You will certainly do extraordinary things.
And we will have the joy
of watching you change the world.
The first time I came here was in 2013
My friend was visiting from Africa and I remember
my friend telling me, "You deserve to be here"
and I shrugged it off.
I was like that's not me, I cannot go to Berkeley.
And then years later when I stepped on the doors,
I had almost an epiphany because now the old sentiments
came back that I'm here and over time,
I've accepted that it is right for me to be here.
That I had worked hard enough to be here.
And that's a feeling that I take every day
since that first day.
After I graduated college,
I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life
and I did what people who don't know what they want
to do with their life do,
which is, move to New York.
It was right around the time when Occupy Wall Street started
and I felt like the issues that it was introducing
were hugely important to our society.
Questions of inequality,
questions of corporate accountability.
And about nine months into doing that work,
I kind of had this aha moment, I had a revelation.
Which was that, there's certain things protests can do
and certain things it can't do.
My background is in environmental policy making
and there was a number of Ivy League programs
which looked excellent but California really had
a leadership role in climate change in America
and the Berkeley Masters in Public Policy was
really ahead of the game as far as providing
faculty members at Berkeley that I would have access to
in being able to actually forward my career.
I've been teaching for the last, oh I would say, 40 years.
And I've never encountered a generation of students
who is as committed, as dedicated to social change,
positive change in our system, our community, our nation,
our world, as the students I'm teaching right now.
We have cabinet secretaries.
We have the Head of the Associated Press.
We have high level government officials.
We have ambassadors.
We have college presidents who are graduates of the school.
So, it's clear that the sky is the limit.
And what's neat about the Goldman School is it teaches
people how to use social science knowledge
and how to define the problem and how to analyze problems,
break them into their pieces
and actually come up with a solution.
And it turns out that a lot of training
doesn't do that very well.
I think we do it exceptionally well.
What amazes me the most is that every day,
students come in and they tell me that they
are doing so much.
Not only are they taking rigorous courses,
but they are involved with so many different opportunities.
And a lot of the major public policy ideas
and innovations that happen, start here in California.
And so for me, the stories and opportunities that students
tell me every day is because we are in a great place
that lends itself for them to go out and take advantage
of the time that they have here
and do amazing work.
We're not law students.
We're not business school students.
We are here to be policy students because every one of us
cares about, in some way, leaving the world a better place.
I think what makes Goldman special,
is that it feels like a family.
It's small, but it's large enough that you can come here
with any policy area interest
and find folks that are experts in your field.
And folks that are making a difference throughout the world.
When I think about what does it mean to be a part
of this community, I'm thinking not only about
all the wonderful classmates that I have in my cohort
but also the fantastic people in the class above me,
the people who I will meet in the year below me,
who are bringing their energy and curiosity
and then every place I turn in California,
there's some GSPP grad doing some cool work that
I want to know more about.
And so I feel like I've entered something really huge
and important to the future of the state.
By coming here, young people can understand
how they can make a difference.
They can get the tools of economic analysis
and political analysis and understanding really where
the pressure points are in the system for making
the kind of changes that they believe in.
We're not selling a particular vision of society.
We are not selling a particular ideology.
What we are providing students is the power to make change.
It was the end of September
and we were taking our first test in our econ class
and I had been scribbling and you know, sweating
and about 30 minutes in,
I kind of took a moment to look up and take a breath
and it really dawned on me how much I had already learned
and I kid you not, I almost cried.
What moved me so much was the idea that I had come to school
to develop a tool box that would allow me to be a more
effective change-maker and within a month,
I already knew that I was on my way.
Toni Morrison said that
"The function of freedom is to set someone else free."
and because I consider it an honor and privilege to be here,
to be part of this community.
I want my work and my research to represent that
to communities that don't have that privilege
to attend Berkeley like I did.
And so, I want to dedicate my life's work
to those communities.
Whether those communities are in San Francisco
or in Nairobi, Kenya.