I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about remembering things recently. I suppose for a lot of reasons. Time has been acting really funny of late, and I struggle to find myself in it.

I went to see a play in London (Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love) yesterday that had been one of my favorite plays in high school…I’d never seen it performed before, but I had read it many times, and I think I had done a few scenes in class. Or maybe not. I don’t remember that part. Similarly, there were some lines in the play which I felt as though I had read that morning; so clear were they in my mind, I could mouth them along with the actors, despite not having read them in at least 11 years. But yet, some of the very central concepts of the play were a complete surprise to me. Those of you who know the story know that there is one big shock, one big truth on which the entire weight of the play hangs, but watching it performed it was as if I was learning it for the first time. And it was so much realer, so much more relevant than it was in high school. Love lost, forbidden lust which is too strong to ignore, death, and hurt tied up with caring and destiny…all of these things were out of my grasp as a 17 year old, and so perhaps the lines about fingers smelling like pussy, and about drinking tequila or cleaning guns, were all my brain could process to the level of importance that would commit them to memory.

I guess I bring this up because of other things happening which bring the past to the front, in odd, inconsistent ways, with different emphases and different perspectives. What an awful shock were last weeks’ events in Mumbai, Israel, and Beirut. In many ways, they remind one of haunted pasts, but yet so much has happened since the last attack, in the world, but also for me. 15 years ago, or eight years ago, I didn’t have friends in Mumbai, in Pakistan, in Beirut, in Tel Aviv, and in Jerusalem. I didn’t understand what was going
On, I didn’t even know what it meant for someone to be Israeli or Lebanese or Indian…I had never really experienced it, and so, while I read and re-read article referencing the attacks and wars which are being dragged out of the filing cabinets to give perspective to these new horrors.

I guess the blessing of the diversity of our school has an evil corollary, which is that for every global atrocity, the chance of having one of our own affected is magnified dramatically. In a sense we are now all affected; we now longer can pretend that any of these things have nothing to do with us. So I send out my best wishes to all of you, wherever in the world you are, but particularly to those in areas which have been in the news of late, and wish safety and peace to you and those around you.

Here is my graduation speech for the INSEAD class of July 2006, givenn on July 6th, at the Palais de Congres at Versailles, as reguested...if I could add just one line at the end:

YOU FUCKING ROCK!
______

It’s hard to remember what my life was like before INSEAD, but in the months preceding my arrival, I certainly recall many sleepless nights, wondering, worrying, planning, anticipating.

What had I gotten myself into? What lay ahead of me? I was excited, I was nervous...sort of like I am right now actually.

There are many reasons for choosing to do an MBA here, and the INSEAD experience has meant something different to each of us. So while it would be foolish to try to sum up all of our memories in one speech, there is one word that is inescapable in any description of the INSEAD experience, and that is diversity.

There are so many ways to demonstrate the diversity of our class, so many numbers and statistics that we never tire of quoting. We come from over 70 countries, speak over 50 languages (at a level III or better), and count among our ranks opera singers, fighter pilots, dot-com millionaires, rocket scientists, 2 bankers and a consultant. I have also come up with another, more subtle way to illustrate the diversity of our class: I played with some of the names that can be made by taking a surname from one of my classmates, and pairing it with the last name of another. (Feel free to consult your programs and play along) Some of my favorites are Jayant Panda, Christian Israeli, Jesus Judah, and, of course, Vijay Umedkumar Sunyer Carreras-Candi. I could go on…

But I won’t, because more impressive and important to me than the variety of names or backgrounds or languages or jobs or any other classification of the group of people with whom I’ve spent the last 10 months are the people themselves.

My impulse at this point is to just start gushing, because these people are AMAZING! You cannot imagine the wealth of knowledge, compassion, culture, talent, humor, sensitivity, creativity, and even occasional business sense that we have been immersed in at INSEAD.

People critical of MBAs as a degree are fond of saying that you can learn the concepts from a book, and the rest you must learn by working. I’ll allow those people their opinion, but here’s mine:

I could spend the next 10 years of my life reading management books and working, and I wouldn’t come away with anything nearly as valuable as what I’ve gained from my 10 months at INSEAD. Although my degree is an MBA, the knowledge I’ve gained here spans all disciplines, and probably constitutes a few new ones as well.








In what job would an average week include:
• Dining at one of the most beautiful chateaus in Europe, with 10 people from 14 different countries
• Trading finance lessons for camembert and pâté,
• Singing horribly off-key in a private karaoke room
• Playing poker or foosball with 3 people whose names you can’t pronounce
• Heading straight from the library to a costume party at the infamous Le Vieux Moulin on an island in the Loing river,
• Dancing the night away with 150 of your best friends at a beach club on a man-made island
• Grocery shopping in Asian markets for an after-class barbecue, where you and your classmates make plans to visit Borneo, Thailand, Vietnam, and Bali and beyond…

All the while soaking up valuable knowledge and insight from some of the finest student minds and management faculty in the world?

All these activities and the flurry of energy definitely took away my nervousness and my anxiety, but they still didn’t help me get a full night’s sleep…every hour of sleep was an hour spent not doing one of a thousand other seemingly more valuable things.

With all this and more available, it’s no wonder that such an exceptional group of people choose INSEAD as the place to come to change their lives.

But to me, just as important, is that INSEAD students are not only here to change themselves; the people you see around me also want to change the world. Over just this year, in addition to completing a rigorous 10-month MBA and job search, some of the students you see here have
• Started a highly successful program that provides support and incentives for young children in rural Vietnam to stay in school.
• Some have organized fundraisers and clothing drives for the communities that have so generously hosted us during our studies.
• Others have posed almost nude in downtown Fontainebleau to raise money for survivors of Hurricane Katrina….well, it worked.
• Still more traveled to South Africa to investigate sustainable means of relieving developing countries from the grip of crime, poverty, and disease.

So I’ve seen how my classmates behave in the face of stiff deadlines, seemingly overwhelming amounts of work, and in heated debates and discussions, but I’ve also seen how they interact with children orphaned by AIDS, and watched them share their professional knowledge with young students from impoverished backgrounds with dreams of starting companies to help uplift their communities. And I assure you, they do you, us, and everyone else very very proud. I hope we can all carry this spirit of generosity with us as we head back into the world, and continue to look beyond ourselves when deciding how to use the incredible gift this year has been.

OK, an amazing group of people in an amazing place doing amazing things. But that’s not quite the whole story, because none of us got to INSEAD alone, nor did any of us make it through on our own. Whether it was partners, parents, siblings, children, grandparents or other loved ones, none of us would have survived this year without the patient ears, reassuring smiles, warm hugs, or any of the other countless acts of love and support from those closest to us. On top of that, we always had the guidance of a truly stellar faculty, and fabulously dedicated staff, top to bottom. Basically what I’m saying is that we were lucky as hell. I’d like to ask my classmates to stand and join me in giving a round of gracious applause for the people who helped us get here today.

I would also like to extend our gratitude to Gabriel Hawawini for his part in making INSEAD such an amazing place, and wish him the best as he moves on. I welcome to Frank Brown to the school; as one of my classmates said, as an American, it’s nice to finally see my people get some recognition on the international stage. But seriously, I hope you keep in mind that it is precisely because INSEAD is un-American in many ways that it is such a unique and wonderful business school.

Well, here we are. To my friends, I want to say thank you all for this fabulous year, and for the honor of speaking to you today. We all have very bright futures ahead of us, and I hope that the bonds we have formed during our short year together will last a lifetime. While the thought of our separation is a hard one for me to swallow, I eagerly look forward to watching you all head off to take over the world. I can finally sleep through the night, knowing that it will be in such good hands.