(applause and cheer)
- Thank you, Provost Pritchett.
And thank you, President Gutmann
and Board Chair Cohen for your outstanding stewardship
of this American treasure during these unprecedented days.
Hello, class of 2021.
Hello.
(applause and cheer)
Hello graduates from around the world
from China, Switzerland, Kenya, and my own home country.
The nation state of New Jersey.
(applause and cheer)
I am deeply honored and grateful to be with you today.
I'm here, because of the education
I received from this university.
Graduating from Penn is a real accomplishment.
I rejoice with you that your efforts
have brought you to this day.
And congratulations to all the parents, families
and friends who coaxed you along, picked you up,
and supported you every step of the way.
As the mom of a college senior at another university
I celebrate with your parents too.
You are no ordinary class of college graduates.
History has seen to that, you faced more
than the commonplace challenges of a rigorous education.
You pursued your studies during a global pandemic,
and many of you participated in our historic
and long overdue reckoning with racial injustice.
The way you've adapted and triumphed
this past year is truly impressive.
And I congratulate you on something
even more impressive. As you adapted,
you kept your sense of joy and your readiness for adventure.
When I graduated from Penn back in 1985,
I remember feeling nervous about what my future held.
And though the world you're graduating
into fields in so many ways more precarious,
my uncertainties and anxieties were real.
Growing up, I was raised in a middle-class
town and spent summers on the Jersey shore
and listening to Bruce Springsteen.
My mother had been a high school history teacher
and we lost my father when I was three.
My father was a pilot in the Marines and he died
in a mid air collision while training other pilots.
It was a shocking scarring loss.
My mother, who was only 30 years old
had four children under the age of six.
Yet she found grace amid the suffering,
modeling resilience that we all internalized as our own.
To attend Penn, I needed some creative financing.
So I took out multiple student loans.
I had scholarships of all sizes like anyone else,
but that wasn't enough so I waitressed at
Smokey Joe's on the weekends.
(applause and cheer)
Yes, yes I did.
(applause and cheer)
But most importantly, I held a work-study job
as the receptionist at Penn Student Agencies.
And, as I was working there during my freshman year
I had an idea for a new agency.
The director took a risk on me and
I started parent services, creating care packages
and birthday cakes and delivering them to students.
One night, we delivered a surprise care package
to the university president thinking he would be
a good influencer for our sales.
We unintentionally triggered his silent alarm.
And the next morning we were visited
by university police who told us the cake
was eaten by the president's guard dog.
And while I have no doubt that the dog enjoyed the cake
this was not a good influencer for our sales.
So while that idea was a failure,
I caught the entrepreneurship bug
at Penn and have had it ever since.
And not to worry, the dog was fine.
I share this with you to say
I may not know what it's like to graduate
during a pandemic, or to enter a job market like this one.
But I do know what it's like to feel both excitement
and trepidation about what lies on
the other side of a college degree.
I know that in times like these,
times of hardship and uncertainty, it can feel
like the world is conspiring to shrink
our sense of possibility.
To sour us to the daring adventure of life.
I'm here to say, don't let it.
I suspect many of you are feeling concerned
because you don't know exactly what
you want to do for the rest of your lives.
Well, I didn't either.
I did know that I wanted a life that included service.
I interviewed with the Peace Corps,
but my financial reality wouldn't allow that path.
So instead, I ended up on the fixed income
Trading Floor at Goldman Sachs.
No, I know it wasn't the Peace Corps
but I did learn survival skills.
And I also did something very important to me.
I supported myself in New York City,
and after a few years paid off all my student loans.
So thank you Goldman.
(applause and cheer)
My experience at Goldman gave me
something even more valuable.
When I told my boss I was leaving,
he assured me that there would always be a position
at the company if I ever returned.
And in saying that he gave me for the first time in my life,
a safety net to fall back on, it was more than a promise
of financial security, although that was wonderful relief.
But with this safety net, I had permission
to imagine the world not as dangerous but as wondrous.
To dream up different life paths.
And from that moment on, I thought differently
about what was possible to accomplish.
What was possible to see.
How I could possibly be helpful to others along my path.
I wish that same appetite for adventure, that same readiness
for surprise and delight for every one of you.
Your sense of possibility will always
be a great spiritual resource.
Take good care of it, teach it to others.
For we are only as large as our horizons.
We go to college to widen them, but
the task of widening is the work of a lifetime.
For me, I began to imagine how I could be
useful to others, I felt myself changing.
Change in ourselves and change
in the world happens similarly.
It comes slowly, slowly, and then all at once.
What matters is your readiness for
the moment of revelation, of challenge, of opportunity.
We have to be prepared to walk through
the door when it opens or by our own power
and purpose to open it ourselves.
And sometimes we need to tear down walls,
the ones within and the ones without.
We learned this at the end of the Cold War.
Standing at the Berlin wall, a symbol of oppression
that was built to prevent people from escaping
Soviet controlled East Berlin into West Berlin,
President Reagan challenged Russia's Gorbachev
to tear down this wall.
And then something even more startling happened.
The wall was getting torn down.
It was a turning point in world history.
One of the defining moments of the 20th century.
My best friend and I were determined to witness history
and go see that wall come down.
We watched on television as German citizens were
taking sledgehammers to this edifice,
but we had no money for the journey.
I was back in graduate school and back in debt.
So we sold shares in our trip to old colleagues, promising
in return to bring them a piece of the Berlin wall.
That wall was made of concrete,
rebar and old ideas.
And then just like that people
reconnected and a new world was born.
When I finished graduate school,
I followed my dream of becoming an entrepreneur.
I started an organic vegetarian
food company called Terra Vera.
This was a rather radical idea 30 years ago.
It was aligned with my passion to make healthy
delicious food more convenient and more ubiquitous.
Within a few years we were supplying
Northern California's Whole Foods and Safeways
with fresh prepared food every day,
and running a fleet of food trucks that we
affectionately called Earth cruisers.
Life was full.
I had two young children, my husband
was working long days and I was running the startup.
And right about that time, a local
high school teacher invited me to speak
to her first-generation college bound students.
I agreed, not knowing my life was about to change.
It was the fall of the student's senior year.
I was so impressed with these students.
They had everything it takes to succeed in college.
Grit, tenacity, talent, and a will to persevere.
In fact, they spoke about their college ambitions
with excitement and joy, but it soon became clear
that none of them had taken or plan to take the SATs.
No one had told them that they needed to.
Most had never visited a college campus,
and worse yet only three of the 35 students
in the class had taken the classes
they needed to even apply to a four year college.
When I left the class, I couldn't stop
thinking about the students.
Public education, I believe
is central to the promise of America.
It was designed to be our great equalizer. My own education
as I stated, changed my life and my opportunities.
And yet through the randomness of where they were born
these students possibilities were narrowed for them.
That day at Claremont high school.
Well over 20 years ago laid bare
a disturbing truth in our country.
That while talent is equally distributed
opportunity is not.
At some point in all of our lives, we must ask
ourselves what happens when you
confront an unacceptable reality.
Do you act, or do you look way ?
I chose the former.
I returned to the class every Friday that Fall
and served as their unofficial college advisor.
Soon after that, I stepped back from Terra Vera.
It was a big life decision for me.
I had wanted to start a company since I was here at Penn.
It was why I went to graduate school.
But when life opens a door as it will, for all of you
we must be prepared to walk through it.
It was from that experience, that College Track was born.
We began with 25 ninth graders,
knowing that if we change just one of their lives,
the whole effort would have been worth it.
And today we're serving thousands of students in more
than a dozen centers across our country, accompanying them
supporting them on their journeys
through high school and college.
(applause and cheer)
There is no higher or better use of your
time on this planet than to be helpful to others.
I learned this at College Track.
All the systems in our society were created by people
no smarter and no more capable than any of you.
And through your energy and intention and force of will,
you can change them. But only if you understand them.
Identifying systemic breakdowns
and then imagining new structures is why
I started Emerson Collective.
I wanted to do more to address the multiple
interlocking injustices that were evident from working
with parents, students, and families.
At Emerson, we work in the
realm of ideas, design and action.
We know that system redesign often requires
policy redesign and we work on that as well.
But overriding everything is a recognition
that humanity is bound together
and we realize our own potential
only by caring for each other.
Think about your own relationships here at Penn.
Who you cared for ? Who cared for you ?
All of life is reciprocity, filled with the circular joy
in giving and grace in receiving.
It's important to partner your joy with humility.
Even as we use our heads, we must learn to bow them.
Humility and ambition need not contradict each other.
We should all be ambitious to be good stewards of our planet
and good caretakers of one another
during the brief time we have together,
because sometimes our time here is briefer than we desire.
We lost my husband, Steve, almost 10 years.
My children and I grieved along
with people across the world.
And I'd like to share what I learned
about loss through that experience.
We do not pass through grief and leave it behind.
Instead, I found, we integrated it.
Along with the joyful memories,
all the laughter, all the love into who we are.
One of life's most beautiful dimensions is
integrating those you've loved and lost into your own being.
We see more, and we understand more,
and we love more.
Steve used to say, your work is going to fill
a large part of your life, and
the only way to be truly satisfied
is to do what you believe is great work.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
If you haven't found it yet, keep looking.
Let his words guide you as they've guided me,
the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
And while you're doing it, love who you do it for
and love who you are while you do it.
As long ago as Socrates we've been praising
the examined life, but the examination of a life
is not an idea it's a daily practice.
Discover or create your own practices.
They don't have to be grandiose
but they must be regular make space for them and make time.
Tend to your soul and to your community,
infuse your values into every part of
what you do and how you live.
Your values should be like your fingerprints
proof of where you have been and what you have touched.
Well, a few months ago, I had the opportunity to speak
with several members of your graduating class.
Truly extraordinary students with deep commitment
to the world, outside of their academic pursuits.
With them and all of you in mind,
Emerson Collective is making a gift to the
education non-profit DonorsChoose a gift that will help
teachers prepare their own students for college.
So in honor, of each of you 3000 graduates
we will support 3000 classrooms.
(applause and cheer)
Graduates, you will all have opportunities
to serve throughout your lives.
Don't let them pass by, align your talents, your spirit
and your energy to make this world more equal and more just.
I assure you, the attempt itself will fill your soul.
It is its own reward.
I cannot wait to see everything you accomplish.
The changes you bring, the healing you bring, the better
more humane world that you and your generation create.
What an honor it is to be with you
and be part of your graduating class.
Congratulations, class of 2021.
(applause and cheer)