 It's a special pleasure for me to welcome all of you to tonight's Gala event. But in many ways, what I want to do is emphasize the fact that what we're really celebrating is the things that are being communicated in the symposium, which is occurring over three days this week. And the symposium really reflects the hard work, the accomplishments, and the vision of the team that's created the natural capital project. It's wonderful to be able to be one of the hosts, but at least for me, it's the enthusiasm on the faces and the excited chatter of all of the people who are really accomplishing great things and who are moving academic ideas into genuine accomplishments. It's wonderful to be able to celebrate NAPCAP in a room like this. Not only is it spectacular and beautiful and compelling location, but I love the way that the circular shape speaks to the way that NAPCAP needs to have people from different perspectives contributing in an equal and equally meaningful way. And I think the room very much validates what I see as the core NAPCAP mission, which is to bring creative people together, to empower them, to create unusual solutions, and then to figure out how to deploy those in a genuinely communal sense. So I want to congratulate Gretchen, Mary, and then NAPCAP team for everything that's been accomplished and to provide my strong encouragement for everything that's yet to come. My main role tonight isn't to thank NAPCAP so much as it is to welcome John Hennessey, Stanford's 10th president. And John Hennessey, we're especially fortunate to have tonight, our very busy guy, he just started a new job as the chairman of the board of Alphabet, one of the world's largest companies, and it must be a substantial task. John Hennessey, president Hennessey's trajectory through Stanford is really a classic one. He went from a faculty member and department chair, dean of the school of engineering provost, and was president of Stanford from 2000 to 2016. Actually, he stepped down the day I joined, and I don't know if there's a cause and effect relationship there, but I owe a tremendous amount to the vision and the structures that he created. And in many ways, the Woods Institute for the Environment, and especially the natural capital project, are really a product of the architecture that John Hennessey brought to Stanford. He, through the Stanford challenge, really created the foundation for building interdisciplinary scholarship, for recognizing what it could be, and for laying the foundations that allowed it to go from boutique activities on the fringes of the university's agenda to the absolute core. And what I see now with the strong emergence of NATCAP as the essential tools for figuring out the value of nature and for helping communicate to stakeholders around the world of what they can do to implement nature-based solutions, though what we're really seeing in many ways is the flowering of the vision that President Hennessey brought to the university, and which he has really led. In many ways, President Hennessey has a new task as well, which is to emphasize the role of international scholarship at Stanford through his leadership of the Knight Hennessey Scholars, the first 50 of whom have just arrived. And I think this juxtaposition between the recognition of the importance of a commitment to international scholarship and the importance of engaging around the world through activities like the natural capital project really bring the mission of Stanford University into focus, and they also really bring into focus the vision and the values and the grounding that President Hennessey has brought. So please join me in welcoming President John Hennessey, the 10th President of Stanford University. Thanks, Chris. Well, the real truth is I was waiting to retire till Chris accepted to be Woods Director. So I couldn't do it until I knew something so important our Interdisciplinary Institute dedicated to the environment and sustainability was in safe hands, so that was key. Gretchen asked if I would talk some about the underlying themes that we're trying to create with the Knight Hennessey program and how it relates in a very deep way to the natural capital project. As I was beginning to think about stepping down as president and wondering what I would do next, and my wife was reminding me that she didn't want to see me home every single day of the week, and I didn't really relish playing golf every single day of the week. I thought about what real challenges do we have around the world? What are the big problems we need to solve? And it struck me that we had a major leadership void around the world. And that leadership void wasn't just in government leadership. It had spilled over into the corporate world. It even existed in the nonprofit world. And this was at a time when the refugee crisis was just breaking out in Europe. Several countries in Africa were actually moving backwards in terms of development as the leaders of those countries fled with millions of dollars and the countries collapsed into economic ruin. I'm a great believer in the power of education and I'm a great optimist about the next generation. So we decided to try to build a program that would take great students from around the world who would come to Stanford for their graduate education and who would have the opportunity to study in whatever field they thought was going to lead to important contributions for them and for their colleagues around the world. And we would build, accompanying that, a leadership development program to help them achieve what they really wanted to do in the world. You might ask why do this at Stanford? Well, I think we had some unique characteristics. Here we are on the Pacific Rim. We're not on the old side of the country. We're on the new side of the country. And we're facing out across the Pacific to Asia, which is increasingly the most important part of the world. So Stanford had a big advantage and it had had historically students from Asia from the very beginning, from its roots. So our connections across the Pacific to China were absolutely crucial. We also had excellence across the university. We have a great engineering school, but we also have a great medical school. We have a great business school, but also a great law school. We have great humanities and sciences. We have great environmental efforts. So we could offer students in whatever discipline they were in a great educational opportunity. And this is the most entrepreneurial university in the entire world. It has a deep commitment to thinking about problems in different ways, to being willing to try different things, not just in startups in the valley. Certainly we do that. But natural capital is a great example. We think how you approach environmental problems. Don't just scold people about being better stewards. Think about how you align their economic interests with the right long-term focus on the environment. That's a very different approach. It's a very entrepreneurial approach. Very creative. So we began to build a program, and the themes we arrived at from the beginning were similar to natural capital. Global. Build a program that's global. We had a great Rhodes scholarship program, but it wasn't open to everybody in the world and only recently has been open, for example, to students from China. Only very recently. We wanted a program that was global from the beginning, that recognized the rise of Asia, the challenges of bringing students from around the world. Build a program that recognized that all disciplines have a contribution. We need people with education in the business school, just as we need people with education in the environmental area to come together and think about how we solve problems. We needed a program that attracted academically excellent students. Intelligence matters. It makes a difference to have smart people who are intellectually curious, who want to learn. That's critical. And help them develop their leadership skills. Develop their ability to do complex problem solving. Natural capital is not an approach that's simple. It's an approach that has to bring together really skilled people. Recognize the importance of collaboration. And here, natural capital is a gem in recognizing the importance of that. Look at the group here today. We've got international collaboration. We have collaboration between Stanford and the University of Minnesota. We have collaboration between NGOs and between universities. We are not going to solve the big problems around the world, whether they're environmental, whether they're peace and security, whether they're human healthcare, unless we learn to collaborate between governments, nonprofits, universities, and the corporate world. We have to learn that skill. As Chris mentioned, we have just accepted our first class of students, 49 incredible scholars, chosen from over 3,600 applicants. That's an incredible selection rate. You get really good people when you are that selective. 53% of them born outside the United States, and 63% with a passport from a country other than the United States. 45% of them will do PhDs, but 37% will do professional degrees. MDs and JDs and MBAs. And we have two truly incredible students coming from China. Two young women that are absolutely amazing. The very first road scholar chosen from China is going to come to Stanford to study in law. And the other incredible student is a young woman coming to study physics. So we have in our first class two just incredible students that celebrate the international aspect of our program. And I think natural capital is a model of the themes that we really have in mind. Global, collaborative, interdisciplinary, complex, creative problem solving. That's what's going to change our world. And we hope to educate students who will be prepared to make the kind of changes that we need. We're so delighted to have this partnership. This is an important part of what we will do as a university. And we're delighted to have you all here tonight. My final task before exiting the stage and getting our performers up here is to introduce Lee Xu, who will introduce our incredible performers tonight. And we're so delighted that you've come from China with this incredible group. So please join me in giving a warm Stanford welcome to our colleagues from China. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Henderson. My name is Lee Zhu. I'm the Associate Director of Conservation Program and the Pulse Institute. I think and do tag committed to the advancing sustainable economic growth and environmental protection between US and China. It is a great privilege for me to introduce our performers tonight. They are Ms. Long Li Zhu, Ms. Wu Nan, and Ms. Lin Nan Feng. They are going to bring us two wonderful performances, solo singing and the dance in the Miao ethnic group, and also a short scene from Peony Pavilion, one of the most famous Chinese plays from the Ming dynasty. Our performers tonight are from Guizhou and Jiangxi provinces, where the pilot of the projects to explore innovative mechanisms to realize the venues of ecosystems and ecological products are being planned and implemented. This is a collaboration between the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Natural Capital Project, and the Pulse Institute. And sitting among us tonight are some of the political leaders from these pilot cities and will applaud their vision and efforts. The performance from Guizhou province tonight actually consists of two numbers. The first number, wine offering, shows the Miao people's hospitality towards guests coming from afar. The second number, young ladies of the Miao, showcases the Miao people's ethnic dance in its full splendor. The performance from Jiangxi province is a local rendition of one of the most celebrated Chinese play, Peony Pavilion, a story about the two star-crossed lovers who overcome all difficulties transcending time and space, life and death, and finally get together. The playwright, Tang Xianzu, who wrote the play is often held as the Shakespeare of the East. This is not only because both Tang and Shakespeare were born just 14 years apart and passed away in the same year, but also because they both are great masters of depicting the complexity of human nature and their championing of emotion over discipline and humility over authority and hierarchy makes their works relatable even today. We are fortunate tonight to have two performers from Fuzhou Jiangxi province, the birthplace of the revered playwright, Tang. The scene they are going to perform depicts the female heroine and her maid going on a sprint outing in the private garden. I'm sure they are going to enchant us with their superb artistry and refreshing authenticity. The two performances differ in style, but they both draw inspirations from nature. It is through our love and reverence of nature that the human spirit source and creativity flourishes. And finally, to borrow President Donald Trump's favorite phrase, we're going to have a tremendous show tonight and we hope everybody is going to enjoy the tremendously. Now please join me in welcoming our stage, our performance from China.