Richard W. Ivey, HBA ’72, received an honorary Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LL.D.) at Western’s 301st Convocation ceremony on June 17. During the ceremony, he gave a speech to Ivey’s HBA graduates and the School of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies. His full speech is below.
Richard W. Ivey, Western Convocation Address
Thank you Carol, President Chakma, Chancellor Thompson, Minister Matthews, faculty and staff…parents, family and friends, and, most importantly, members of the Ivey Class of 2013.
I am honoured to stand before you for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Western is one of Canada’s great universities and it is, therefore, a wonderful privilege to receive this honour from such a distinguished institution.
I’m not the first member of my family to be so honoured. My grandfather, my father, and my late mother were also awarded an honorary doctorate by Western. And I am very pleased to say, as mentioned by Minister Matthews, that my father is here with us today.
Obviously I have not earned this honour entirely on my own. I’ve also been blessed with accomplished forefathers and mothers who have built a great family name and legacy at Western.
It’s also wonderful to be able to share today with, and address, the Ivey class of 2013. My grandfather was the business school’s first advisory board chair and led the campaign for its first building. You, the Class of 2013, will be the last Ivey class to graduate from that claustrophobic, overcrowded labyrinth…I mean…that gracious 55-year-old building over there.
You should feel honoured. The successful business and community leaders that have preceded you in those hallways have contributed enormously to Canada’s stable and prosperous economy and democracy.
The Dean announced a week ago today that the business school has successfully raised $206 million through its “Campaign for Leadership,” likely the largest faculty fundraising campaign in Canadian university history. Congratulations to you Carol, to your team, and to the many volunteers from Ivey’s Advisory Board and its alumni.
As part of that campaign, $110 million is being invested in a brand new facility just across Western Road. The building will be a spectacular new home for the future graduates of the best business school in Canada and one of the great schools in the world. My dad and our family very much look forward to the official opening of the new campus in September. And we take much joy and pride from our long association with the business school.
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In order to get into and graduate from Ivey these days, you must be very smart, likely well-parented and mature for your age, perhaps driven, and just maybe motivated by wealth and power or a desire to improve the world through capitalism. Whatever the attributes are that you brought to Ivey, today you should take great pride in your accomplishments.
In the old days, Ivey was perhaps a little less intense. My three clearest memories from business school are as follows:
One. My peer-reviewed group project where our start-up company assumed, without authorization to do so, the legalization of marijuana. Our faculty advisor resigned immediately, but we forged on and launched the first commercial marijuana cigarette brand…Weedies…to our class and finished second out of nine groups. Thank God for peer review.
Two. Seeing a documentary film in Room 40 which ripped President Richard Nixon to shreds; and
Three. Breaking my glasses the day grad photos were taken and having to wear sunglasses for the photos, to my mother’s everlasting shame.
Hopefully these quite shallow admissions won’t deter you from continuing to listen.
You have studied business management and leadership from some of the greatest teachers in the world. You can’t wait to start your job and begin your ascent through the corporate ranks or launch a start-up in anticipation of selling out to Google in two years. You are well-positioned and on the fast track to success…Or so it seems.
Like all convocation speakers, I’ve got some advice. The fact that I’m a baby-boomer who came of age in the late ’60s, who firmly believed his generation was going to fix the world’s problems and who now admits we failed, will hopefully not negate your willingness to consider my counsel because it really is quite simple…Do not devote your life to just business.
There is increasingly important academic evidence that one’s life-long happiness or sense of well-being does not continue to increase as your income and wealth increase. Family, community, and a supportive society are far more important drivers of life satisfaction.
As your life picks up speed, and it will soon, it is admittedly complex to manage a career, a partner, and friends and family. But you are quick studies so doing even more should be a piece of cake.
My recommendation is that you consider a parallel career as a volunteer. Many, if not most, of you will have already sampled or actively engaged in the world of voluntarism…Which is great. I hope to persuade you to aspire to make it a determined, life-long journey.
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I’ve been active in one charity since I was 24 and at least two or three charities at all times since I was 30. Today, my volunteering probably adds up to half to two-thirds of each working week, and annually, a week or two of travel, 20-30 evenings and a weekend or two…I can do this because I am now effectively self-employed and I am comfortable financially speaking.
There is no question that genes, familial examples and expectations, and a sense of obligation contributed enormously to my initial engagement in voluntarism.
But those factors were only triggers. I now choose to spend my time this way versus playing more golf…because it gives me great enjoyment and enriches my life. You could say my serial volunteer work has developed into a passion.
You may be saying to yourself – he’s rich, he can afford to spend the time doing this…why should I see less of my friends and family, etc. etc.
So let me now spend a few minutes trying to underline the merits of this kind of approach to life, regardless of your circumstances, by elaborating on why you too should get more engaged in the voluntary sector.
First and foremost, the learning opportunities are vast. It is estimated that the entirety of human knowledge doubled every century until 1900. Today it’s doubling every year, and by 2020, it will be doubling every month or two. It’s getting tough to keep up!
Whether your interests are learning more about climate change, reducing poverty, quantum computing or improving Canadian innovation, there are charitable vehicles that can broaden and deepen your knowledge.
Volunteering provides a tremendous practical education as well…The do’s and don’ts of chairing a committee or board for example. Having served under many chairs good and bad, I’ve learned a lot about the art and science of chairing a meeting.
The practical learning from volunteering inevitably extends deeply into the strategic, financial and human resources realms as well…helping to craft a charity’s strategy, dealing with deficit challenges, or serving on the selection committee for a new executive director, inevitably educates even the most sophisticated business person.
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In addition to learning, community involvement will also serve as a tremendous networking opportunity. Through my volunteering, I’ve worked with and come to know an incredible mix of smart passionate people that I never would have met otherwise.
An interesting side of the networking experience is fundraising, a task I did not take to right away. But through memorable failures and successes over time, I have come to love it.
Fundraising is a great way to get to know people better. And targets are usually business people. Watching them squirm or engage is extremely enlightening. You get a completely different measure of people. I’ve made asks for millions over the last few years…And I look forward to doing many more!
Another really rewarding aspect of networking has been the joy of learning to mentor or be mentored.
Two students from Western I volunteered with in the mid ’80s through an on-campus charity called AIESEC have become friends and very successful – as head of a major charity and a venture capital firm respectively.
Additionally, as a result of networking in my volunteer life, I’ve made venture capital investments, I’ve arranged for job interviews for friends and I have even furthered my principal business interests.
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Of course, it’s not just the learning and the networking. It feels good to contribute to your community, even at the governance (vs. Grassroots) level.
In the organizations with great staff, the tremendous appreciation by them of volunteers manifests itself daily. Whether for the time put in, the expertise brought to the table, simple insights, being a sounding board, raising some money, or recruiting another volunteer. The appreciation is usually only a simply gesture or a few words but the great staffers know how to make it truly meaningful.
And when the causes are important, and outcomes and impact are attained, working to achieve the goals of organizations can be enormously satisfying. It’s nice to go to bed at night knowing that you have made the world a better place in some small way.
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My next to last reason to engage in the volunteer sector will seem distant to you now. It is retirement planning. Many busy business people do not adjust well after retiring at age 65 or thereabouts even if they golf or garden…Active volunteer interests over the years go a long way to assist in the transition to a happy and fulfilling retirement from business.
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The fifth and final reason to get involved in volunteer work is that you owe it…to your families, your community, your country and your planet. You might be very surprised to learn that a salary of just $40,000 annually puts you in the top one per cent of people on this planet. Needless to say, most of you are probably earning a lot more than that already, or will be very soon.
Think about that. You are all blessed and privileged relative to a vast majority of the people on this planet! And I don’t have to tell you that the world is in pretty lousy shape right now – conflict, poverty, environmental degradation, disease, terrorism – you name the problem and it is prevalent.
As you’ve probably noticed, governments and business are not solving the problems. So it’s up to each and every one of us, in our own way, to pitch in and make the world a better place in some way. You are really intelligent, goal-oriented, leaders in waiting…If one person can make a difference, just imagine the potential impact of the entire Ivey Class of 2013.
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I spent five hours engaged in meetings of each of MaRS and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, or CIFAR, last week. MaRS is a non-profit incubator and accelerator for growth businesses in the burgeoning knowledge economy. CIFAR is a unique global research institute based in Toronto which is tackling some of the most complex problems we and our world face.
I walked out of both meetings beaming. These are fascinating organizations with important missions to me, extraordinarily smart and passionate Canadian leadership and bright futures.
Whether you think you might want to help immigrants settle in Canada, or cure breast cancer or clean up a local river, start thinking about and searching for your first MaRS or CIFAR tomorrow. When you find it, dig in and get engaged. You will learn lots, meet fascinating different people and help your community and society at large.
And I can promise you that if you make it a lifelong journey, your career, your family life and your overall sense of well-being will be substantially enhanced.
Thank you.
Congratulations to each and every one of you.
And good luck.
