Suzy Welch Urges NYU Stern MBAs to Ditch Networking for Friends

NYU Stern

Transactional networking and the search for a lone savior mentor fail to drive careers, requiring graduates to build authentic friendships and treat every encounter as a source of wisdom.

AI-assisted summary of Professor of Management Practice Suzy Welch | NYU Stern MBA and PhD Convocation, Class of 2024 — original source. Check the original for full context.

Source published: 2026-09-22

Key ideas

Suzy Welch addresses NYU Stern's MBA and PhD Class of 2024, designating them 'the new ones' and delivering three counterintuitive rules to accelerate their professional success. (0:08)
Welch rejects traditional networking as mercenary and transactional, advising graduates instead to focus on genuine friendships that form a resilient career mosaic. (2:30)
Challenging the lone mentor myth, Welch argues that professionals should treat everyone as a mentor and actively extract knowledge from every encounter. (4:28)
Welch highlights an informal field experiment at LAX showing that smiling broadly with your teeth yielded an 87.5% reciprocal smile rate, serving as an open signal of confidence and warmth. (6:10)

Detailed notes

## Background Published on YouTube by NYU Stern on September 22, 2026, this video captures Professor of Management Practice Suzy Welch delivering an address at the NYU Stern MBA and PhD Convocation on May 17, 2024. The official description highlights Welch's roles as a professor and Director of the Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing as she shares departing advice with the graduating Class of 2024.

## TL;DR Drawing on a memorable childhood observation from her son declaring 'we are the new ones,' Professor Suzy Welch presents three contrarian principles to help graduates accelerate their integration into the professional world. She advises abandoning transactional networking in favor of building a rich, resilient mosaic of authentic friendships. She then dismantles the fantasy of finding a single savior mentor, arguing instead that graduates should extract wisdom from everyone around them. Finally, citing a humorous field experiment during an airport layover, Welch urges students to disarm the world by smiling with their teeth, meeting their futures with authentic, defenseless warmth.

## Atmosphere & style The address is lively, conversational, and playfully irreverent, balancing self-deprecating humor with deep affection for the graduating cohort. Welch subverts traditional business school conventions with comedic timing—joking about whether her counterintuitive advice might get her fired—while keeping the audience engaged through direct audience participation. The tone shifts gracefully from humorous, relatable anecdotes to earnest, empowering inspiration, leaving the auditorium feeling seen, energized, and embraced.

## Bulletin - [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=8s) Suzy Welch addresses NYU Stern's MBA and PhD Class of 2024, designating them 'the new ones' and delivering three counterintuitive rules to accelerate their professional success. - [02:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=150s) Welch rejects traditional networking as mercenary and transactional, advising graduates instead to focus on genuine friendships that form a resilient career mosaic. - [04:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=268s) Challenging the lone mentor myth, Welch argues that professionals should treat everyone as a mentor and actively extract knowledge from every encounter. - [06:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=370s) Welch highlights an informal field experiment at LAX showing that smiling broadly with your teeth yielded an 87.5% reciprocal smile rate, serving as an open signal of confidence and warmth.

## Key takeaways - [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=8s) Welch thanks outgoing Dean Raghu Sundaram and credits Ken Langone with opening the door for her to pitch her initial course and join the NYU Stern faculty. - [01:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=72s) Welch shares an anecdote from 30 years ago when her five-year-old son declared to an older woman in a supermarket: 'Well, we are the new ones.' - [02:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=128s) Welch names the graduating Class of 2024 'the new ones' who must claim their place in society through accelerated, counterintuitive approaches. - [02:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=150s) Rule 1 urges graduates not to network, labeling conventional networking as transactional, mercenary, and ineffective. - [03:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=185s) Extraordinarily successful leaders attribute their success to a few good ideas, tremendous luck, and great friends rather than networking. - [03:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=220s) Friendships do not all have to be 'besties'; together they assemble like imperfect individual tiles into a rich and resilient life mosaic. - [04:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=268s) Rule 2 dismisses the romantic myth of finding a single, heroic mentor who swoops in to orchestrate one's career. - [04:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=298s) Professionals should extract wisdom from everyone they meet, recognizing that every individual knows something they do not. - [05:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=315s) Welch explains how she relied on crowdsourced mentorship, learning teaching techniques from Professor Nate Pettit and reevaluating her 80-hour workweeks through student feedback. - [06:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=370s) Rule 3 encourages graduates to smile at everyone with their teeth, signaling warmth, confidence, and complete defenselessness. - [06:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=412s) During a seven-hour flight delay at LAX, Welch tested toothy smiles on passing travelers and observed an 87.5% return rate. - [07:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=455s) Baring your teeth in an open smile proves that you are authentic, eager to learn, and ready to engage without defensive posturing. - [08:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=485s) Welch closes by encouraging graduates to meet the world with goodness and open authenticity so society will gladly make room and welcome them.

## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=8s) Gratitude, Origins, and "The New Ones"

Professor Suzy Welch opens her address by offering heartfelt thanks to NYU Stern Dean Raghu Sundaram, noting the deep honor it has been to work alongside him over the past two years and wishing him godspeed as he prepares to transition to university-wide leadership. She reflects on following Ken Langone on stage, revealing an origin story known to few: her very presence on the NYU faculty began several years earlier when she had an idea for a course. The first person she called was Ken, who offered to get her in a room with Raghu. Extending her gratitude to both Ken and his wife Elaine for their boundless generosity and wisdom, she then turns to the families in attendance, noting that having four children of her own, she has sat in those same seats as an NYU parent. Turning warmly to the graduating MBA and PhD Class of 2024, she greets them with enthusiasm: "Hi! Good to see you all. You know I love you. I am Suzy Welch."

To frame her message, Welch recounts a memory from thirty years earlier when her son Roscoe, who just turned 35, was five years old. At the time, she was raising four children under the age of five and living in what she terms an exhausted, sleep-deprived "zombie phase." While pushing Roscoe through a supermarket and zoning out by the grapefruits, an older woman stepped up beside them. As any parent of a precocious five-year-old fears what unfiltered observation might pop out, Welch watched in horror as Roscoe turned to the woman and asked point-blank, "Are you old?" The woman cheerfully replied that she was, prompting Roscoe to examine her with a gimlet eye before declaring, "Well, we are the new ones." Delivering that line to the auditorium, Welch directly designates the graduates as the modern heirs to that statement: "Class of 2024, you are the new ones!"

- **Origins at NYU:** Welch pitched her initial teaching concept to Ken Langone, who facilitated the meeting with Dean Raghu Sundaram that brought her to Stern. - **Family Ties:** Welch is an NYU parent four times over; her son Roscoe was five when the grapefruit aisle encounter occurred. - **The Core Mandate:** As "the new ones," society must eventually make room for them, but Welch offers three counterintuitive rules to dramatically accelerate that process.

[02:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=150s) Rule 1: Do Not Network—Make Friends Instead

Welch acknowledges that while the world will naturally make room for newcomers over time, graduates do not have the patience to wait passively. Taking advantage of the final moments she has the students "in my clutches as a professor," she lays out her first counterintuitive rule: "Do not, do not network." Acknowledging that this blasphemously defies standard business school dogma—joking, "Sorry, am I fired?"—she argues that networking is inherently mercenary, transactional, and ultimately ineffective.

Instead, Welch urges students to focus entirely on making authentic friends. When extraordinarily successful figures are pressed on the true drivers of their careers, they consistently attribute their rise to three factors: a few good ideas, a tremendous amount of luck, and great friends. Looking across the stage, she calls on Ken Langone to confirm whether friendships paved his path, receiving an immediate affirmation. Welch emphasizes that not everyone needs to become an intimate confidant or "bestie." Instead, she visualizes each friend as an individual tile: no single tile is flawless on its own—just as no graduate is complete in isolation—but when arranged together, they form the intricate, resilient mosaic of a rich life.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: From Networking to Lasting Connection accDescr: Contrasts traditional transactional networking with building a mosaic of genuine friendships. subgraph Transactional["The Conventional Path"] A["Mercenary Networking"] --> B["Superficial Exchanges"] B --> C["Transactional / Ineffective"] end subgraph Mosaic["The Suzy Welch Approach"] D["Make Genuine Friends"] --> E["Diverse Imperfect 'Tiles'"] E --> F["Resilient, Beautiful Career Mosaic"] end ```

[04:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=268s) Rule 2: Ditch the Lone Mentor Myth—Learn from Everyone

Welch moves directly into her second contrarian principle, risking the ire of university leadership once again: do not waste time hunting for an elusive mentor. She dismisses the romantic notion of a single hero galloping in on a stallion to sweep someone up and orchestrate their career as an absolute fantasy that almost never happens. Instead of relying on one savior, professionals should treat every person they encounter as a source of wisdom, recognizing that everyone knows something they do not. The real task is seeking out that latent knowledge and extracting it.

Welch shares that her own career is guided by mentors everywhere. When she arrived at NYU Stern without formal classroom training, the administration sent her to sit in on classes taught by Management Professor Nate Pettit, through which she learned the craft of teaching. Moreover, she credits the students themselves as her most transformative mentors. While acknowledging it might sound "cringey," she explains that their perspectives forced her to confront fundamental assumptions about her life, including challenging her habit of logging 80-hour workweeks. Though that introspection led her to reaffirm that she genuinely loves work—almost as much as she loves her dogs—the students' probing pushed her to consciously choose her commitments rather than drift into them blindly.

- **The Mentor Myth:** No lone individual will swoop in on a stallion to build or rescue someone's career. - **Crowdsourced Mentorship:** Welch learned pedagogy by shadowing Nate Pettit and received perspective shifts directly from her Stern students. - **Self-Interrogation:** Student questions caused Welch to critically evaluate her 80-hour workweeks, ultimately clarifying her deep passion for her profession.

[06:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=370s) Rule 3: Smile with Your Teeth and Embrace Authenticity

Introducing her final insight, Welch humorously bills it as a deep, profound, philosophical concept that "maybe the PhDs will sort of dig this one more than the MBAs." The grand rule: smile at everyone with your teeth. To prove she is serious, she demonstrates the wide, toothy grin on stage and commands the audience to turn to their neighbors and do the exact same thing right then and there.

Welch insists this is grounded in empirical field research. While enduring a grueling seven-hour Delta Air Lines delay at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), she decided to behave like a true professor and run an experiment. Walking through the terminal, she beamed broadly with her teeth at passersby and discovered that an astonishing 87.5% of travelers smiled back with their teeth. She joked that she desperately wished she had merchandise to sell given the conversion rate. On a deeper level, she explains that baring your teeth in an unguarded smile communicates confidence, warmth, and complete defenselessness: it signals that you are one of the "new ones," eager to engage, ready to make friends, open to learning from everyone, and unafraid to show your authentic self.

Welch concludes by looking at the graduates crossing the threshold into the post-academic world. As society sizes up whether the Class of 2024 truly belongs, she charges them to prove it not through defensive posturing, but through friendship, eager curiosity, and radiant goodness. When they meet the world with an open, authentic toothy smile, the world will readily step aside, look back at them with love, and say: "Welcome."

## Notable quotes > [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=8s) Hi! Good to see you all. You know I love you. I am Suzy Welch. — Suzy Welch

> [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=8s) Are you old? — Roscoe Welch

> [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=8s) Well, we are the new ones. — Roscoe Welch

> [00:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=8s) Class of 2024, you are the new ones! — Suzy Welch

> [02:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=150s) Do not, do not network. — Suzy Welch

> [02:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=150s) Sorry, am I fired? — Suzy Welch

> [06:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw&t=370s) Welcome. — Suzy Welch

## Mentioned Suzy Welch, Raghu Sundaram, Ken Langone, Elaine Langone, Roscoe Welch, Nate Pettit, Delta Air Lines, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), NYU Stern School of Business

## Video description Suzy Welch, NYU Stern Professor of Management Practice and Director, Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing, addresses Stern's MBA and PhD Class of 2024 on Friday, May 17, 2024. See additional features here: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/graduation/archive

[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FAVD0cuGw)

中文简报

苏西·韦尔奇敦促纽约大学斯特恩商学院MBA毕业生放弃功利性人脉，转而结交真正的朋友功利性社交以及寻找单一救星导师的做法无法推动职业发展，毕业生需要建立真诚的友谊，并将每一次相遇都视为智慧的源泉。苏西·韦尔奇（Suzy Welch）教授借鉴其儿子童年时关于“我们是新人”的难忘观察，提出了三条反常识原则，以帮助毕业生更快融入职场。她建议放弃功利性的社交人脉，转而构建由真诚友谊组成的丰富且有韧性的关系网络。随后，她打破了寻找单一救星导师的幻想，主张毕业生应当从身边的每个人身上汲取智慧。最后，韦尔奇引用在机场中转期间进行的一项趣味现场实验，敦促学生们通过露齿微笑来卸下世界的防备，以真诚、毫无防备的温暖迎接未来。苏西·韦尔奇面向纽约大学斯特恩商学院2024届MBA和博士毕业生发表演讲，称他们为“新人”，并提出了三条旨在加速他们职业成功的反常识法则。 (0:08) 韦尔奇摒弃了传统社交，认为其充斥着唯利是图和交易性质，建议毕业生专注于建立能够构成韧性职业生涯网络的真挚友谊。 (2:30) 韦尔奇对单一导师的神话提出质疑，主张职场人士应将每个人都视为导师，并积极从每一次相遇中汲取知识。 (4:28) 韦尔奇着重提到在洛杉矶国际机场进行的一项非正式实地实验，该实验表明展现露齿的大大微笑获得了87.5%的微笑回应率，这成为传递自信与温暖的开放信号。 (6:10)

Reading summary

Addressing the NYU Stern Class of 2024, Professor of Management Practice Suzy Welch argues that emerging graduates can accelerate their professional ascent by casting aside conventional business dogmas in favor of genuine friendships, crowdsourced mentorship, and unguarded authenticity. Inheriting the World as 'The New Ones' (0:08) Welch framed the Class of 2024 around an encounter from thirty years earlier when her five-year-old son bluntly told an older shopper in a grocery aisle, 'We are the new ones.' Extending that identity to the graduating MBA and PhD classes, Welch noted that while society will eventually make room for newcomers, ambitious graduates lack the patience to wait passively for that transition to unfold naturally. Reflecting on her own transition to academia—facilitated by outreach to Ken Langone that secured a meeting with Dean Raghu Sundaram—Welch maintained that generational handoffs are propelled by deliberate human relationships. Rather than relying on patience alone, she proposed three contrarian habits to dramatically accelerate the graduates' integration into their fields. Replacing Transactional Networking with Lasting Friendships (2:30) Welch urged graduates to discard professional networking altogether, arguing that the practice is mercenary, transactional, and fundamentally ineffective. Drawing verbal confirmation from Langone on stage, she asserted that extraordinary careers are built primarily on a combination of a few good ideas, considerable luck, and deep friendships rather than curated contacts. Rather than seeking ideal companions, Welch described a network of friends as an architectural mosaic. In her framing, individual friends are imperfect tiles, but when arranged together alongside one's own flaws, they create a resilient, enduring foundation that supports both professional momentum and personal well-being. Dismantling the Myth of the Singular Mentor (4:28) Welch challenged the common business school aspiration of finding a single, career-defining mentor, dismissing the idea of an executive savior arriving on horseback as a destructive fantasy. Instead, she urged graduates to extract wisdom continuously from everyone they meet, operating on the premise that every person possesses domain-specific knowledge or perspectives worth discovering. Sharing personal examples, Welch recounted learning classroom pedagogy directly by observing NYU Stern Management Professor Nate Pettit, while also crediting her own students as transformative mentors. She noted that student questions forced her to re-examine her habitual 80-hour workweeks, prompting deep self-interrogation that ultimately led her to consciously reaffirm and clarify her passion for work. Projecting Radical Defenselessness Through Unreserved Warmth (6:10) For her final rule, Welch instructed graduates to embrace the practice of smiling openly at others with their teeth. She grounded this directive in an informal experiment conducted during a seven-hour flight delay at Los Angeles International Airport, where she found that smiling broadly with teeth elicited an identical response from 87.5% of passing travelers. Welch argued that this overt physical gesture is not superficial pleasantry, but a deliberate projection of radical defenselessness and confidence. Baring one's teeth signals an absence of cynicism and a readiness to engage, disarming institutional skepticism and marking the graduates as receptive, authentic partners in any professional environment. Welch concluded that navigating the post-graduate landscape requires replacing defensive posturing with curiosity, mutual goodwill, and visible warmth, asserting that approaching the world with open authenticity is the surest way to prompt society to step aside and welcome new leaders.

Source quotes

[0:08] Suzy Welch: Hi! Good to see you all. You know I love you. I am Suzy Welch. [0:08] Roscoe Welch: Are you old? [0:08] Roscoe Welch: Well, we are the new ones. [0:08] Suzy Welch: Class of 2024, you are the new ones! [2:30] Suzy Welch: Do not, do not network. [2:30] Suzy Welch: Sorry, am I fired? [6:10] Suzy Welch: Welcome.

Original transcript

[0:08] Professor Suzy Welch: Hello everybody. Thank you, Raghu. It has been my great honor to work with Raghu for these two [0:14] years. And Raghu, like everyone else in this room, I wish you godspeed and I will miss you [0:20] so much as you ascend to the great heights of NYU. Ken, it has been a great honor to follow you [0:27] here on this stage. Most of you don't know one of the reasons I'm at NYU is because a few years [0:32] ago, I got this idea that maybe I had this course to teach. The first person I let know was Ken [0:38] and he said "Well let me see if I can get you in a room with Raghu," and that's the reason I'm standing [0:42] here today. So thank you Ken, your generosity knows no bounds, along with Elaine. [0:47] But also, Ken, your wisdom. I want to greet the parents of the Class of 2024, and families, [0:53] I have been you four times. I am an NYU parent myself. But I also, most warmly, want to say hello [1:00] to the Class of 2024. Hi! Good to see you all . You know I love you. I am Suzy Welch. [1:10] Many years ago I was in a supermarket with my son Roscoe. He just turned 35 so that's [1:18] how long ago it was. He was five years old and I had four children by that time, believe [1:23] it or not. And I was pushing him along, and I was kind of in this zombie phase because, you know, [1:28] if you have four children under the age of five you're going to be a zombie just [1:32] FYI. I was vaguely looking at some grapefruits, really sort of zoned out, and a [1:40] woman walked by and started looking at the grapefruits right next to us. Now, parents, [1:45] you know that when your child is five you're sort of, they're at that stage where you are always [1:51] living in fear of what your precocious youngster might say. My son Roscoe did not disappoint. He [1:57] looked at the woman standing next to us, and this is no lie, he said to her, "Are you old?" Luckily, [2:05] this woman was very cheerful, and she said, "Yes, I am." Okay. And he looked at her with a gimlet eye. [2:13] He considered her. I was standing there gasping for air, and he said, "Well we are the new [2:20] ones." He honestly said that. Class of 2024, you are the new ones! You are the new [2:30] ones. So, as though with all new ones, the world is gonna have to make some room for [2:41] you. Now, the world will make room for you in time. It will naturally make [2:47] room for you in time. Okay, but I know who you are, because I've had the pleasure of teaching [2:52] you, and I want to take this moment that I have with you, the last I have you in my clutches as [2:57] a professor, and share with you three ways that you might expedite the world making room for [3:03] you. I will be swift, okay. So the first way that you can expedite the world making room for you [3:09] is this: do not, do not network. That's right, I said it. My class has already heard this many [3:17] times, don't network. Networking is terrible! I know they all tell you to network. Sorry, am I [3:22] fired? I don't network, okay, do not network. It's mercenary, it's transactional, and it doesn't [3:29] work. Here's what you have to do: you have to make friends instead. Make friends, and lots and lots [3:36] of them, because making friends is actually what works, okay. If you were to ask anybody who has [3:42] been incredibly successful, "how did you do it?" and they would say, "I had a few good ideas, I had a ton [3:47] of luck, and I had great friends." Let's test, Ken Langone, friends? Is that what did it? Yes! We didn't [3:54] talk about this beforehand at all, but that is how it happens. It's friends. And here's the [3:59] thing, not everybody has to be your bestie. I'm not asking you to go out and be besties with everyone. [4:03] I'm saying: think about your friends, each friend as a tile, no tile is perfect on its own. Spoiler [4:09] alert: you are not perfect on your own, okay. But all the tiles you collect around you, they create [4:15] the beautiful mosaic of your life. So, number one, do not network. Make lots of friends. Don't [4:23] judge anybody. Just be friends with everyone you can. That's number one. Number two, and the [4:28] way to make room for yourself more quickly is, yeah, just, whatever you do, don't go looking for a [4:34] mentor. It's all right, he's not my boss anymore. There's my new boss. May not be my [4:44] boss for long at this rate. Don't mentor. Here's the thing, okay, here's why you can't mentor. The [4:51] idea that there's somebody on a stallion who's going to gallop in and sweep you up and make [4:57] your career for you, that's a myth. It almost never happens, okay. [5:05] It just doesn't happen, no one person's going to save your career. Everybody is going [5:09] to help your career because you can learn from everybody. Everybody knows something that you don't [5:14] know, okay. You've got to go look for what they know that you don't know, and you've got to [5:19] go get it out of their heads. I have mentors everywhere, okay. Raghu, you've been a mentor to me, [5:25] Ken's a mentor to me. Where's Nate Pettit? You've been a mentor to me. I didn't know how to teach [5:29] when I got here. They sent me to watch Nate's class, you've all had him. That's how I learned how to be [5:33] a teacher. And you, my students, you have been the best mentors to me. You have taught me so much. I [5:39] know it sounds cringey. I'm trying hard not to be total cringe up here. But you taught me so much. [5:45] You've opened up my thinking and you've made me ask myself hard questions. Like "Suzy, do you really [5:52] really, really need to work 80 hours a week? Do you really need to do that?" You've made me think that, [5:59] and you've made me answer "Yes. Yes I do," because I love work. I love work almost as much as I love my [6:05] dogs. Don't get me started, okay. Here's number three, and this is the third one and then I'm gonna [6:10] let you move on with your lives. This is a very, I don't want to get too serious on you, this [6:15] is a very deep one, it's very it's very profound, it's very philosophical so, you know, maybe the [6:22] PhDs will sort of dig this one more than the MBAs. But here's what I need you to do. I need you to [6:28] expedite your, accelerate your way into the world waiting for you, is to [6:36] smile at everybody with your teeth. Okay, like this. Not like this, like this. Okay, you got to smile with [6:46] your teeth at everybody. Right now, just turn to the person next to you and smile with your teeth for a [6:50] second. This is huge, this is gamechanging! Oh, you think I'm kidding. You think I haven't [6:59] researched this? I'm a professor now, okay. I'm a professor. So, I was in LAX recently, doing [7:06] some work, and I had a seven-hour delay. Delta Airlines. I had a seven-hour delay, and I thought, I'm going [7:13] to do some research because I'm a professor. So I walked around LAX and [7:20] I smiled at people with my teeth, like that, and 87.5% of all people smiled back at me, like this, [7:27] with their teeth. And I thought, oh my God, God I wish I had something to sell. Everybody was smiling [7:33] back. But here's the thing, smiling with your teeth is like saying, I'm selling myself, I'm [7:39] here, I am one of the new ones and I'm ready and willing and able to engage. I want to make [7:44] friends with you, I want everyone to be my mentor. I am here, I am ready to show you my authenticity, [7:50] because that, my friends, is what the world is going to embrace. When you show your true self, and you're [7:54] not defended, and you smile back with your teeth. Okay, listen, today you cross over the threshold [8:01] from this remarkable university, which I've grown to love very, very, quickly. Many thanks [8:06] to you, my wonderful students, and all of the Class of 2024. You step from this remarkable [8:12] university into the real world. And they will be looking at you like, do these new [8:21] ones belong? And you can show them that you do. You can show them by making friends with everyone. You [8:26] can show them by reaching out to everyone as a mentor. And you can show them by smiling with [8:32] your teeth. And with those teeth, smiling at them, and all those other demonstrations of your [8:40] goodness, the world will step aside, look at you with love, and say "Welcome." Thank you very much.