Month: May 2024

Originally published in Qualcomm’s 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report

We work to have a sustainable supply chain management program that emphasizes product quality while minimizing risk and improving overall sustainability. Our due diligence strategy focuses on making appropriate supplier selections, assessing for risk, conducting comprehensive onboarding and monitoring adherence to our Supplier Code of Conduct.

We want our products to be distinguished not only by their capabilities but also by the responsible way in which we design and produce them. Because we primarily employ a fabless production model, we rely on suppliers to perform the manufacturing of our integrated circuit products. We regularly work with the primary semiconductor foundries and assembly suppliers that manufacture our products to assess risks and monitor conformance to our Supplier Code of Conduct.

We expect our suppliers to uphold the same corporate responsibility standards as ours, including respect for human rights, responsible sourcing of minerals, reducing emissions and minimizing use of resources such as water and energy.

As a Full Member of the RBA, we require suppliers to adopt either the RBA Code of Conduct or a similar code. By leveraging RBA tools and resources in our supply chain management program, we can focus on driving our suppliers to conform to high standards in relation to labor issues, health and safety, the environment, ethics and management systems.

The RBA Code of Conduct, which serves as our Supplier Code of Conduct, and The Qualcomm Way: Our Code of Business Conduct, are the cornerstones of our commitment to the RBA and responsible supply chain management.

Understanding risks and enabling supply chain sustainability is a key part of acting responsibly. As part of our risk-based approach, we require our primary semiconductor manufacturing suppliers to complete the RBA Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) annually. The SAQ is a risk-assessment tool that enables companies to evaluate specific supply chain risk in areas such as labor, health and safety, environment and ethics. The SAQ results from our suppliers have indicated that 100 percent of our primary semiconductor manufacturing suppliers all have low-risk manufacturing facilities according to the SAQ ratings.

Regularly assessing and monitoring suppliers for compliance with the Supplier Code of Conduct allows us to minimize potential harm to individuals, communities and the environment, as well as create more resilient supply chains. In addition to completing the SAQ, our direct suppliers are subject to RBA VAP audits and/ or customer managed audits. We also conduct sustainability audits of selected non-primary manufacturing suppliers and suppliers that are new to our supply chain for conformance to our corporate responsibility requirements.

RBA VAP audits are conducted by our supply chain management team and include RBA Lead Auditor trained personnel who conduct on-site audits of selected suppliers for their adherence to our Supplier Code of Conduct and other corporate responsibility requirements, including product environmental governance and conflict minerals. For more on our audit program, see Human Rights.

Over the last two years, RBA VAP audits of our direct primary manufacturing suppliers discovered 62 non-compliance findings, of which 19 were minor, 40 were major and three were priority instances of non-compliance. Corrective action plans and closure audits are put in place to resolve non-compliance as part of the RBA VAP audit process.

We have a 2025 goal of ensuring 100 percent of our primary semiconductor manufacturing suppliers are audited at least every two years. As of 2023, 88 percent of them are receiving biennial audits.

Learn more about how Qualcomm is driving innovation, societal advancement and sustainability in the 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report

Originally published in GoDaddy’s 2023 Sustainability Report

Customer Experience

We deliver top-tier personalized support.

At every stage of an entrepreneur’s journey, we deliver leading technology and personalized support. Offering this experience enables us to foster deep relationships with our customers as we encourage entrepreneurs to realize chances taken, risks rewarded, and potential fulfilled. We know that every entrepreneur’s story is different, and that’s why we offer customized support — whether that’s thinking about business names, creating a compelling brand, building a website that draws in customers, spreading awareness, harnessing and leveraging analytics, or growing through sales.

We strive to not only satisfy but exceed our customers’ expectations and to enable our customers to realize the full value of the products and services we offer. We uphold our commitment to excellent customer service through our dedicated GoDaddy Guides, our customer support programs, and resources. These efforts deliver the right products and services at first contact, drive value, exceed expectations, foster accessibility, and support customers in ways that best fit their unique needs.

21 Million: GoDaddy had 21 million customers in 2023.

Awards and Honors

2023 Stevie Bronze Award 
Customer Service Team of the Year2023 Stevie Gold Award 
Sales and Customer Service2023 Forbes Advisor 
10 Best Website Builder for Service Providers

GoDaddy Guides

Our GoDaddy Guides are more than customer service representatives — they’re champions, experts, sounding boards, partners, and cheerleaders. Every Guide is trained and eager to ‘wow’ our customers with an outstanding experience, whether helping with a password reset or building an entrepreneur’s complete web presence.

While our Guides handle millions of conversations per year, each interaction with a Guide is characterized by real, human interaction. Through a collection of managed service offerings, our Guides apply their deep expertise and personal knowledge to help our customers in a way that’s right for them. Our Guides are located globally and provide inregion support in several local languages. GoDaddy Guides work hard to meet the customer where they are, either through personalized service or easy-to-understand self-help tools that guide our customers through the answers to their most-asked questions.

Customer Conversations and Support 

We work diligently to uphold our reputation for outstanding customer service. Our level of care for every stage of an entrepreneur’s journey is a major reason we stand out from our competitors. GoDaddy customers can choose their preferred guidance channel, including phone and text channels like webchat, WhatsApp, WeChat, SMS, and Google Chat Suggest, among others.

We learn from customer conversations to understand and improve how we show up for our customers. This commitment to continuous improvement is reflected in our customer feedback. In 2023, we achieved a Trustpilot score of 4.7 out of 5.0. Because of our dedication, our customers choose to stay with us.

Expert Guidance 

While conversations with our GoDaddy Guides are an essential component of our customer service offerings, we also share information as thought leaders and industry experts through a wide variety of on-demand tutorials and resources. These resources are available to entrepreneurs when and where they need them. Timely, practical, and actionable information can be found on GoDaddy Resources, where all entrepreneurs (not just customers) can browse by topic or product. On third-party sites like YouTube, we host tutorials that cover the most upto-date, in-demand topics that shepherd entrepreneurs along every stage of their journeys, from starting to growing their businesses.

8.5 Million: We engaged customers through more than 8.5 million inbound voice conversations and almost 5 million texts and messages in 2023.

We want to give our customers a voice to name problems and get fast solutions. That’s why we created our Voice It program. Through Voice It, GoDaddy Guides collaborate internally with our Care Product Team to address customer pain points and develop and share solutions to benefit our wider customer base.

Ambitions for 2024 

We always aim to elevate our level of care — at every stage, for every entrepreneur and for every unique need. In 2024, we’ll continue to enhance the efficiency of our customer engagements — whether in our services or ecommerce offerings — and leverage responsible use of GenAI platforms and other technological innovations.

To learn more, read our 2023 Sustainability Report.

###

About this Report 

The GoDaddy 2023 Sustainability Report details our progress toward our corporate sustainability goals, strategies, and initiatives in support of our overarching corporate mission and values. Unless otherwise noted, this report reflects our corporate sustainability performance across our global operations covering the fiscal year period from January 1 to December 31, 2023. To demonstrate our commitment to transparent communication regarding our sustainability progress, we routinely share updates through our website and our annual Sustainability Report. We welcome your questions, comments, and feedback on this report by contacting ESG@GoDaddy.com.

This report references the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards and includes select Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) metrics for the Internet Media and Services sector. We also disclose our contributions and progress toward priority UN SDGs. For additional information on how we align with these frameworks and key indicators demonstrating our sustainability performance, please review the Frameworks and Metrics section.

Originally published on Bristol Myers Squibb News & Perspectives

Globally, communities are struggling to support growing healthcare needs. This is especially true in regions with limited financial resources, collectively known as low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Although LMIC populations have grown nearly four times faster than those of other nations, many LMICs are not able to facilitate consistent access to high-quality care and treatments.

This contributes to pervasive health inequities. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates more than three-quarters of global deaths due to non-communicable diseases – like cancer or heart disease – occur in LMICs. And the life expectancy of a person living in a low-income country is 18 years shorter than that of someone living in a high-income country.

The imbalance in healthcare access is just one of the systemic barriers faced by the world’s most vulnerable populations, where worse health outcomes and lack of economic opportunities keep individuals and entire communities from achieving their full potential.

At BMS, our vision to transform patients’ lives through science extends to all patients. That is why we have a long-standing commitment to promote health equity and help people in underserved communities access the care and medicines they need.

We built on this commitment with a 10-year strategy to help patients in LMICs live healthier lives, called ASPIRE, which stands for Accessibility, Sustainability, Patient-centric, Impact, Responsibility and Equity. ASPIRE will help us achieve our goal to reach more than 208,000 patients in LMICs by 2033. The effort reflects our unwavering focus on operating responsibly and sustainably.

BMS is leading the way for access to immuno-oncology therapies in LMICs by collaborating with the Access to Oncology Medicines (ATOM) Coalition. BMS joined the ATOM Coalition as a founding supporter at its launch in 2022. Working with the ATOM Coalition and their partners, BMS will make Opdivo™ (nivolumab) available via a safe, scalable and sustainable access model in select countries including Pakistan, Rwanda and Zambia while working to develop an integrated pathway that can expand access in multiple LMICs by 2026.

By investing in solutions that reduce quality-of-care gaps and strengthen health systems, BMS will help drive equitable access to innovative medicines to patients around the world, regardless of where patients live. Enabling timely access to innovative medicines in LMICs is part of BMS’ commitment to health equity globally and our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy. 

To learn more, read our press release.

About Bristol Myers Squibb

Bristol Myers Squibb is a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases. As global citizens, we work sustainably and responsibly to create a positive impact in the communities where we live and work.

Originally published on DICK’S Sporting Goods Sideline Report

Today we’re bringing you the latest quarterly giving series from The DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation to highlight the great work being done in support of our mission to help inspire and enable youth sports participation.

In our first quarter of 2024, we:

Celebrated the 10-year anniversary of our Sports Matter Program with a new grant initiative.Surprised 20 organizations in Boston and Pittsburgh with $10,000 grants at our House of Sport grand openings.Partnered with some major Hollywood star power to donate $300,000 in grants to organizations across the country.

10 Years of Sports Matter

In April, The DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation marked the 10-year anniversary of its Sports Matter Program. For the past decade, The DICK’S Foundation has committed over $100 million to support more than two million youth athletes with equipment, registration fees, league costs and playing fields. Check out the video above for a trip down memory lane!

To celebrate 10 years of changing lives through sport, The DICK’S Foundation announced a new $2 million grant initiative to empower even more young athletes to pursue their passions!

The initiative kicked off during the grand openings of House of Sport in Pittsburgh and Boston. Ten organizations or schools in both cities were awarded a $10,000 grant each.

Sports Matter X DICKS.com

In February, DICK’S Sporting Goods launched its Click on DICKS.com campaign directed by screenwriter and actress Lake Bell and starring actors Will Arnett and Kathryn Hahn. As part of the campaign, The DICK’S Foundation provided the Hollywood stars with $300,000 worth of Sports Matter Grants to go towards deserving youth sports organizations of their choosing. Beat the Streets Cleveland received $100,000 to renovate their new building with a classroom and tutoring space, alongside the gym. Other grantees included Girls Play LA, New Haven Soccer Club, Angel City Sports, KEEN LA, Stride Adaptive Sports, and Peace Players.

A Sports Matter Night in Pittsburgh

On Jan. 27, we painted PPG Paints Arena green for The DICK’S Foundation’s annual Pittsburgh Penguins Sports Matter game. Teammates from our top three POS conversion stores for holiday – Store 3216 in Naples, FL; Store 224 in Pittsfield, MA; and Store 782 in Horseheads, NY – joined us for the fun.

We raised over $30,000 for our Sports Matter Program.

During the first intermission of the game, we also awarded a $25,000 Sports Matter Grant for the girls’ division of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Hockey League.

These moments are made possible by contributions to the sports matter fund. If you’d like to donate, visit www.sportsmatter.org.

Mastercard

PURCHASE, N.Y., May 28, 2024 /3BL/ – Mastercard and the African Development Bank Group today launched the Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy (MADE) Alliance: Africa to extend digital access to critical services to 100 million individuals and businesses in Africa over the next 10 years. The announcement was made on the sidelines of the U.S.-Africa Business Forum hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Alliance will initially focus on supporting the agricultural sector and women. Among the first efforts will be a pilot program launching this year to support three million farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria by working with local banks to provide digital identities and access to high-quality seeds and agricultural inputs. The Alliance intends to expand to Uganda, Ethiopia, Ghana and the rest of the continent.

“Mastercard’s work leading the new MADE Alliance: Africa aims to provide 100 million people greater digital access to critical services,” said Michael Miebach, CEO of Mastercard. “Across Africa, people are driving new growth and opportunity, and Mastercard wants to support their success. This Alliance builds on the innovations and investments we are already making with partners in 45 countries to enhance Africa’s digital infrastructure and accelerate inclusive growth.”

As co-chairs, the African Development Bank Group will invest $300 million to support Alliance programs, providing funding for digital infrastructure and incentivizing ecosystem actors to enhance digital access, and Mastercard will register 15 million users in Africa onto its Community Pass platform within five years, with interoperable digital infrastructure to facilitate involvement from a range of ecosystem participants. Launched in 2020, Community Pass is a social enterprise at Mastercard that digitizes and connects remote, underserved communities to governments, NGOs and the private sector for access to critical services.

“The African Development Bank Group believes that digitalization via Mastercard Community Pass can play a vital role in increasing the adoption of agricultural technologies to help feed Africa, as well as improve incomes of millions of African smallholder farmers. Joining the Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy Alliance: Africa will amplify and multiply the impact of the Bank’s investments to build sustainable, climate-smart food systems across the continent. We applaud U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ commitment to financial and digital inclusion in Africa,” said African Development Bank Group President Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina.

To enable more people to join the digital economy, an ecosystem of public and private sector partners is critical. The Alliance matches partners’ complementary strengths in key geographies to promote sustainable digital access. Together, the partners will deliver connectivity, skilling, employment and digital access to financial and other critical services.

More than half a dozen organizations have committed to participate in the MADE Alliance: Africa at launch, including Equity Bank, Microsoft, Heifer International, Unconnected.org and Syngenta Foundation. The African Development Bank Group and Mastercard will serve as initial co-chairs of the effort.

The efforts of the MADE Alliance: Africa will support the U.S. Digital Transformation with Africa Initiative (DTA) and the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (DTS). It also ties into other business objectives announced this year focused on Africa, including:

A memorandum of agreement with the International Trade Administration, a bureau within the U.S. Department of Commerce, to advance digital access and inclusion in Africa based on a mutual interest to support the aims of the U.S. Government’s Digital Transformation with Africa initiative and MADE Alliance: Africa. This collaboration builds on Mastercard hosting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo during AmCham in Nairobi in April for a “Digital Showcase” on best practices and lessons learned for building and scaling digital solutions across the continent of Africa.EdTech Africa, a new partnership between the Government of Kenya, Kenyan President Ruto and the U.S., which builds on Mastercard’s existing multi-million-dollar investments with the Atlanta University Consortium (AUC) Data Science Initiative and Howard University’s Center for Applied Data Science & Analytics Initiative. This effort cultivates educational exchanges between Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and African scholars in the ever-evolving landscape of emerging technology and is an example of innovation, talent empowerment and cross-cultural connectivity across the African diaspora, poised to drive forward education and technology for young leaders of Africa and America.A new partnership involving Mastercard Community Pass, the Co-operative Bank of Kenya, the Shell Foundation, and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office that gives smallholder farmers access to a digital marketplace and enables affordable credit to buy clean energy tools that support farmers’ incomes, such as solar-powered irrigation pumps. First announced in January, the effort aligns to Mastercard’s involvement with two USAID initiatives: the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE) and the Women in the Digital Economy Fund (WiDEF).

Bringing together public and private sector leaders will create and enhance accessible, affordable and trusted technology and digital tools that are scalable, enabling more people to join the digital economy.

Media Contacts

Jessica Jeng-Mitchell, Mastercard

Jessica.Jeng-Mitchell@mastercard.com

About Mastercard (NYSE: MA)

Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses realize their greatest potential. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.

www.mastercard.com

Originally published by Mastercard

Follow along Mastercard’s journey to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere.

Originally published on Built From Scratch

Morris Brown College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, Georgia, has experienced its share of setbacks and challenges over the years. From almost closing in 2012 to graduating its largest class in 20 years this month, the institution has proven to be resilient.

In support of this historic comeback, The Home Depot’s Retool Your School program is helping to transform spaces on campus. President Kevin James shares how their story of growth and resurgence wouldn’t be possible without the community’s support.

Established in 2009, Retool Your School has invested more than $12 million in financial support, providing HBCUs with needs-based grants for campus renovations. For a look at this year’s Retool Your School winners, visit RetoolYourSchool.com.

Keep up with all the latest Home Depot news! Subscribe to our bi-weekly news update and get the top Built from Scratch stories delivered straight to your inbox.

Watch the full commencement speech here.

It was an absolute honor to be back at my alma mater to address the MBA Class of 2024 at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Delivering this commencement speech felt like a full-circle moment, not just for me, but as a celebration of the amazing journeys these future leaders are about to embark on.

As I stood before them, I thought about the sheer amount of anticipation, discovery and possibility that awaits each graduate. It gave me the unique opportunity to help connect the dots between everything they learned at Wharton and the lessons that can only come from just diving into the experiences that life brings.

Here’s what I shared:

Thank you for the great introduction, Dean James. Members of the faculty, families and supporters, and especially, to the graduates of 2024, thank you for inviting me to share this moment with you.

In a way, I come to you today from the future. As a Wharton grad who has been away from school for well over 30 years, I can represent in at least a couple of respects, a voice from your own future. And so with that perspective, I decided to title my talk today, “Things They Probably Forgot to Teach You in Business School.” Now, I know I do so at some risk, as I’m standing here in front of the dean and faculty and graduates of the greatest business school on earth, but what the heck, here goes. In all seriousness, these are FOUR things I wish I had appreciated when I was leaving this incredible place.

I’ll start with a simple one. Take a chance on yourself. No really — Go At Risk. It might sound obvious, but if you want others to take a chance on you, you have to go first.

They teach us management here at Wharton, and they do it better than anyone — but the first fallacy of management is the name. Managers aren’t here to manage things. Managers, at our best, are here to change things. Wharton grads are here to change trajectories. And in order to do that, you have to be willing to take a leap.

Think about it. Without people being willing to step up and step out, an organization will keep running, but it won’t keep getting better. For most organizations, just maintaining the status quo, or repeating last year’s then-successful results, would be considered a fail this year. Organizations are expected to successfully grow — and leaders are therefore here to bend the curve, not just manage it.

That is certainly the main lesson I’ve drawn from 12 years in leadership at T-Mobile. To me it is SO important to make sure that at T-Mobile, we are never satisfied with the status quo. This idea is codified in one of our five core values in our culture, and we call it “We Won’t Stop.” In the last 12 years, we’ve gone from a $6 billion market cap to $195 billion, and become the world’s most valuable telecommunications company of any kind, by doing one thing: constantly striving. Relentlessly finding new ways to grow, finding ways to be able to afford to do more for customers, to put them first, and to change the rules in their favor. To do that, we’ve had to step it up, and change some trajectories in our business, time and time again.

And listen, there’s only one way to do that. Take some smart risks — with your business, and therefore with yourself. Take your shot. Speak up. Raise your hand. Be the one who, day in and day out, jumps into the big, hard project, or blazes a new trail. When people see you taking a chance on yourself, an amazing thing will happen. They’ll begin to invest in you, too. It’s a simple formula: Take a chance on yourself, and inspire someone to take a chance on you.

Now, a quick caveat. If you talk to successful people my age, thriving at the top of their fields, whether in business or Hollywood or just about anywhere, most will tell you with some humility that LUCK played a big role in getting us here. Just plain luck. It’s true. But by stepping out, taking smart risks, not accepting the status quo, you can maximize your chances of being lucky. It often comes in the form of someone else being willing to take a chance on us, to give us an opportunity we wouldn’t have had otherwise. That comes from relationships. Take a chance on yourself, and find someone who will take a chance on you.

And that leads me to my second thought for you. If in doubt, reach out. Actively foster these relationships and connections you’ve made at Wharton and throughout life. Actively foster them. And no, “liking” somebody’s social media post doesn’t count.

It’s well known that business school is partly, and some would say perhaps even mostly, about the relationships that we make. But only YOU can determine the value of those relationships in your life, by actively fostering them.

The greatest highlight from my time here walked into my life on move-in day, first year. Suzanne and I became inseparable from that point on, and now we have been married more than 30 years! She’s the single best thing that ever happened to me, and she’s here with me today.

So, I can attest — the relationships you started here are important. It’s not too late to turn even casual acquaintances from your time here into lifelong friendships and relationships that matter. And I’m here, from the future, to tell you that this one thing will matter to you more and more as you go on.

I recently spent a fantastic weekend with four roommates and friends from my time here. We had a wonderful time, filled with meaningful conversations about the things that men our age experience, and about our time together back in school, and a lot more. And you know what, it was actually the first time all five of us were together for a non-wedding weekend since the day we left here, over 30 years ago. What a shame that is. I let long gaps in time emerge in these relationships, and I shouldn’t have. I would think about these guys often, but I didn’t usually reach out when I did. I always wondered if it would seem random, or even a bother. Daniel Pink, in his fantastic book “The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward,” points out repeatedly that most of the regrets people experience later in life are regrets of omission. It turns out that we regret the actions we didn’t take, more than the actions we did. And that goes to building relationships more than anything. If in doubt, reach out. …

The third thing they might have forgotten to teach you: Stoke your successes, instead of fighting your fires. In life and in business, pay less attention to trying to solve what’s not working, and more attention amplifying what is. Double down on the things that are working. Stoke your successes.

When it comes to career advice, for me, the phrase “follow your passions” puts a little too much pressure on younger people to know what their passion is. An easier hack is to figure out what’s working in your life, and do more of that. Something you find you’re good at, where your contributions seem to come naturally. Do more of it. Get help and coaching on those things, not the problem areas. Do even more, and get even better. This is about following your competence. I’ll promise you this: You’ll find yourself enjoying the things that you feel yourself getting better and better at. One of them might even become a passion.

Business is the same way. We’ve all seen those red/green/yellow-light dashboards that companies use to measure progress against goals across projects. But here’s the thing: Most companies are fixated on the red, obsessing over what’s going wrong. I think that’s a big mistake. I’m interested in the red, and solving an obvious problem can be very productive, but I am much more focused on the green — what’s working — and how to replicate and grow that success. It’s far more productive and rewarding to stoke successes than to constantly fight fires!

Rather than getting sucked into what’s broken, great leaders invest more energy making the green projects, well, greener. They focus on building on the team’s strengths and wins. Moving winning projects along faster. Investing more in successful projects. Something interesting then happens: Others across the organization start feeling motivated to replicate elements of the winning project’s success formula, and more wins tend to follow.

Don’t get me wrong … there will always be day-to-day problems we have to solve. But often, the higher ROI option is to zero in on the thing that’s working really well — and invest even more in it! Stoke your successes.

The final thing they might not have taught you here at Wharton? All business basically boils down to storytelling. I’m here to tell you that the essential skill of all business is storytelling. I’m talking about the power of authentic and truthful storytelling to advance your agenda, whatever it is.

Think about it. If you are a hiring manager recruiting a candidate, you are a storyteller. If you are a manager working to motivate your team, you are a storyteller. If you are leading engineers to build a new product, you are a storyteller first. Good finance people can maintain great spreadsheets, but the best finance people can tell the story that those numbers portray. The startups that get funded? They aren’t just the ones with the strongest financial plan — they are the ones with the strongest story. In a negotiation, having leverage is helpful, but successfully using that leverage to your advantage will depend on how you weave the story to bring your counterparty along.

And graduates, I’m sure you’ve learned already, when you are speaking with recruiters or investors about your career, you become the author of your own autobiographical story. It’s a story of where you’ve been, where you might be going, and why. And that “why” — the core motivation of the central character, you — is one of the most important parts of any story, especially yours. YOU have the power to connect with people’s emotions and inspire action, to disarm people with a laugh, and to humanize complex ideas and make them relatable. And you’ll find that these skills will become your most important tools, in business and in life.

In a few minutes, they are going to open those doors and send us all back out in the world, ending your brief two-year time here in the cozy bubble of Wharton. When they do, remember the things they don’t always teach in business school. Step out. Take a chance on yourself, and find someone who will take a chance on you. When in doubt, reach out. You won’t regret it. Commit to fostering these relationships you’ve built here for a lifetime. Stoke your successes. There’s nothing wrong with solving problems, but you’ll maximize your personal ROI by doubling down on the things that are working, in your life and your career. And be a storyteller. It is the essential art of business.

So, when they do open those doors, go out there and write your own story. And graduates, I can’t wait to see where your stories take you!

Congratulations to the Wharton Class of 2024!