 President Gruz, members of the Board of Governors and Board of Counselors, representatives of the Japanese and Okinawan governments, esteemed faculty and staff, proud parents, friends, and especially the 41 OIST graduates here in person and on the screen who have reached this well-earned milestone. I am so humbled to be given this opportunity to address you all on this momentous occasion. I was initially introduced to OIST by my husband, Jesper Cole, who is sitting somewhere out there, who serves on the Board of Governors. I distinctly recall when he returned from his first visit to this idyllic campus. He couldn't stop talking. And now I know why. This is paradise. Dr. Gruz, when can I apply for your PhD program? But then again, surrounded by these turquoise beaches and tropical breezes, I know I wouldn't get any work done. Only later did I realize that despite its relatively small scale and youth, OIST punches well above its weight in global scientific research rankings. Number one in Japan and number nine in the world, according to the Nature Index. And it has so much potential to contribute beyond Okinawa and Japan to create solutions to society's challenges around the world. Now to prepare for today's talk, I had the chance to speak with a couple of graduates, Shivani Satish and Camilla Mustafina, and was really struck by how consistent their answers were to my simple question. So what makes OIST so special? Number one, the faculty. The caliber of OIST's faculty is world-class, yet they are more accessible than at other institutions. Number two, OIST is blessed with state-of-the-art resources and infrastructure. For instance, lab equipment such as DNA sequencing machines is top-class and easily accessible. Quote, my peers at other institutions are so envious that I have access to such equipment at any time. Third, interdisciplinary. The cross-disciplinary nature of OIST's approach to research is so unique and lends itself to a high degree of collaboration. Fourth, good things come in small packages. The benefit of OIST's compact scale is the depth and intimacy of relationships students are able to build with their peers and their professors. The students also commented that they've learned just as much from each other as they have from their professors. Fifth, local community engagement. Frankly, many academic institutions around the world operate as ivory towers, but in the case of OIST, there's a high degree of community engagement, not just hosting the popular science fairs that attract over 5,000 visitors, but especially during COVID. Students have proactively created solutions for the local community. For instance, Sebastian Lapointe and Sandrine Buriel and their team produce a disinfecting gel to supply to health care facilities across Okinawa. And number six, life after OIST. OIST supports students beyond their doctoral degrees. For instance, one of the graduates is participating in an OIST postdoc fellowship that will enable her to help commercialize her research in future. But what exactly is OIST's secret sauce? It is, in my view, diversity. One of OIST's eight core values, namely the diversity of its community. Particularly in Japan's context, the fact that there are 45 countries represented by the student body and 60 countries represented by the faculty, administration and staff makes OIST a category of one in the nation's tertiary education system. One student commented, not only did I learn how to conduct research with different types of people from very different backgrounds than my own, but I also learned how to live with people who are different from me. I've worked their points of view and I'm now confident that I can live anywhere, dive into any situation and be comfortable. Now for somebody whose life work has been advocating the critical importance of diversity in promoting growth, I strongly believe this is where the magic of problem solving, innovation and growth happens. And just to be clear, when I say diversity, I'm not just talking about gender. It includes age, ethnicity, economic, religious, in other words, cognitive diversity. So let me now tell you a little bit about my own background if I may. I am the daughter of Japanese immigrants from Naruken to California. And like many immigrants to the United States after World War II, my parents left Japan to seek greater economic opportunities abroad. And since my father was a small scale flower grower, his dream was to create a large scale flower nursery in America, something impossible to do in his family's tiny plot of land in Naruken. So I grew up in a small rural town called Salinas, California. And although I grew up making mochi every New Year's, and my mother is a long time Urasenke tea ceremony sensei. I frankly had little interest in pursuing Japan related studies or a career related to Japan when I was young. However, as serendipity would have it, I received a Rotary Scholarship to study in Japan after university, very unexpected. And for the first time in my life, I came to Japan, and I was immersed in the country of my ancestry and my roots. And after graduate school in the U.S., I decided to return to Japan, I'll explain why later, and began my career as an equity strategist researching Japan's economy and stock market in 1990. Now, looking back, 1990 was probably the worst time one could start a career in Japanese finance. Shortly before I began, Japan was riding high on an asset bubble of historic proportions. For instance, at the time the value of the grounds, the property of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was reportedly worth more than my entire home state of California. People told me then, I really remember, people told me then, the bubble Matsu-san would continue forever. Asset prices would continue going up until one day. Japan discovered something called gravity. During my first year on this new job, the Japanese stock market collapsed 40%. And in subsequent years, the economy fell into a deep slump weighed down by the so-called 3Ds, debt, deflation, and demographics. Now, a particular concern to me was the bleak demographic outlook, where the government itself was projecting that the workforce population would shrink by as much as 40% by the year 2055. That's huge. Now, not surprisingly, many of my clients, including institutional investors around the world, kept asking me this question. Kathy, why on earth should we invest in Japan? Where is the growth going to come from? So that was what I was grappling with in my professional life, okay? Meanwhile, in my personal life, I noticed that after returning to work, from maternity leave after our first child was born in 1996, many of my mama-tomo, mother-friends, encountered numerous difficulties trying to return to their careers full-time. So many decided to off-ramp and quit their careers altogether. Now, at the time, only 56%, so just over half of all Japanese working women, worked outside the home, which used to be one of the lowest ratios in the developed world. So you see this juxtaposition of my professional and my personal lives in 1999 led to one simple conclusion. And I called it Mottainae. In other words, I was surrounded by a sea of untapped female talent, yet I knew that Japan could not afford to leave half its population underutilized. It was like trying to run a marathon on one leg. And that's what spurred me to build an economic case for raising the female labor participation rate, and that could boost economic growth, hence the birth of womenomics. Now, to tell you the truth, another reason I picked this topic at the time was because then, and frankly during my entire 30-year career as a strategist, I was the only female strategist in the market. And given that I had what I call three strikes against me versus my Japanese male competitors, in other words, foreign, female, and young, I knew I had to write differentiated research in order to get noticed. Now, at the time, I naively thought that womenomics was rather obvious. Atarimai. However, I was wrong. I encountered many skeptics. Matsui-san, if all the Japanese women work outside the home, isn't that going to lower Japan's already very low birth rate? Which is actually, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, false, but that was the view. Or the classic Tij, anyone knows Tij? This is Japan. Argument that Japan is different. With such deeply embedded gender role stereotypes and cultural norms, it will take Japan over 100 years for any meaningful change. I therefore decided that rather than an argument based on human rights or justice quality, I thought the only way to convince these skeptics was to use hard data and objective analysis to prove that diversity can, in fact, enhance economic growth and corporate performance. Now, empirical studies around the world have shown that more diverse leadership teams are positively correlated with improved business performance and better risk management. My own research also demonstrated that Japanese companies with diverse management teams exhibited above average profitability and lower costs of capital. We also estimated that if Japan could narrow its gender employment gap, Japan's GDP, size of the economy, could potentially expand by as much as 15, 1.5%, which is huge. Why? Very simple, because more working women means more household income. More income translates into greater consumption. Greater consumption produces more revenues for companies. More revenues gets channeled into greater investment, higher wages, and so on. In other words, the bottom line for Japan to combat its rapidly shrinking population and to grow, for me, diversity is no longer optional, it is an economic imperative. So it's been 22 years since I first wrote about womenomics. And many people have asked me, so Kathy, what's actually changed? Has anything changed? And first of all, I will say I am glad to see that Japan's very low female layer participation rate, I told you earlier, about 56%, has shot up in the last few years, reaching 71% in 2019, surpassing the ratios both in the United States and in Europe. 3.3 million more women are working outside the home today than before. Second, the Japanese government actually passed landmark legislation in 2015, which requires companies and public sector organizations to disclose their gender diversity statistics and diversity, and set diversity action plans. This was a crucial step forward since you cannot move the needle if you don't know where that needle lies. But what hasn't changed? Japan unfortunately still ranks quite low in global gender gap rankings, largely to the dearth of women in leadership, be it managerial roles or representation in the public sector. Moreover, as we all know, Japan still has a long way to go when it comes to female representation in STEM fields. While the gender gap in STEM is obviously universal, Japan's ratio of female researchers ranks the lowest in the OECD today. We are clearly heading into an era of disruptive change, driven by rapid advancements in technology and digitalization, and while that's all very exciting, it will also be accompanied by substantial dislocations, including potential job losses. Therefore, we need to ensure that everyone in society, including our daughters and our granddaughters, will be well equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to thrive in this new world. And in this context, I'm very encouraged to see OIST taking concrete steps to make a difference for women in STEM. Frankly, it's so impressive to see that over 40% of the PhD candidates at OIST are female, and the recent launch of the Rita Colwell Impact Fund for the Advancement of Women in Science will help nurture more women and girls in science and create opportunities for women to advance their careers and become leaders in the field. I applaud you all. So the bottom line is this, for all of you graduates, don't take your diverse experience at OIST for granted. Continue to engage with people outside your discipline, your gender, your religion, and your race. Use your knowledge, empathy, and patience to address the challenges facing the world we are counting on you. Finally, this wouldn't be a commencement speech if I didn't leave you with some life lessons. So as some of you reminisce about your final days in the campus village, let me share some of mine. First of all, each of you has attained a level of academic achievement that is reserved for only the top echelon of academicians, and most of you know exactly what you'll be doing next. However, I encourage you all to keep an open mind and heart. Way back when, when I was in university, I was determined that I would join the U.S. Foreign Service. I was in university, I got an internship with the U.S. State Department, I studied abroad here in Japan for two years, I went to graduate school to study international relations all with a singular goal of working in an embassy someday. Then, during my graduate school summer internship in Tokyo, I met and fell in love with my husband, Jesper, causing me to abandon all of my plans and move to Japan in order to be with him. I had no job, but I had love. So I simply followed my heart, and that was the best decision I ever made. Second, as you all step out into the big world, I guarantee you will make many mistakes, stumble and fall, and think that life is totally unfair. When I was 36, I had just been promoted to become the first female partner at Goldman Sachs Japan. I became the top ranked Japanese equity strategist, and had just given birth to our second child. Simply put, I was on top of the world, nothing could go wrong. Which is precisely when everything went wrong. I was suddenly diagnosed with cancer, and had to put everything on hold for eight months of treatment. During this time, one of my colleagues gave me a great piece of advice. She said, build your own personal BOD, Board of Directors. These are people who you can trust for honest, straightforward feedback, including telling you things you don't necessarily want to hear. My personal BOD is composed of a diverse group of my best friend in high school, my college roommate, my work mentor, my husband, and friends who are far more experienced at motherhood and parenting than me. These friends have holistic views about me, know my strengths and weaknesses, and I respect and value their guidance whenever I hit a roadblock in life, and believe me, I hit many. So I strongly encourage each of you to create your own personal BODs as well. Third, you have all been blessed by world-class education, working with top-notch faculty in the slice of paradise called Okinawa. However, with such privilege comes responsibility. As you head out into the world, remember all those people who have supported your journey to this point. Stay in touch with your professors and peers, and I guarantee they will prove very helpful in the next chapter of your lives. And above all, don't forget to give back to the next generation at OIST, just as your seniors have supported you. Finally, allow me to end with two pieces of wisdom from leaders I admire. First, comes from the former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. Quote, To succeed, you will require the kind of knowledge that extends way beyond mere facts to knowledge of self. From this day forward, you will have to rely not on grades or guidance from professors to tell you how you're doing. You will have to rely instead on an inner compass. Whether that compass is true will determine whether you become a drifter who is blown away, blown about by every breeze or a doer, an active citizen determined to chart your own course, question your assumptions, and when necessary, sail unafraid against strong winds. My second quote comes from Navy Admiral William McRaven, who famously wrote, If you really want to change the world, start by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made, and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. So if you want to change the world, start by making your bed. Now, one last homework assignment. I know you weren't expecting this, but before I leave you, graduates, after this ceremony is over, call, do not text, call your parents. Tell them how much you love and appreciate them. Believe me, as a parent, this is all we really want to hear from our kids. Thank you. Congratulations again to all of you OIS graduates. We are so proud of you. Go out and change the world, but don't forget to make your bed. Thank you very much.