Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
William E. Evans, PharmD
Director and CEO
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Memphis, Tennessee
May 2, 2009
Thank you Dean Koda-Kimble. Distinguished faculty, family, friends, guests and graduates, it is my great honor and pleasure to deliver the 2009 commencement address to the UCSF School of Pharmacy.
As I thought about my charge for today, I contemplated how I might say something profound that would become an indelible memory of this great occasion for our graduates. And balance that with my charge to do this in 8 minutes or less! Then, as we were backstage robing, one of the faculty members told me that if I really wanted to make the faculty and the students happy, I would do this in 7 minutes or less! That's when I realized that my challenge was impossible, until it dawned on me that today is not about my words, rather it is about our graduates, their accomplishments and the opportunities that await them.
So, let me first congratulate our graduates for getting to this point in your education and in your life. You should be proud to have reached this milestone, and you are surrounded today by people who are proud of you and happy for you, and many rightfully happy for themselves as well, as they have in some way contributed to your arrival at this special moment. Perhaps some are happy because they get to stop paying tuition (your parents or spouse or guardian angel), others are happy because they have studied with you, learned with you, taken care of patients with you, partied with you (perhaps too much on occasion), and now are very soon to graduate with you. Still others are happy because you are the fruits of their labor; that would include your parents of course, but also your professors who were with you in the classroom, the labs and the clinics every step of the way. Some of you were their star students, and I suspect some of you may have been their special challenges, but all of you inspire what they do as educators. We are all happy to be here today to celebrate this special moment with you.
Today is your commencement -- it is not to commemorate the end of your education, rather it is to celebrate the beginning of your career! This occasion marks the commencement of what you will do to help shape the world, the world of your profession, your family, your friends, yourself and the 7 billion others who share this planet with you. You are soon to have the opportunity to become leaders in your profession and your community. You are graduating today from the #1 school of pharmacy in this country (on the planet!), something no other pharmacy class can say, no other commencement speaker can pronounce. You were of course blessed with great intelligence -- otherwise you would not be receiving a doctoral degree from the #1 school. I realize that you had nothing to do with your innate intelligence, you can thank your parents for that -- it was largely a gift of genetics. I also realize this is the year of Darwin's 200th birthday, but we must not overlook that you are the products of both nature and nurture.
As I look out, you sit here today dressed alike in your graduation regalia, sitting nicely as one. But within each of those identical gowns are 117 marvelously unique individuals, poised to make your mark on the world in your own way. If I leave you with only one message today, let me encourage you to, in your own way, reach high as you transition to this next phase of your life, as you move from student to professional, from classmates to colleagues, from learner to leader. Aim high -- no, aim very high -- you are graduating from the #1 school after all! Do not be happy to follow ... feel compelled to lead. You are fully capable of being leaders in your profession, in your institutions and in your communities, of being the driver and not the passenger on your healthcare team or among your collaborators. Don't just take the orders ... take the reins when opportunity presents itself.
Actually, I am really just passing along what some of my professors told me 35 years ago when they said I must not let my education or my degree determine what I attempted to do in my life and my career. They were right when they said I would learn infinitely more after graduation than during my formal education, and that I needed to view my degree as a rite of passage, as a ticket to play, as a beginning and not an end to my education. And they said that ultimately it would be how I played the game that would determine the outcome of my career and my life. So I implore each of you to have enough confidence and faith in yourself to go beyond your comfort zone, to reach high. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the entire staircase." We have faith in you, so have it in yourself -- don't hesitate to take a bold first step.
In 1972, I took my first step as a pharmacy student at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and I knew very quickly that I wanted to return there at the first opportunity after my graduation, not because it paid well, but because I believed in the mission, and I embraced the culture. I had learned as a student that it was a place that valued good ideas from everyone. When I returned as a pharmacist in 1976, I didn't set out to become the CEO, but it also never crossed my mind that it might be impossible, either. (I never really thought about it, to be honest.) I would encourage you to begin your career assuming that anything is possible -- anything. (This is a great time in your life to let naïve optimism run rampant!) So you should set your sights as high as you can dream.
In the 1950s, Danny Thomas had a dream of creating a world-class research hospital for children with catastrophic diseases. You are all too young to know who Danny Thomas was -- he was a comedian, then an actor (Make Room for Daddy), and then a Hollywood producer, and above all a great father and humanitarian. Maybe you have heard of his daughter Marlo Thomas, a Tony- and Emmy-award-winning actress who also played Jennifer Aniston's mother on Friends -- that's a little closer to your generation. Danny was a big dreamer, who had great vision and tried to help make the world what he thought it should be. After success as an actor and producer, he decided to repay society by creating a research hospital for children with cancer, sickle-cell disease and other catastrophic diseases. When St. Jude Children's Research Hospital opened in 1962 he said that all patients would be treated for free, and regardless of race, religion or their ability to pay. Many thought the focus on childhood cancer was a mistake because almost all children died in 1962 (only 4% all were cured). They also thought that it would not be possible when Danny declared he could one day raise as much as 1 million dollars a year to provide free care at St. Jude. I can tell you that today care remains free at St. Jude, and this now requires that we raise over $1 million a day [not a year] -- and we do! More importantly, the cure rate for all has increased from 4% to almost 90% today!
Another Memphis Dreamer is Fred Smith; his dream became a business plan for his economics class at Yale, a paper that his professor gave a C+. He was not deterred (as you should not be in case any of you have gotten a C+ while here at UCSF), and what you should know is that today Fred Smith's C+ business plan is FedEx, a global logistics company with annual revenue of $40 billion.
My message from these two examples is simple: dream big, set your sights high, don't let others talk you out of a great idea ... and don't assume you received the correct grade on every paper in school! In the words of Vincent van Gogh, "I dreamed my paintings and then painted my dreams." Danny Thomas and Fred Smith painted their dreams, and it's now time for you to paint yours.
Please know that your professors have taught you well, and provided what you need to achieve this moment of transition in your lives, the time when you commence your career as a professional. But they have not taught you everything (exemplified by Fred Smith's professor and by the fact that Danny Thomas never went to college), so realize you have much more to learn about pharmacy and about life -- about yourself and how you will give back to your profession and your community. One of Danny's favorite quotes was, "In this world there are 2 kinds of people, there are givers and there are takers. The takers eat well, the givers sleep well." What happens next in your life will be determined by your dreams and your determination, by how hard you work and by how smart you work, by the company you keep and by how much you are willing to lead and give of yourself. I would encourage you to pursue a career that lets you sleep well ... not merely a job that pays well. Over the long term, the former will yield far greater riches than the latter. I charge you as new graduates to put your gifts of nature and nurture to full use, as that is not only what will make this a better world and pharmacy a better profession -- it is what will make you sleep well and bring you the greatest happiness. So, now, graduates, go out and paint your dreams, and change the world! We are counting on you to do just that!
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