Most Reverend Bishop Robert Deeley, President Jim Dlugos, members of the board of trustees, honored guests, faculty, administration and staff, family, friends and members of the class of 2019 — thank you for allowing me the honor of delivering this year’s commencement address.

Graduates of the Class of 2019, congratulations!

Your pride is evident and justified.

This beautiful place brought to mind the great words from a gifted poet … the late Maya Angelou… a human rights advocate who envisioned a place where “everything has rhythm and everything dances.”

Graduates, I am honored today to be dancing with stars! And before I begin – please stand and give thanks to the brightest of stars – your parents and family who love you regardless of your GPA.

I am honored to see the many faces who comprise a unique and rightly happy group of graduates. A good deal of you have conquered the limits of geographic distance and used technology to earn your degrees. for some, it’s your first trip here. Whatever the circumstance, you are all Monks, now and forever.

I feel a special connection to this beautiful campus. I was here last October to help inaugurate the Institute for Integrative Aging – the first of its kind in Maine. it will be a center for research, education and community-centered care for older adults here on campus. The organizations that I lead are partnering with the Institute, and I am optimistic about our direction.

At this moment in life when one graduates from college, getting old seems incomprehensible. But a little secret – you will get there, and it will seem quick. When you look back, I want you to be able to do so with gratitude and joy.

While nobody is entirely able to create a life outcome, I do believe you are largely in control of it.

I’m going to tell you why with a handful of brief stories… some painful, some uplifting, all hugely instructive. I’ll skip the sweeping commencement speech platitudes in keeping with some sound advice from my favorite philosopher, Yogi Berra, who said “You don’t want to make the wrong mistake.”

I have found that the power of a personal story, honestly told, builds trust and opens up a world of opportunity. My stories confirm fundamental human virtues that you can nurture to achieve a future that you desire.

In my first story, a young boy of eight contracts an ear infection and loses the ability to hear. For nearly a decade, he endures no fewer than five experimental surgeries. He is ridiculed and bullied by peers, friends, even family. His hearing loss is so severe that he fails the fifth grade.

Finally, surgery works.

However, when the bandages are removed from his ears, the horror of not hearing is replaced by the horror of hearing himself speak. He can’t pronounce his “r’s” or “w’s.” Many believe he has a learning disability.

As luck would have it, his sister-in-law is a speech pathologist at the local university. the boy gets help. He records his speech every single day, repeating words and sounds. he makes real progress. He teaches himself to speak again.

When the time arrives to apply for college, though, he is rejected by every single one. The admissions offices conclude that the boy is disabled with low academic potential.

He can’t shake the stigma, despite the clear results of hard work. But the experience has taught this young man tenacity and to use adversity to build strength.

He finally convinces one college that the label of disabled is neither appropriate nor fair. The boy enters the Class of 1975, and four years later, he graduates summa cum laude.

Despite being voted by his classmates “most likely not to succeed,” this boy goes on to become a successful business executive, a published author and a global healthcare activist.

Friends… that young boy was me.

Had we had Facebook and Instagram in those days, I would have posted a few of my successes and maybe gotten a few ‘likes’ from the naysayers. As it were, I rather enjoyed returning to my 10 year high school reunion to let my classmates know they had gotten it wrong.

Painful experiences like this one ultimately guided me to author a book, Life’s Bulldozer Moments: How Adversity can Lead to Success in Life and Business.” It came out just a few years ago, and I’m proud that it’s in its seventh printing.

What I learned in the publishing of my book is everyone has a story, and taking the time to listen to those stories can and will create for you a new perspective and open up a world of new connections.

Events like the loss of my hearing can knock you to your knees. The book proposes what you do when you get up.

When you get up, you endure. You teach yourself why – and hold fast to that learning. and, with hard work and a bit of luck, you can write a better personal life story, and help others write a better story, too.

There’s a saying that some attribute to Mark Twain. It holds that the two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

I have two why’s – one professional and one personal. My professional why began to take shape months after i regained the gift of hearing.

You see, my sister-in-law Rosemary, the speech pathologist who is credited for my ability to be on stage speaking to you, lost her life while giving birth to her second child. the cause was a medication error.

A preventable error.

For nearly 40 years, I have been working to make sure that what happened to Rosemary never happens to anyone ever again. I launched several successful healthcare companies, the technology of which is still used today to prevent medication errors.

Improving the healthcare delivery system became my hard and gratifying labor. It became my passion. It became my professional why.

As for my personal why, it was unleashed by the events of 9/11. On that very day, i was scheduled to fly on United flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles. A simple toothache and last-minute dental appointment caused me to rebook on another flight. Sadly, two dear friends and their young son got on board.

They had been visiting me at my summer home here in Maine. They lost their lives when the second plane hit the south tower of the world trade center. Even now I grapple with the painful, larger questions: why my friends, not me? How could anybody murder a 3-year-old boy?

The painful moment guided me to Tennyson, who said… quoting… “we faintly trust the larger hope.”

Whether you welcome it or not, pain will find its way in your life and your embracing the opportunities that will come from those challenges will unquestionably lead to a greater clarity of purpose for you. It did for me!

And so, rather than be bitter or angry, I created the Tramuto Foundation in memory of my friends. Eighteen years later we have provided nearly 200 grants to non-profits whose mission it is to make the world a more just, fair place. We have helped hundreds of young children facing adversity in many forms to pursue their dreams of college education.

But we did not stop our work with this important victory.

More than a decade after creating the Tramuto Foundation, I was shocked to read a statistic that in our lifetime, 1 billion people will go to their graves prematurely because they don’t have access to a healthcare worker. Six million are children.

Some people have told me this is not our problem. I disagree. Article 25 of the universal declaration of human rights states that healthcare is a basic right for every single person. and when one person is denied access, we have violated that right.

Likewise, I agree with Pope Francis who said, “Health is not a consumer good, but a universal right, so access to health services cannot be a privilege.”

The knowledge of this enormous and ongoing adversity fueled my personal passion to launch Health eVillages. It’s a global non-profit that provides medical information and decision support to caregivers via mobile devices.

We’ve achieved incredible things. We’ve driven down infant mortality in sections of East Africa from 100 infant deaths per 1,000 births to 20 – from a newborn dying about 10 percent of the time to 2 percent. That’s right, 80 more babies per 1,000 births now live, thanks to the smart and good people powering Health eVillages.

Health eVillages built a maternity ward in a small village in East Africa so that every mother-to-be can deliver her baby on a bed and not on a dirt floor. Just because you are poor does not mean that you do not have a right to basic healthcare. to visit communities like Haiti, South Sudan, and Africa – as I have – is to be reminded that the life we live is temporal and our greatest responsibility is to love, accept, and care for each person. The Tramuto Foundation and Health eVillages are my personal why’s.

Now, you are at an early, promising, young stage of life. You can harness the strength forged by your own adversity and make your corner of the world a better place. You can find your why and let that passion drive you.

Before I close, though, I want to offer two important bits of advice – be authentic and be kind! Too many people will tell you what to be and I have found it’s a lot easier to simply be who you are – your happiness will rise and fall on how successfully you lead an authentic life.

And, be kind. I like to say kindness is the new currency for the world we live in. and I encourage you to use that currency in all that you do. There is no other investment that offers a better return.

I’m so optimistic when I look at all of you. I see critical elements of a broad counterattack by the forces of what is good on earth. I admire the youth, the energy, the idealism and the enthusiasm nurtured under the values of St. Joseph’s College on display here.

In preparing to speak to you today, I came across the life and words of Catherine Mcauley, the founder of the Sisters of Mercy, who in turn founded this great institution.

Catherine was an Irish lay person who managed to build a house where she and other women would shelter the homeless, reach out to the sick and dying, and educate poor girls. At the time of her death in 1841, there were 100 Sisters of Mercy working across Ireland and England. Today, there are thousands of Sisters in over 40 countries. By any measure, that is quite a remarkable achievement. But as Catherine said… and I quote… “We can never say, ‘It is enough.’”

In many ways and through your education at St. Joseph’s, you are uniquely advantaged to live out the words of Catherine Mcauley and to practice the life lessons that my stories so clearly affirm.

Channeling bulldozer moments – disappointments and adversity into strength.

Finding and knowing your personal and professional why.

Be authentic.

And using the currency of kindness throughout it all.

You are as well positioned as any generation in history to affect social change. make the most of it. Do something good. It need not be great. You can do little things that have the capacity to drive great change.

Remarkably, I find myself just off of the starting block of my sixth decade.

I’ve found deep purpose in my work and my life. I’ve given and received kindness in ways that continue to surprise and delight me. I’ve been shaped by adversity and overcome adversity.

And if I can be at this podium today… the guy voted most likely not to succeed… and I can accomplish what I have accomplished, imagine what’s in store for you.

How proud I am of this college.

How proud I am of you.

And how confident I am that you will make the most of the opportunity that lies ahead.

-###-