For All's network of partner organizations
is inspiring thousands of promising leaders
across more than 60 countries from Afghanistan to Ukraine
to channel their energy
towards ensuring that all children in their countries
fulfill their potential.
And by enabling everyone to learn from each other
our network is enabling all of us to make more progress.
If that Princeton thesis requirement
had not inspired me to set off on this effort
as early as it did,
it's unlikely that I would've had the chance
to pursue this global work.
I wouldn't have had the chance to learn
from so many brilliant people
across such diverse cultural context
who have led me to rethink so much
from the purpose of education
to how we can develop the leadership we need.
For decades, the common path has been to pursue
professional success and only then figure out
how to engage with social issues.
But if you're tackling big important challenges
that paradigm will keep you from having all the impact
you have the potential to have
and from the fulfillment that comes
from playing the long game.
Class of 2022, these are uncertain times
that need your energy and leadership more than ever.
As Princeton students with the privilege
of a world-class education and the networks and credibility
that come with it,
you have a particular responsibility
to rise to that challenge.
Don't think that advocacy efforts
in the wake of the latest injustice will sufficiently
ameliorate your moral responsibility to lead lives
in the nation's service and in the service of humanity,
because it's doing that,
the heavy lifting of actually reshaping our systems
that will create a just world.
You have worked so hard to earn these degrees.
Now it's time to celebrate and then to put them to work.
I'm excited for you on this eve of your graduation.
Your choices will tell us a lot about the trajectory
of our country and our world.
And for all of our sakes, I wish you the very best of luck.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)