Chairman Badavas and members of the Board of Trustees, President Davis-Blake and members of the faculty and staff, distinguished guests, proud parents, families, and friends, and of course: to all the worthy graduates of the Class of 2019.

You, the Class of 2019, are an extraordinarily diverse and able group. Thanks to the superb Bentley faculty and administration and the ongoing support of your family and friends, you are about to start your exciting next chapters.

I am honored to be with you today to share in the celebration of your hard work and your aspirations to build a better a future.

For many years, State Street has benefited from the talents of Bentley graduates, and I look forward to continuing to draw from that well of talent.

Thank you all for inviting me to be with you on this special day.

As I reviewed previous commencement speeches, here at Bentley and elsewhere, I was struck by the number of speakers who began their talks with a similar disclaimer.

They essentially said: “I don’t remember much of what was said at my graduation ceremony, because of too much ‘celebrating,’ and I suspect you won’t remember much either, so I’ll keep this short.”

Well, “short,” when it comes to speeches, is always good, so I pledge to do the same here today.

And while I’m afraid I also belong to that group of graduates who can’t remember much of what my commencement speaker said, I do remember clearly how I felt sitting where you are now:

Clueless, with a vague sense of foreboding…

You see, I had spent the last two summers of my undergraduate life driving a beer truck.

It was a great job: weekends and evenings free; great in-kind benefits; and, my dorm room was fully stocked for the first month back to school. (By the way, the legal drinking age back then was 18).

It was one of the best jobs I ever had, and I couldn’t imagine for the life of me a better gig.

So I sat there thinking, “Is this it? I haven’t even graduated yet, and I’ve already peaked?”

Of course, life had other plans for me beyond beer logistics -- twists and turns that I could have never imagined nor dreamed of.

So, my first message for you today is this: don’t feel you need to have your life figured out at this point. You don’t, and that’s a good thing.

Be open to the immense possibilities that life will offer, and be ready to take a chance.

Remember: “commencement” means a beginning, not an end.

So, at this beginning I would ask this accomplished group of graduates three questions:

1. Are you prepared to lead?
2. Are you willing to lead?
3. What kind of leader will you be?

You are “commencing” at an extraordinary time. A time of great uncertainty, but also a time of at least one indelible certainty: broad-based leadership matters.

Consider the questions that are being raised about a capitalist system that was assumed to be a good thing when I was graduating.

Today a debate rages around globalization, technology and the future of capitalism. Disaffection exists around job displacement, stagnant wage growth, and increased numbers of migrants.

Critics point to workers who have been displaced by technology and globalization, and say capitalism is to blame.

We are also witnessing a backlash against technology giants because of privacy issues, concerns over monopolies, and whether these business models themselves are depressing wages and adding even more to income inequality.

All of these are genuinely difficult issues. I don’t deny that.

Many critics insist we need to blow the system up. Indeed, as we move towards the 2020 elections, various politicians and candidates say we must stop trade, stop immigration, break up companies and industries, etc.

Is that leadership? Stop it, break it up, blow it up? Complex problems seldom have simple answers, which is why solving complex problems requires leadership.

Why are these problems so complex?

To begin with, many have lost sight of the fact that capitalism, globalization and technology advances have created benefits for everybody, not just the 1 percent, and have also helped make the world a fundamentally better place than it was 50 years ago.

The fact is that billions have been lifted out of poverty around the world as a result of those three forces.

In 1981, around the time I was graduating from college, more than 40 percent of the world’s population struggled to live on less than $2 a day; today that share is less than 10 percent.

My grandparents lived at a time when hideous diseases like polio, influenza and tuberculosis were common ailments that could cripple or kill family members.

My own grandmother, for example, was diagnosed with TB after my father was born. She was sent to a sanitarium when my father was a year old and stayed there until he was 10.

This was a devastating separation for both mother and child – and my grandmother was never able to have another child.

Fast-forward and organizations like the Gates Foundation – and, more importantly, the young scientists and researchers it funds – have nearly eradicated diseases like tuberculosis and polio, while dramatically reducing the incidence of malaria and HIV.

Infant and maternal mortality has decreased drastically around the world and life expectancy globally is rising.

Educational outcomes for all are improving in most parts of the world, which in turn is driving one of the most powerful forces for prosperity ever: equal education opportunities for girls and the full integration of women into all aspects of the global economy.

And, despite the real concerns around climate change, the carbon intensity of most economies has actually been falling, and in many places there are far more parks and protected wilderness than there was 50 years ago.

Take Massachusetts: at the time of the American Revolution, 75 percent of the state had been deforested by agriculture and Boston Harbor then and up to the 1980s was a stinking sewer.

The water was so bad that anyone who could afford to moved away from the waterfront.

Today, one can swim in Boston Harbor, and 75 percent of Massachusetts consists of woods and forests.

These are remarkable achievements, driven by capitalism, technology and globalization.

On the social front, thanks to a revolution in communications and remarkably efficient movement of ideas, we have also seen a welcome and rapid rise in the acceptance of differences.

Who would have imagined 10 years ago, let alone 50 years ago, that same-sex marriage would now be the law of the land, and that a leading candidate for the U.S. presidential nomination would be an openly gay man accompanied on the campaign trail by his husband?

So, blowing up and breaking up sound like easy answers. But they are not the answer. Doing nothing is also not the answer. The “answer” will require leadership.

I suspect many of you are sitting there now asking yourselves: What does any of this have to do with me?

And I say back to you: think of the role that young leaders have played in some of the most important events in history.

Three important anniversaries are happening this year: the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing; the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing in France; and the 100th anniversary of the vote by Congress to ratify the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote.

For decades after Neil Armstrong’s historic moon landing in 1969, he gave almost no interviews.

Why was that?

Because he believed that all 400,000 people involved in the space program were the real heroes, and that they more than him deserved recognition.

In particular, he credited the young engineers, mathematicians and test pilots who led the problem-solving and drove the countless breakthroughs required to achieve that final goal: putting two people on the moon and bringing them back alive.

D-Day was also an extraordinary event that marked the beginning of the end of one of the most devastating wars that human beings have ever fought.

But, despite all the people and materiel and years of planning, the invasion of Normandy nearly failed. Little went according to the plans of the great generals, and success turned on the young leaders, some designated, most self-appointed, who stood up, led and turned the tide.

And they were young: the average age of officers on those beaches was 25. The non-commissioned troops were even younger – 19 years old on average.

Finally, Susan B. Anthony is indelibly remembered for leading the movement to get women the right to vote.

But the suffrage campaign was hardly her first demonstration of leadership. In 1837 she led an early petition drive against slavery. She was only 17 at the time.

And today, we see a 16-year-old Swedish woman, Greta Thunberg, persuading entire countries to declare climate change as a national emergency.

My point is: leadership is hardly limited to older people. And so my question – my challenge, really – to you is: What will you do to ensure that the arc of the universe continues to bend in a positive direction?

I would urge each one of you to step up and lead. Lead with purpose and vision and courage.

But what is good, ethical leadership exactly?

As I think about my own experience and the example set by leaders I admire, some traits frequently come to mind.

Doris Kearns Goodwin in her magnificent book on great presidential leadership succinctly summarizes these traits; humility, empathy, courage, resilience, equanimity, self-reflection, and the ability to communicate well.

That’s a pretty good list, and I know that all of those traits played a key role during the greatest challenge I ever faced during my own career.

That was the global financial crisis in 2008/2009, when I was the head of BNY Mellon Asset Management.

Both BNY Mellon and State Street play a huge role in the nuts and bolts of the financial system’s plumbing.

And that plumbing was severely tested during the credit crunch that locked up financial markets.

I remember we faced a daily battle to keep the overnight money markets open and ensure that our customers had access to their hard-earned investments.

That was when I learned first-hand how important strong leadership is in a crisis. I experienced extraordinary leadership on the part of my colleagues and the people who worked for me who stepped up and worked around the clock in a courageous and selfless way, even when it was not at all clear that they would have a job to return to the next day.

Both they and I learned the importance of keeping calm, even when the storm is at its worst and your stomach is turning cartwheels.

Because you owe it to everyone around you to show that you are committed to persevering and being there for them and empathizing with their pain. The financial crisis was indeed the challenge of a lifetime, but in the darkest hours I saw extraordinary acts of courage, kindness and selflessness.

It also taught me that great leadership comes in all shapes and sizes. We’re all different, and each of us has our own version of it. And it is crucial to find your own authentic version of it.

For me, great leadership is about: Not talking, but doing. Not getting, but giving. It’s not about serving some stakeholders, but about serving ALL stakeholders, and the difficult trade-offs that often entails.

Great leadership is not about being selfish but about being selfless.

Effective leaders are impatient, often to an irritating degree. Why is impatience so important?

In my experience, problems persist at the rate at which they continue to be accepted. Good leaders are not very tolerant about letting problems linger.

Finally, great leadership is about taking chances on people.

This is perhaps one of the most important lessons I have learned in life, mainly as a result of other people taking a chance on me.

When I graduated from business school, the hiring partner at McKinsey saw something in me that her other colleagues did not and she pushed the firm for me to get an offer.

Ten years later, the CEO of Mellon Bank, for whom I had worked as a consultant, took an even greater chance on me and asked me to become the head of Mellon’s asset management business.

In both cases I didn’t check many of the boxes under the qualifications, but both of those people had faith in me, and were prepared to let me prove myself. That was a powerful experience, and it has inspired me to take chances on others.

There are three things CEOs must get right to be successful:

1.       Set an effective strategy

2.       Allocate the appropriate resources to support the strategy

3.       Get the right talent to lead and execute

I’m here today to tell you that #3 is by far the most important. Circumstances change and can disrupt even the best strategy. Lean times can lead to under-investment in the appropriate resources. But find good people, and they can overcome the challenges to the first two points. So, I think a lot about people and I do take chances on people. Not all work, but most do.

Like the young associate who was assigned to my team when I was a project manager at McKinsey. She had struggled with her first project, and soon there were whispers about a “hiring mistake.” That same woman went on to become one of the first female senior partners at McKinsey.

The importance of taking a chance on people also taught me the importance of taking a chance on yourself. As I said at the start, life offers immense possibilities, but you need to be prepared to take a chance on yourself, even when you don’t check all of the boxes.

I know it’s hard to take the long view in a world that seems so focused on the here and now. But having a vision of where you want to go, and accepting that the path forward will not always be a straight line, will be a great way to put setbacks into perspective.

Fail fast and move on. But give yourself that chance to fail. Trust yourself enough to fail. Continually, ask yourself: what positive change do you want to make in the world and your jobs, and how and when will you lead?

And, most importantly, cherish the friendships you find along the way.

I’ll end on this thought: Every study of centenarians, or indeed anyone who has lived a long and full life, confirms the same thing about what’s important in life.

Rich or poor, CEO or middle manager, a clear purpose and strong relationships are the most important and powerful determinants of a happy and successful life. Get those two ingredients right and everything else will follow.

So once again, congratulations to all of you. I look forward to hearing your stories of your happy and purposeful leadership.