2021 Harvard Business School MBA Section A Diploma Ceremony
i want to give a warm welcome to parents grandparents uncles aunts children mentors those are all the people in david chattaway's window there apparently friends and especially to you the graduating class of 2021 so congratulations if you don't know me my name is malcolm baker and i met the legendary section a for the first time a 619 days ago on september 16th 2019 in aldrich 111 and at precisely 10 50 a.m i turned to luis ramos and i asked him a simple question i said how is mark butler doing and luis he was calm but he was serious and you know this is the benefit of scribes we have the exact quote he says butler lumber is running perilously low on cash receivables are ballooning his line of credit is all but exhausted and the business is now solely reliant on its suppliers to carry on in short mark butler is not doing well i do wish that luis had also warned us about the impending pandemic and how it would wreak havoc on the lumber supply chain but i suppose that's forgivable so i could tell right at that moment that section a was firing on all cylinders and with that start section a you were off you studied finance and accounting lead in biggie tom and tam strategy market in lca and more importantly you studied each other all here on the zoom gallery that i can see and apparently you bonded as a section uh you're bonded together right now in many of these windows and the bond was on display for me when i went to flag day with more than 40 countries represented from angola and bulgaria to taiwan and turkey the bond was on display in my takes where you shared openly and listen compassionately and most importantly the bond was on display each and every class where you created an environment of supportive and engaged learning and 94 previously unconnected individuals became the famous the legendary section a of 2021 so section a knows me as somewhat or you know me somewhat uh as a comic who hides strategically behind a dry wit but today i'm going to try something new and completely foreign to me i'm going to risk actually being earnest it's a new thing for me uh but what i have to say is kind of from the heart so it's such an honor to be with you on this momentous occasion i'm obviously very sad that right now we aren't basking on baker beach i'm glad to see that greg is basking in stoughton it's a beautiful day outside today but i would say a coveted silver lining for me is that i have this opportunity right now the tremendous good fortune to preside over the conferral of diplomas to you section a i don't think that opportunity would be available to me in a normal year and i've taught at harvard business school for about 21 years now i'm right at the half point halfway point i think i'm gonna teach here for 21 uh more years before they kind of put me out to pasture so in all likelihood in those 42 years that will be the one and only time that i have this privilege to make a special connection to a treasured section so the effects of covet have been mostly pretty terrible you know socially economically politically but there have been some silver linings and for me you know being right here with you now uh at least virtually with the chance to celebrate you uh is a huge one so we're also here today to celebrate two families one old family and one new one for you the first is the family that raised you whoever that may be perhaps sitting next to you today or joining us from a distance usually starts with you and your siblings and spans back to your parents or your grandparents and beyond spans across to your cousins your aunts and uncles uh and eventually for some of you your family spans ahead to your children grandchildren and great-grandchildren so i can see i'm looking for some families there in the gallery i can see some uh there all smiles and families are not perfect there's occasional irritations and disagreements uh cantankerous uncles maybe estranged cousins but through it all uh these these smiling people here today they've nurtured and encouraged you maybe not perfectly but with pure intention and unconditional love you wouldn't be sitting here without their tremendous support so if you have the opportunity take the time today to express your gratitude and your debt to them so i want to offer my thanks as well to those of you supporters and family members out there at harvard business school we're so fortunate to have a beautiful campus with buildings named aldrich and clarman and spangler and chow uh and i walked by them today they're all dressed up in their finest mayweather uh for graduation today with the landscaping you know even more carefully manicured than usual but these buildings are nothing without you the students inside so i'd like to thank the families here today for providing the critical seeds that sustain this institution uh that i love so it's not a perfect institution to be sure but it's one that evolves to meet the challenges of the moment that needs you the new students with the new ideas it's not our buildings that make a difference to the families out there it's your children or maybe your grandchildren or your brother or your sister sitting next to you you know thank you for sharing section a with us so now a couple words to section ah so to section a your families are so so proud of you of all that you've accomplished you know obviously not today but throughout your life uh and much more importantly not of what you've accomplished but of of who you are as people and i'm not saying this in the abstract i know it deeply in my heart i know it because my treasured section a is graduating here today but i also know it because my son graduates from high school two weeks from today so i'm going through some of these same parental emotions and i'm so proud of him so i'll use the word we in the sense that we nurtured you so part of our pride in seeing you here today is in a job well done we worked hard we sacrificed we hoped and dreamed and taught and counseled and watched and listened we sometimes cried from your pain or from our joy some nights we were up anxious some mornings it was hard to wake up we were exhausted it was not always easy but it was a hundred percent worth it so but i want to say that that's not the whole story behind our pride or my pride in my son you're much more than that you're much more than a job well done you're so much more and the way i describe that is we're most proud in those kind of precious and magical moments you know first in your infancy then childhood and increasing in frequency into adolescence in your early adult years what do i mean by those moments i think the parents in the gallery might know what i mean these are kind of the moments where you in section a did uh you know or what you said or how high you jumped around or the way you laughed or danced that was somehow like wholly unexpected and wonderful something that couldn't be connected simply and linearly to who we are uh and how we raised you i i so wish and and we wish we could take credit in some sense for those moments of interesting and new uh of brilliance in you but instead you know when i look at you and when i look at my children it seems a bit like divine intervention or some kind of miracle of human evolution in the sense that you're more sophisticated and more wise and often uh more self-possessed than you know than we can rightly understand there's like a spark in you that we can't completely explain when you exceed our expectations in some way or you eclipse us uh in ways that we don't understand physically or intellectually or emotionally so in the micro these moments with you are really what make the classroom at hbs come alive for me i just don't you know i don't know what's going to happen when i walk into aldrich and so i do so with the same excitement that i did 21 years ago for the very first time i've learned so much from you from those moments of insight even though i'm teaching the same material that come from our discussions as a group or one-on-one socrates it turns out devised a pretty good method for keeping both students and instructors engaged in the learning process in the macro when i think about those moments in you it just gives me so much hope and aspiration for the possibility of the future for what you can accomplish section a so that's the family that raised you you know beaming with pride here today what i want to do in addition is to welcome you into another family you know you're already very much a part of it but i want to welcome you into the hbs family like your nuclear family it starts right here with section a your hbs siblings in some sense but it spans across the other sections this year back to supportive alumni and forward to future generations who will walk through these halls of haws eat at harvard square exercise at chad hopefully on the ergometer but just like all families hbs is not perfect far from it we have a wonderful mission to make a difference in the world and we you know your hbs family are striving uh in uneven ways towards that goal the new sometimes creative methods now and we always will be so like the family that raised you we've tried to nurture you to support you and today we celebrate you as graduates of the class of 2021. in that sense it might feel today to you like somewhat of an ending and that that might feel bittersweet particularly what we've all been through you know over the past 15 months or so but this is the secret is your path together has just barely begun you know this is really the beginning not the end you've learned so much and not just the capital asset pricing model or the black shoals formula as important as those are to your future success but you've learned really how to learn how to question conventional wisdom how to make connections between disciplines how to find humanity in business and really in section a how to build a diverse community but you're not done right you must keep learning and i want to say in two ways in kind of small steps and then kind of giant leaps this is what will happen to you so the world is changing fast you know think about like a computer science a computer scientist who once needed to understand the mainframe you know now it's the pc and then the internet uh and finally recently it's aws the blockchain deep learning i just like saying deep learning the neurosurgeon must renew you know her skills with the latest tools these days it's guided imaging and lasers you need to be on top of the data to understand the most efficacious approaches built on recent evidence of what works where when and why and these are small steps in small steps whatever it is your area of focus or interest you too must keep yourself on the cutting edge so that's the one part that's kind of the small like it's just continuous learning in some fields so the world's changing fast but you are going to change as well and that's kind of where the giant leaps come in you know you're here at hbs as general managers not as a pure computer scientist typically you're a neurosurgeon you might go from analyst to manager to the c-suite to ceo maybe you're switching from one industry to another and then another you know maybe you're an entrepreneur and you're simultaneously a marketer an accountant a mentor a visionary a hiring manager and even a travel agent so these aren't the small steps of refining your technical skills to go from one level to the next to go from working on problems to managing big teams of people these are kind of the giant leaps of reinvention that you're going to need to make they're changing you know who you are as much as what you know through time and that that process is just beginning so i can report that hbs has prepared you well for this second category of frequent reinvention you may be disappointed that we didn't train you well enough in excel i know i am or double entry bookkeeping but we've anticipated these more distant and profound possibilities for you and we've been planning for your ongoing professional growth we've imagined that many of you will be senior managing partners or founder ceos and so as often as three times a day you know getting exercise we placed you in these very big shoes as protagonists [Music] in each of these you are facing complex and multifaceted business problems and what you might say at this point you might be inclined to point out this does have some downsides i've heard occasionally that hbs graduates in some circles have a bad reputation i'm not sure what the right expression is you know maybe it's we're a bit too big for our britches i think wearing robes like this one may not help i'm not sure uh but i think this characterization is mostly uh unfair but as with many stereotypes there is a small grain of truth in that and if you want to blame someone you know someone someone's messing with you you know blame me the hbs faculty in some sense made you that way but let me also say that this is a feature not a bug in our system you will be leaders if not right now then very soon and you will be prepared then to make those big leaps of reinvention you know you want to work your way in that direction but you're very ready for those challenges and i'm so excited about that your hbs family and section a most of all all of you here will be by your side to support you to encourage you to pursue your dreams to aim high to build on your strengths and also to fill in the gaps and spot your vulnerabilities to catch you when you fall only to help you rise again so section a i can report that you have two pretty amazing families uh to work with uh and let me tell you this you 100 deserve them you're not at all finished with the journey but you very much belong on this journey of leadership you may have felt in like uh an imposter on day one that's always possible when i met you 619 days ago but i can assure you today that if you were not already maestro's then i can say today you are masters literally masters of business administration before we formally celebrate you in that sense let me just give the floor to my friend and colleague jan rivkin the dean of our mba program who's just outside my perch in the clarman auditorium take it away for me jan congratulations again to the class of 2021 you are now officially hps graduates you know graduation day is my favorite day of the year i love seeing our students so happy i love seeing their families and friends so rightly proud of their graduates and so excited about their bright futures and we now come to my favorite part of my favorite day of the year the diploma ceremony where we recognize each and every member of your section as members of the class of 2021 are recognized you'll hear mention of three kinds of honors the first is distinction this is for students who earned academic honors in both the first year and the second year of our program the second is high distinction these individuals not only earned honors in the first year and the second year they also had combined academic performance that placed them in the top five percent of their class as a whole these students were also known as george f baker scholars commemorating the individual whose generosity in the 1920s allowed us to build the campus i invite you to look at the baker scholars page on the graduation website to learn more about the legacy of george baker and this particular distinction third and last but by no means least the dean's award the dean's award celebrates the extraordinary achievements of graduating students who during their time at hbs made distinctive contributions to harvard to harvard business school or the broader community these students have contributed to the well-being of others through amazing acts of leadership students and all members of the community nominate these individuals and then dean tatar makes the final selection so please enjoy the diploma ceremony celebrate each and every member of your session i hope that your session will remain close through the years as mine has and i hope that these two years hbs will be just the beginning of an ongoing conversation among you as you enjoy long happy years of making differences that are meaningful to you and meaningful for the world be well and stay close thank you jan i'll admit we're back here in the auditorium of claremont and i will admit jan that you look better in your regalia than i do but you know i'm doing the best with what i've got uh so this is the moment of truth where all those assembled here today formally acknowledge and celebrate the tireless work dedication resilience resilience in the face of a global pandemic and the intellectual achievements of each member of section a in my own graduation from harvard 21 years ago i spent most of the time thinking about how not to trip as i walked across the stage as much as you might miss that combination of joy and dread we have a different kind of value proposition for you today as you sit more quietly with your family uh or in the case of david chadway a bit more loudly with friends as you hear each name and see each photo i'm going to encourage you to take a moment to think how this person on the screen made an impact on you large or small what did you learn or experience while you were here in their company and how did that shape who you are today as you move on to the next chapter of your life zoom is taken away a lot and i'm so sad that we can't be together but this moment zoom can give us a bit back of this meditation on our two transformative years so here they are your child or grandchild or sibling and importantly here they are your section mates take this in and please appreciate each one [Music] high distinction david garcia distinction distinction nicholas [Applause] bensour mary ashley bowles [Music] clayton calendar laura carlson david chattaway [Applause] joy rebecca sink [Applause] samantha cohen belgique lorenzio enriquez al ranzio sam enuma [Music] zachary erickson look at that bowtie anna stella distinction [Music] evan firestein distinction evan smartypants rodolfo [Music] burgess godraj adam greenstein adam camille gregory no commune joanne godwinski distinction [Music] barrett hanson [Music] [Music] james heffelfinger applefinger toby idogo [Music] iqbal kevin lee alec meade [Music] [Applause] neenan [Applause] carl and james [Music] emma peng [Music] kimberly pearl gabriel linda chin [Music] luis ramos ramos eloise john roberts oh john carina rodriguez laura elizabeth sandoval marcus [Applause] reginald c wright carlin shapiro lucy shaw hi the station diana sunukova jose smith [Applause] mike roxanne tully [Music] wasserman let's go jamie sylvester we williams jesse winfield let's go [Applause] yuki yaguchi [Music] last name [Music] so heartwarming it gave me chills and also made me realize that i am still mispronouncing your names on many occasions i apologize for that but back to the matter at hand here by the powers vested in me by jan rivkin by srikant tatar by larry back out by charlie baker by joe biden and of course by elon musk and jeff bezos i pronounce you masters of business administration from harvard university cheers to the class of 2021 congratulations section a we're so [Applause] incredible professor baker we love you as we scroll through i want to see all of the zoom gallery as we go here one more time for your effort sacrifice and most of all for your love yeah one more time [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you
2021-06-04 19:27
