 I have the privilege of introducing our commencement speaker, Kathy Giusti, a multiple myeloma patient is the founder and executive chairman of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium. It's a bit of a mouthful. She also has more than two decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry previously holding senior positions at GD, Cyril, and Merck. Since founding the foundation in 1998, Giusti has led them in establishing innovative collaborative research models in the areas of tissue banking, genomics, and clinical trials. These models are dramatically accelerating the pace at which life-saving treatments are brought to patients and are building an end-to-end solution in precision medicine. Today, Giusti is widely recognized as a champion of open access data sharing and a strong advocate for patient engagement, not only in their cancer cure, but as part of the research and drug development process. Giusti's leadership has earned her several prestigious awards in recognition. Most recently, she was ranked number 19 on Fortune magazine's world's 50 greatest leaders. In 2011, she was named to the time 100 list of the world's most influential people. She has been named an open science champion of change by the White House and has also received the American Association for Cancer Research Centennial Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Harvard Business School's Alumni Achievement Award and the Healthcare Business Women's Association's Women of the Year Award. Giusti has been featured on the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, Fox News, CNN, and Bloomberg. Her efforts have also been profiled by the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Forbes Wired, and Fast Company. Giusti currently serves on the White House Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group and the Harvard Business School Health Advisory Board. She has previously served on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, National Cancer Advisory Board, and the National Cancer Policy Board. Giusti graduated magna cum laude from the University of Vermont College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Sciences. In 2013, she reserved an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Vermont. Giusti holds an MBA in General Management from Harvard Business School. Please join me with a warm welcome to Kathy Giusti. Welcome back to your proud alma mater. Thank you so much, Dean Vogueman. It has been an absolute joy to work with you as we prepare it for today. And I really want to thank the student administration, the faculty, everyone for inviting me back here. It's so nice to be back at this beautiful, beautiful university. And can I just be one of the first to say congratulations? You guys are amazing. I am so happy for you. I graduated from UBM. It's now 35 years ago. And I really can't believe that because it seemed like it was just yesterday that I was sitting just like so many of you. And I have to say, I remember exactly how I felt. I felt really proud that I had made it through the university. But I also felt uncertain. Uncertain because I didn't yet have a job. The economy was not doing so well. I was still debating between MCATs and medical school. I was unsure of myself. So today, whether you're sitting out there and you know your exact career path, exactly where you go, want to go, what you want to do, or whether you're a little uncertain like me, it's all going to be okay. You're all going to do great things. The secret is seeing opportunities when they come knocking on your door. The secret is being prepared to act on them, build on them, and to let them transform you. And trust me, those opportunities, they'll really arrive unexpectedly. Sometimes those opportunities won't even seem like opportunities at all. I never expected to get a cancer diagnosis at the age of 37. I certainly never expected it to be a fatal cancer diagnosis of just three years. But that diagnosis allowed me to take my skills and build a company that is absolutely curing cancer, saving lives, and giving hope to thousands and thousands of patients today. And that, thank you. And that is the true definition of success. To look back and know that you've truly made a difference in your life. So today as I was preparing and thinking long and hard, what I want to share with you about my decades of experience, I realized there were three principles that absolutely drove my success. And I thought I'd share them with you today so that when the unexpected comes your way, you're ready to go. The first principle, build your base. Build your base. You see, at 57 years old, my mother tells me that I really should forgive my father for being somewhat tough on me. And I know I should. But here I was, having graduated from UBM, accepted into medical school, actually the medical school that he had attended. And I came home for dinner one night to see my parents, and he brought out his copy of the acceptance letter. And I thought to myself, this is my moment. He's gonna say, Cathy, you're amazing, you're wonderful, I'm so proud of you. He tore the letter in half. He tore it in half and handed it back to me. And I sat there bewildered thinking, what just happened to my dreams? But my father said to me, Cathy, I know you love science. And I think being a physician is an absolutely incredible and worthy cause. But I also want you to be open to looking at other ideas out there. I want you to think of other paths that might be helpful to you. So I kept working in the pharmaceutical industry. I was working in sales, and I moved inside into headquarters in marketing. And I kept getting moved and moved and learning so much when I was working for Merck. And I saw all these amazing opportunities of combining my science degree with my business degree. I didn't go back to medical school. I actually applied to Harvard Business School and got a degree in general management and then got a job later on in consumer marketing at Gillette. And the reason I tell you this story is because at the age of 27, I had really built my base. I now had the bottom of my resume, that foundation from which I would grow, reading science, technology, business, reading marketing, sales, communications, reading great universities like UVM and reading great companies as well. So I didn't expect my father's reaction to my medical school acceptance, but I can tell you I was open to his wisdom and open to his ideas. And his ideas allowed me to build that foundation from which I grew in many, many different careers in my life. And I can tell you, even as an executive chairman today, when I'm interviewing people, I still look at the bottom of their resume first. Principle number two, be bold and decisive. Be bold and decisive. I kept working at the Gillette company, learning a lot in consumer marketing, and I realized I missed science and healthcare. So I came back to work for Searle, which became Pfizer. And I was so fortunate because building my base allowed me to shine when I got to the next company, and I was being mentored by an amazing man, the president named Al Heller. And he said to me, Kathy, where do you wanna be in five years? And I said, I'd really like to be considered for your job. And he said, I agree. So let's put together the rotations you're gonna need to get you where you wanna be. So I took every one of those rotations from sales operations, from international, anything the company asked me to do. I was rising fast, flying high. I was on my way for that executive committee. Everything was perfect until I was driving home one night on the Kennedy outside of Chicago, and my phone rang. And it was my doctor who said, Kathy, I'm really sorry. I'm certain you have multiple myeloma. And like many you, I'm going, what is that? And he's saying it's a blood cancer like leukemia lymphoma. And I'm saying, well, how bad is it? And he's saying, it's pretty bad while the cars are passing me in the left hand lane. And I'm saying, well, how long? And he's saying three years at best. So I kept traveling around the country trying to find answers to this orphan disease. And I realized there was no awareness, no funding, no drugs in the pipeline. Absolutely no hope. So I made the bold decision to start the multiple myeloma research foundation with my identical twin sister, Karen, also a UVM grad and an attorney. And we made the bolder decision to say it's not gonna look like a patient advocacy group as much as we love that. We wanted it to be high science, high technology, delivering new drugs. And one by one, we started building a community of scientists, clinicians, everybody you could imagine to start building this community and said, what are the problems we need to solve? How do we do it? When we couldn't find scientists to work in myeloma, we decided to work together and fund them to attract them. When we couldn't find an easy way for those scientists to work together and have team science, we built our own collaborative models, tissue banks, clinical networks. We kept growing and growing the MMRF to the point where today, we have now tested 30 drugs with 60 clinical trials, seven of them have already been approved, three more will be approved in the next year. We've more than tripled the lifespan of multiple myeloma patients and we serve as a model for every single cancer and every disease out there. I never expected to get a fatal cancer at the age of 37, but making the bold decision to start the MMRF allowed me to transform a somewhat broken system. So my advice for you today is if you have built your base and you have these amazing experiences, tough decisions are going to come your way. Make the decision and trust your instincts. Trust your instincts because the worst decision is no decision. Principle number three, be grateful because as you can tell, running any company, it doesn't rely on just one person. The success of everything we've shown at the MMRF has been a tribute to the entire team that works around me. Our structure is filled with PhDs, MDs, clinical trial specialists, masters of public health, fundraisers, event planners, all working together to find a cure. But we also outsource all of our technology from genomics to proteomics, you name it, we're working on it. And we have to trust all those partners and build relationships with them. Our success is a reflection of their success. So every time we tried to build a new model, I had to find an innovator in the field who was willing to do that with us. When we decided to start a tissue bank, I remember Rafael Fonseco at the Mayo Clinic saying, we will give you space, we'll help you hire a staff. When we decided to sequence the myeloma genome, I remember the Broad Institute and TGen both stepping in and saying, count me in. When we decided to build our own clinical network, Dr. Bill Dalton at the Moffitt Cancer Center said, I will sign that membership agreement first until everybody else to follow me. And when we said it's time for everybody to share data and give up intellectual property, Deborah Dunsire, CEO of Millennium said, I agree. The list goes on with these amazing innovators and people that were first in the field and raised their hands to support us. I never expected them to say this little tiny orphan cancer deserves my time and energy, but not a day goes by that I don't say I'm grateful for them. They are part of my network and that's what you need to think about too. My advice is find people who inspire you, allow you to innovate and keep them close to you. Allow them to build you. So three simple principles to drive your professional success. Build your base, be bold and decisive and be grateful. But your professional success is only half the equation. Your personal happiness is the other half and that comes from your family and your life. So I'm going to take off my hat now as a founder and a chairman. I'm going to talk to you as a wife, a mother and a friend. When I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, our daughter Nicole was only 18 months old. With just three years to live, I knew that she would never remember her mother. So I went from running worldwide operations in Big Pharma to going out and buying this pretty little journal with a sunflower on the front and sitting down quietly to think, what's the first sentence I'm going to write to her? Inside that first journal, I write to her, dear Nicole, I'm sorry I got this disease, but I am going to fight as hard as I possibly can. It's 20 years later and 20 journals sit on a shelf on the left hand side of my desk. One for every year. Thank you. There's one for every year that I never ever expected to live. And it was only just recently that I read every one of them cover to cover and to end. And I closed the 20th one and I went, wow, that was a life well lived. And boy, am I one happy person. So I thought to myself, what is it that I want to share with you today to make sure that you achieve your own personal happiness too? And I realized, it's the same three things. My foundation, my base was built the day I married my husband, Paul. 20 journals told me that his support was steadfast and unwavering, his sacrifices beyond remarkable. And when your base is that strong, when your foundation is that sturdy, your dreams, your decisions, the ones you make become better and you become so much happier. Who you marry is one of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life. With this amazing strong foundation, Paul and I were able to make the toughest decisions in the most tragic of times. It's so funny that I went back and read my journals and I couldn't believe I was so sad to be diagnosed with cancer, but I was crushed that that cancer was taking away our dreams of having more children. I think it's an identical twin. I always had this side kick with me and I really so desperately wanted that for Nicole. So Paul and I made the bold decision that we were gonna live like I was going to live, not like I was going to die. And we went out and interviewed fertility specialists side by side with oncologists. And with many thinking we were crazy, not perhaps even irresponsible, we decided to go through the process and our son David was born 15 months after my diagnosis. Journal after journal that I kept reading on this long window of reading these beautiful documents saying they showed a woman running a company and trying to cover so much while raising this very young family. And day to day, week to week, I faced the guilt that any working mother would face. Do I meet the bus or take the plane? Do I draw the art project or write the PowerPoint? Do I watch the game or take the call? I balanced every one of those decisions along with different decisions. When do I do my chemo? What happens when I lose my hair? What will my children think when I go through a bone marrow transplant with my identical twin and leave them for months of isolation? How will they possibly get through it all? But I made the right decisions because I trusted my instincts. And everybody has to think that through you. If you trust your instincts, you're going to do fine. Until many, many years fast forward, another unexpected. After 17 years of raising Nicole and swearing I was doing everything I could not to leave her. It was time for her to leave me. She was headed to college. She was a cheerleader. She desperately wanted a good school with a great football team. And she arrived at Boston College ready to roll. And I went along with her. So as did Paul, we fixed up her dorm room. Everything was ready. And it was time for me to say goodbye. I had these tears rolling down my face, but I was so happy, joyful, beyond myself thinking, I can't believe I saw all this. But I didn't know what was brewing at home. Her brother, David, really, really missed her. You can imagine, he was a freshman in high school and she was a senior. So they'd head off to school. She was always driving, playing music, laughing and having the time of their lives. And now she's gone. He's a sophomore. Mom is driving him to high school and he comes home after practice and mom and dad are giving him endless questions as he called two V one, two versus one. And my great, handsome, funny athlete was all of a sudden not happy. We got into a silly argument one day and he walked out. He walked out the front door and he's six feet tall. I couldn't stop him. And in the hours that waited until he texted me back, I knew I had to make a really bold decision. It was time to step away, never, ever, from my son. To step away from my job. I turned the MMRF over to our well-prepared president and became executive chairman so I could be there for my family. This August, Paul, Nicole and I will drive David to achieve his dreams. He's a great pitcher in baseball, thank goodness. Doesn't always love school. And he's gonna go to Lafayette College and be a D one pitcher, which completely, completely was his dreams and I have to tell you, now I know the true feeling of happiness. The true feeling of happiness is knowing that your children are safe and they're happy. That your children are achieving their dreams. What they want to do. You are all achieving your dreams. And can I have a round of applause for your parents and everybody here that made it all happen? Your lives are going to be filled with the unexpected and the unexpected is going to be big or small, good or bad. And when it comes knocking, I want you to remember this very special day. I want you to remember that even the toughest unexpected that you're going to face can transform you to do something amazing. I have no doubt you are all going to make a huge difference in this world and you will find both success and happiness and that is my wish for each and every one of you. Congrats and Godspeed.