Sage Bistro, Vancouver, BC, June 5, 2017
- Thank you, Angela, for the introduction and thank you all for coming out tonight
- Honoured that you, Canada’s future leaders, have chosen to visit UBC today.
- Welcome to UBC and to Sage! Hope you are enjoying your visit to Vancouver and to our beautiful campus.
- Looking forward to a wonderful evening with good food and interesting conversation
- First, I wish to acknowledge that we are gathered today on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people.
- Also wish to thank the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) for sponsoring this event
- I am proud to welcome you to one of the most vibrant and inspirational places of learning and research in the world.
- One hundred years after opening its doors for the first time, UBC now stands among the best three dozen such institutions in the world. We’re in the top 20 if you count public universities alone.
- Our faculty includes pre-eminent scholars and researchers, members of the great academic societies and winners of the Nobel Prize. And our 317,000 graduates excel in practically every field of human endeavor: three, including the incumbent, Justin Trudeau, have been Prime Ministers of Canada; 65 have won Olympic medals.
- The University, which now spans two magnificent campuses in Vancouver and Kelowna, is renowned as a global research centre. Leveraging more than $600 million in annual funding, UBC clinicians and scientists are leading in everything from the effort to eradicate AIDS to combatting the tragedy of fentanyl addiction.
- Our work in sustainability is at the very forefront – even the notion of an environmental footprint was conceived at UBC. And our scholarship in the humanities and social sciences and in the liberal and performing arts is stunning in its breadth and depth.
- These are accomplishments that, as President of UBC, I am proud of, but I cannot take credit for them, just like I can’t take credit for the magnificent location of the campus.
- They are the accomplishments of the previous leaders of this institution, the women and men who studied and taught at UBC and those who guided the institution through its first 100 years of growth. And they are the accomplishments of the current students, faculty and staff of this great institution.
- UBC truly is home to great leaders – and by leaders I don’t mean just individuals who are in charge of subordinates, but people who lead by example, or by inspiration.
- They are the people – whether students, faculty, staff, alumni or supporters – who make me hopeful for the future of UBC – and for the future of Canada.
- Because Canada also requires leadership to guide us in an increasingly turbulent world
- As global turbulence and unrest increases, it is more important than ever that we have energetic, innovative, empathetic leaders
- Leaders who can meet new and emerging challenges and embrace new opportunities
- Leaders who can inspire others to give of their best and to work towards a better future
- Leaders are needed in every field – business, the labour movement, the cultural sector, government, health, education, science, not-for-profit sector
- Leadership cannot be taught, but universities like UBC can help prepare the leaders of tomorrow for the challenges they will face.
- They can create the conditions that can help nurture leadership
- Some of the ways UBC is preparing the leaders of tomorrow include experiential learning, providing students with opportunities to work with leading researchers, exchange programs and study abroad courses, multi-disciplinary studies
- One of the main ways we foster leadership is by bringing students together with inspiring teachers. For though leadership cannot be taught, it can be encouraged through example.
- Many of us can think of an inspiring mentor, teacher, parent or peer whose example brought out the best in us.
- UBC also fosters leadership through continuing studies opportunities. Not only is the world constantly changing, but the rate of that change is accelerating – it is essential for leaders that they continue to educate and reinvent themselves. UBC makes it easy for people to return to campus to learn new skills, lifelong learning
- My own career path shows how you must expect the unexpected
- When I first went to university as a biology student at the University of Chicago, I certainly did not anticipate that 30 years later I would end up the president of the University of British Columbia, or that in between, my career path would take me to Montreal, Baltimore, Boston, London, Atlanta and Cincinnati.
- Your careers as leaders will have their own twists and unexpected detours of course
- I hope those careers will be as fulfilling as mine has been and that you feel as proud of your role as a leader as I do
- The world needs leaders like you. Thank you.