A long time ago I received two degrees in extraction-mining and energy finance. I spent the first dozen years of my career implementing what I learned and thinking mostly of myself-my next promotion, my next car, my next house. It worked out pretty well, but there were people around me that reminded me about contribution-making a difference for other people. I come from a line of teachers, farmers, shop owners, and health professionals that quietly served their community. In addition to growing up around good examples, when I became an officer of a public company the CEO required me to get adopt a children's charity. The non-profit organization took me on heartbreaking field trips and showed me discouraging data. In short, they made me an education evangelist.

The mentors in my life taught me that contribution is more rewarding than extraction. My work as a public school superintendent was the most difficult but most rewarding period of my life. I had the good fortune of working with thousands of talented teachers, passionate administrators, and mission driven community leaders. They all lived by a motto I was reminded of by the Noon Rotary club-service above self. There is simply nothing more rewarding than teaching, healing, contributing, and community building.

Each of you leave the Palouse headed a different direction with a chance to make a difference. You'll commence a journey where your character will be on display and where people will judge you on commitments kept. Some of you already have a clear sense of calling. Like me, many of you will bounce around for a while before finding a clear sense of purpose. One way or another, you'll find
out what gets you out of bed in the morning-the tasks you enjoy and the purpose you find fulfilling. A distinctive product of nature and nurture, a magical mixture of innate ability, awakened passion, and environmental opportunity, each human being is gifted and able to make a unique contribution.

While every form of contribution has meaning and is potentially fulfilling, leadership is the highest contribution. Our world desperately needs leaders. While there's never been a better time to accumulate wealth, but I'm afraid our political process can no longer cope with the complicated and interrelated problems my generation is leaving your generation:

• Nearly half the low income and minority students in the country don't graduate from high school and are effectively locked out of family wage employment.
• 45 million don't have health care and our public health and retirement programs are on a path to bankruptcy.
• Four billion people on this planet live on less than $2 per day. Millions die each year from preventable disease.
• We've burned a trillion barrels of oil and as we double the number of cars and airline miles flown, we'll burn the remaining trillion gallons by the time you're my age.
• China is building a new coal fired power plant every week and if we don't help them find sources of clean energy, we will have
  effectively destroyed the planet for your children.

We need leaders in education, in health care, in the non-profit sector, and especially in business. I'm encouraged by education entrepreneurs. I'm encouraged by eco-entrepreneurs. I'm encouraged by health care professional that serve within and seek to improve the system we have. I'm encouraged by for-benefit organizations that seek profit and social benefit. I'm encouraged by new philanthropic leadership-innovative donors focusing on outcomes, taking advantage of the leverage of prizes and providing incentives for entrepreneurs.

What I want to tell you is make a difference. Don't just drift. Don't just try to get yours. Find a cause, a place to serve, a place where you can help other people. If you're lucky and persistent, you'll create a place where you can nudge the trajectory of history in a slightly more equitable direction.

My friend Milton Lang is being awarded a doctorate degree in education today. He and his wife Janelle are great examples of lives dedicated to service. They are everything this place stands for. They make "World class, face to face" real for young Cougs everyday. My wife, daughter and I are privileged to be here today to celebrate this important milestone with Milt, Janelle, and their beautiful daughters Zayna, and Maliza.

You commence into a world where the needs are great and the opportunities to make a difference are right in front of you.
Your contribution will be unique. A century ago, Rainer Maria Rilke uttered a beautiful prayer as a young man, a prayer that captures a longing for his unique calling, for the opportunity to contribute in a unique way.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, Riverhead, 1996

Free what waits within you so that what no one has dared to wish for springs forth. Show the world "world class, face to face" leadership. Lift, build, teach, heal, innovate.

Make a difference.