President Gonzalas, board of trustees, faculty, parents and families, and most importantly graduates of 2025. We are here to celebrate your hard work, knowledge, and excitement for your next steps, and the many steps that follow. Thank you to families for giving love, finances, and steady support. Thank you to K faculty for teaching, mentoring, and being heroes.

I first stepped onto Kalamazoo College’s Fine Arts stage one weekend in 2008 to speak about service and volunteerism, and Peace Corps. Liberal Arts Colleges were new to me. But I knew the Colleges boasted, proportionally, the most graduates serving as Peace Corps Volunteers. K was near the top of this distinguished list. Why? That weekend I came to find out.

I began my three days here with a speech, but President Wilson-Oyelaran wouldn’t let me off easy.

She said, “I want you to know Kalamazoo, why our students are leaders at home and abroad. We educate, serve, and in doing so, make a difference to others.” At that time, President Wilson-Oyelaran’s daughter was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana.

“OK,” I said. I observed language classes, listened to student and faculty conversations about the K plan, ate in the Hicks Center cafeteria, and bought a K hornet black and orange tee shirt in the bookstore. That flash of orange is irresistibly bold, like the college. I wanted more of being here.

I must have done OK that weekend, as I was invited to join the Kalamazoo Board of Trustees, on which I served eight years before becoming Peace Corps Director. I became friends with alums who spoke of their own K experiences and values critical to business, academic, organizational successes. I saw their commitment to passing these values on to you, knowing the K education affirms your own future success.

I talked last month with two students here today who spoke of their time at K. One student, Chris, said, “I loved my study abroad in Rome, an international experience K strongly encourages for all students. It offered me contrasts, opened a new world. The grandparents there showed selfless love for the family, every breath was for the love of someone else. I now see that communities of people have different lives, but all are about love and family.”

The other student, Ellie, said: K gave connections which will stay with us all. Even when I felt overwhelmed, I knew my friends would stay with me. I discovered who I am in a learning community that allowed me to be me. Professors stayed with me, fellow students supported me. I don’t believe other schools offer this opportunity.

            From what you have told me, you’ve work hard, you’ve already made a difference … to each other.

I want you to take a moment: Who do you know who has mentored you, made a difference in your life? Bring an image of the person to mind. A parent, teacher, friend, neighbor. Why did you choose this person? What difference did they make to you? Now hold the thought for later.

A Fulbright Scholar colleague of mine told me, “Though we may wish to see ourselves within a great flow of big ideas…we mostly live our lives in a concrete, specific world that we can touch and shape with our hands and voices each day.

To illustrate his observation, I’m going to share three stories. The first one comes from Togo, a small country on the West African Coast. I chose a Togo story because I lived there two years as Peace Corps country director. During that time, I visited Anna, a Peace Corps Volunteer living in a small village near the Ghana border.

Anna and I were sitting on small wooden benches under a thatched roof. Its shade offered only slight relief from the heat and humidity.

Anna began, “I came to this village straight after receiving my MBA. I was asked to teach business skills to the women here who sell colorful cloth on the road and in the weekly markets.

Anna pointed, “Most mornings, these women joined me here, sat on mats, and listened as I spoke in French, Togo’s national language. I talked about tracking costs on simple spread sheets and improving profit margins. They listened, smiled, and then said thank you as they stood to go to their roadside stands.

“I’m making a difference,” I thought proudly.

Anna continued. “The months passed, I learned Ewe, the local language. I ate with the women’s families, talked with children attending the local school, and watched women’s routines of going to the village well, rationing food collected from gardens, and sitting at stands selling cloth in the hot sun as people walked by.

As I learned Ewe and built trust with the women, one day I asked them to tell me what they were learning from me about running a business. Silence. Then, ‘Almost nothing,’ they said. ‘We don’t understand your French, we mostly only speak Ewe.’ But we want to please you so we nod our heads.

Anna put her head in her hands for a moment. “I was crushed, she said. Really crushed. But they were honest. I hadn’t asked before because I thought I knew what they needed. I looked at them.

Then, hesitantly, I asked them a second question: what do you want to learn? A pause. Even more hesitantly, they said, ‘teach us how to read and write numbers. We don’t know how to read. We pretend.’  I was stunned.

Then Anna emphasized, “But…At that hour my old life in the village ended and my new life with the women began. I would start over.

And I said to the women, “We will learn together how to read and write numbers.’ And I bought pencils and copy books, one for each person. They came to our shaded spot on time proudly carrying their copy books, their first.”

Anna stood up, excited to continue, “Together, we drew numbers, read numbers, put numbers together in lines, on top of each other. We laughed, we learned.

A month later, a woman from another village came to visit her cousin. She walked over to our group sitting on the mats, talking, drawing.

She watched. After a moment, she asked the group, ‘What are you doing?’

Anna sat and continued, more slowly. “I panicked inside. I would be found out. Here I was with an MBA, teaching women how to read and write numbers. Was this what I was supposed to do? I listened as the first woman stood up to answer the visitor’s question. She stepped forward, proudly, and said, ‘I’m learning how to record my profits.’ Another stood and said, ‘I now record and add the wholesale prices for the cloth I buy to sell.’ Others gave similar examples.

I suddenly realized they already know how to run a business. But they had to carry it all in their heads because they couldn’t read or write. But now, they could record and significantly expand the business. They already knew more about their work than I could teach.

‘I came here thinking I knew what they needed. I was the expert. But no, I judged need based on what I saw, knowledge I assumed everyone had. I never asked the women, I never listened.

Anna turned to me. “Now I don’t teach: I learn, I facilitate, I ask questions, I help them discover. We are all better business women than before I came, but not because of what I taught, but what we learned together.

The second story is from a close friend, John, the Peace Corps Director in Thailand. He began his Peace Corps service there, thirty years earlier.

  He had been assigned to a rural community to help build a fish pond, a first for this village.  After a year of digging each day while fighting mosquitoes and sweating in the humid weather, John and the village men completed the task. The pond was ready. The community celebrated, filled it with water and ordered a stock of 15,000 tilapia fingerlings. Just before their delivery, a storm the size of a hundred-year flood destroyed part of the village and all of the pond. They cancelled the fish. They lost a year of full-time labor.

But John and the men did not give up. They began again.  A year later, the community celebrated again, a new pond with its 15,000 fingerlings, and John’s end of two years of service with a community that had become his family. The next day he took a final look at the pond before leaving.

He looked at me and said sadly, “the pond water gone, only dead fingerings in the muck.”

He continued, “I completed my service a failure. I knew I could never face my village again.”

Although John worked and lived in Thailand over the next 30 years, he never went back to his village. But now as the Thailand Peace Corps country director, he wanted to visit the village, but was still too embarrassed to be seen. He arrived quietly at 6 a.m. to walk streets before others awakened. To his surprise, his pond digging friends, now grandfathers and grandmothers, recognized him (John is 6-4), called to him in his Thai name, and came joyously out to thank him for being there 30 years earlier.

No fish pond existed, but the small watermelon demonstration plot John had started his first year and forgotten about had become the village’s biggest cash crop and was now serving the entire region. The village had become famous for watermelon.

“You made our village successful,” they said. You made a difference, and now 30 years later, we thank you. They gave him a bow in honor of what he had given them three decades earlier.

For the third story, let’s travel to Central Asia, a small town in northern Kazakhstan. I was Peace Corps Deputy Director and visiting the country and Volunteers. Snow was everywhere, enjoying its takeover of the city and adding chilly winds to slow people’s walks. During my visit, I sat with a woman who has lost one arm and part of a leg to a traffic accident.  She was the Kazakhstani director of a city NGO serving children and adults with disabilities. Her young American Peace Corps Volunteer, Mike, had committed two years to working by her side, building the organization’s outreach.  

The director turned to me, “In our neighborhood, every Saturday morning 9 o’clock, Mike knocks loudly on five different cottage doors, one by one, asking parents to share their son or daughter with him to go to the park and play. The little group grows as each new child emerges, one limping, one without sight, one with limited hearing, one slow to move.  They weave through the streets to the park for two hours of play side by side with other children.  Then they return by the same route, and one by one disappear back into their family homes.

This is what Mike does naturally.  He doesn’t think much about it. But,” the director said, “what he does is not normal here in Kazakhstan.  Most children with disabilities are hidden in shame in the backs of houses. Families lose face, and hide what they cannot acknowledge to others. We with disabilities are not to be seen. 

And yet, Mike, with his blue parka, tasseled wool hat, and mountain boots, laughs, skips, and holds hands with his charges as they jump snow drifts the distance to the park.  For these children, this is their first time playing outside.  The neighbors see these children play with someone who shows his respect and joy for each child.”  The director’s eyes glistened with tears, “I watch Mike every Saturday morning from this office porch.  He probably is not even aware that I do.  His courage is now my courage, his walks are the walks that I now take for people with disabilities.”  I now go on national television advocating for those with disabilities because of the courage Mike has given me.

Anna, John, and Mike, three stories out of thousands of Americans making a difference. Now my story.

Over 50 years ago, with my father’s encouragement, I too was a Peace Corps Volunteer. I left after my University of Utah graduation and flew to Tunisia, North Africa. I let go of my Utah surroundings and family, asking myself as the plane landed in Tunis, “Am I totally crazy?” But that decision, that unknown, changed my life. My father couldn’t have known the gift he gave me.

Like with me, the decisions you make today, next week, and next year, will change your lives. And you can take a little time, take a breath, as you decide. It’s OK not to know now what these changes will be, because you are ready for what comes.

.. Think again of the person I asked you to identify earlier. This person, or persons, has probably been with you in times of the unknown, or difficulty, or joy. And, this person is a model to you. Think of this person when you reach towards making a difference in others’ lives. We need to be parts of communities of support for each other, help each other. That is the essence of our success.

One last piece of advice:

Each night as you climb into bed, fluff up the pillow, and think of sleep. Ask yourself three things:

What is a moment of joy I have had today?

… Now your head is closer to the pillow.

What have I done to make a difference today?

… Getting close to sleep.

What am I grateful for?

Do this every evening, honor what you give and the return for giving.

Communities here and around the world need us, now, next week and next year. Be engaged internationally…. And here at home.

Tita in Laura Esquivel’s novel, Like Water for Chocolate, would say, “The water is…at the boil.  The critical moment has arrived.  It is time, at long last, to put in the chocolate.”  

You are now at that great moment.  You are prepared, … ready.  Use all that you have learned, and you will succeed. 

Congratulations. 

By passing these four years, we can do anything. Go chase whatever you are thinking about during class. So go for it. K has given all these skills. Many lack the confidence for self and to share with others. Look at wehat you have achieved already. Everything you think you need, you alreardt have. Use it. The new circulstances are findable, dig into yourself.

Women, numbers, listening, stories.

Some people seek one-size-fits-all friends who can be there no matter what. As a professor, I taught my students that everyone needs a coach, a mentor and a venting buddy (or two). A coach guides you through what you need to do to improve at that moment. By contrast, a mentor is somebody who “gets you” for life, whom you could call or email and be offered wisdom, no matter how many years have gone by. Peers in your 20s and 30s do not have the life experience to give you much of this sort of friendship.

The basis of a close friendship begins with trust, but the most difficult part of that is not judging your closest friends. 

There are few satisfactions in life finer than the joy of helping another person gain a brighter outlook.

Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion—and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special.

David Wallace: It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

Sonja Lyubomirsky

But I would say that 95 percent of things that are effective in making people happy and that have been shown to be true through happiness interventions are because they make people feel more connected to other people.”

Talking to strangers — on trains, in a coffee shop, at the playground, on line at the D.M.V., in the waiting room at the doctor’s office — could be dismissed as an exercise that simply makes the time pass. But it could also be seen as a moving reflection of how eager we all are, every day, to connect with other humans whose interiority would otherwise be a mystery, individuals in whose faces we might otherwise read threat, judgment, boredom or diffidence. Talking to strangers guarantees novelty, possibly even learning. It holds the promise, each time, of unexpected insight.

Chris:

Village: gateway to manila. I love teams, building teams, working with people. 

Advice: hugh ambitions, go for it. K has put us through so many experiences and difficult classes. K has a new curricular every 9 weeks. Master a subject. Do so well in the classes.

From the lectern on Thursday, Kermit said, “Life is not a solo act; no, it’s not. It’s a big, messy, delightful ensemble piece, especially when you are with your people.” He called on the graduates to help each other whenever possible. “Life is better when we leap together,” he said.

When I asked you what you did at MIT, You said build. When I asked what gave you hope, you didn’t say buildings….you said people.

Give away power. In eras when distrust is high, hierarchies of power are usually suspect. Leaders earn trust by spreading authority through the ranks. In his book “The Power of Giving Away Power,” Matthew Barzun contrasts pyramid hierarchical structures with constellation structures in which power is dispersed. Pyramid structures encourage a competitive win-lose mind-set, he writes, while constellation structures encourage cooperation.  Brooks

A Fulbright scholar said:  “Though you and I may wish to see ourselves within a great flow of big ideas…, we mostly live our lives in a concrete, specific world that we can touch and shape with our hands and voices.  The key to making a difference is to live in the common, the specific, the immediate – wherever we are.”   

The immediate is that emotion, though sometimes unconscious, we each have of sharing, giving, and connecting. 

Tita in Laura Esquivel’s novel, Like Water for Chocolate, would say, “The water is…at the boil.  The critical moment has arrived.  It is time, at long last, to put in the chocolate.”  

You are now at that great moment.  You are prepared, … ready.  But remember to keep stirring, using all that you have learned, and you will succeed.