GRACIAS TOTALES! Thank you all for the support during these two years, specially to my friends from INCAE, the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs - CIPA, my family, financial supporters, friends and mentors. Thanks to your support and time this dream is now a reality. I am officially a Ivy League grad student! Special thanks to the OToole family, Professor Tom OToole and the CIPA faculty and administrators Lisa Jervey Lennox Judy Metzgar Cheryl Miller and Jenn. I am very honored with the outcomes of the last days. I was chosen for a special role at the University Commencement Ceremony today. Costa Rica and I represented the GRAD/Master Candidates from all the different disciplines across campus as the GRAD Banner Bearer at the 146th Cornell UniversityCommencement Ceremony. Also, we got an award called Adams Leadership Award for : Exemplary scholarship and service in the field of public affairs. And, they inducted some us last Friday to the Phi Alpha Alpha honors society-- the national honorary society is one of the highest academic honors in the field of public affairs and administration. Thanks to GOD and all my family, friends, financial supporters and mentors; a Costa Rican CIPA fellow represented all the amazing prestigious scholars from around the world at an Ivy League University with the banner today. I also had the opportunity to addressed the amazing MPA students with the commencement speech as the former President of the Cornell Public Affairs Society. I am very grateful with all the people that believe in this project from the beginning! Special thanks to Karla and Vale who are the pilars of this endeavor and the CIPA family. As some of you already know for the next step of this journey; I am going to be studying my country Costa Rica and the Latin American region as a PhD candidate in Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, the best public administration school in the USA. The type of research I want to do concerns three board areas: i) Civic Participation ii) E-Government iii) Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) through a comparative international public management perspective. These areas are critical to tackle the problems that Costa Rica is facing. My wife Karla Brenes will be starting a Masters in Family Therapy and Counseling at the same University. I was so close 2 years ago of not attending this great opportunity because of lack of funding and financial resources.Thanks to the generosity of so many people I am here today. In the following months, many scholars from Panama and a few from Costa Rica are coming to the program or are already studying because capitalism and solidarity are not mutually exclusive. Thank you very much for all your support. You know who you are... Below my commencement speech for those of you back home that asked for it: --------------------------------- I see a generation By: Alvaro Salas Thank you so much Dana for your kind introduction. On behalf of the many foreign born students here today, including my Latin American compatriots, let me express my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing the 2014 commencement speech at this great American institution—the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs. I also want to express my gratitude to my Costa Rican supporters, family and friends particularly the Zamora Family, which by the way bought me the red tie I am wearing today, Walter Kissling, Gaby Saborio, Luis Javier Castro who was also our thesis advisor here at Cornell, Daniel Robert, the Uribe family, Roberto Artavia and the hundreds of citizens and businessman and women that contributed to make this dream come true. Today is a particular honor for me because lets face it: my presence on this stage today at one of the best universities in the world, a member of the prestigious Ivy League, is pretty improbable. But as improbable as it is, I can tell you exactly how I arrived at this spot, and it all started over 50 years ago on March 3rd 1963. I was not even born yet, but on that day my journey to Cornell began. Because on that day, John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States, landed in Costa Rica to become the first U.S. president to visit Central America. Costa Ricans went wild over the young American leader. I have seen the old newsreels of the crowds cheering him as he drove through the streets on his way to deliver a speech at the Costa Rican Congress. One particular Costa Rican, who was deeply enthralled by the Kennedy visit, was my grandmother, Ana Maria. She had no education, but she recognized an inspiring leader with a great message when she saw one, and a framed photo of John F. Kennedy went up on the wall of her humble house. From that moment on, the spirit of America and John F. Kennedy, the spirit of optimism, the belief in the future, and belief in the values of democracy and getting ahead by merit and hard work, and everything that Kennedy and America symbolically stood for, became part of my family’s values—and all because of that 1963 visit and through that photo of Kennedy on the wall of my grandmother’s house. My grandmother was widowed with six children and she worked two jobs to ensure that my mother at least got the high school diploma that she never had. My mother, who is here today thanks to the generosity of Professor Juan Carlos Barahona, worked as a school administrative assistant, bus driver and sold shoes in the city of San Jose, Costa Rica--a country the size of West Virginia with a population that has less than 5 million people. Nevertheless, my mother had larger dreams for me, and through her hard work, her resilience and her perseverance she managed to get us all graduated from high school. Even though--I am embarrassed to say--that often I didn’t make it easy for her. I even got myself expelled from school at 14, but a good friend, Jose Aguilar, served as my mentor and got me back in school and on the right path. And I should note that Jose Aguilar, runs a major education nonprofit in Costa Rica, and he came to Cornell as a colloquium speaker this year. He became an example of our Institute’s emphasis on putting theory into practice because his organization has now formed a strategic partnership with the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs to scale up his education program to national levels. After graduating from college and then getting an MBA at INCAE Business School, thanks to a scholarship called Leaders for Change, I wanted even more education to also learn about the public side, to learn even more about how to serve my country. So I came up with the wild idea of applying to the Ivy league, and Cornell was bold enough to admit me, and here I am today a product of what an education at the Cornell Institute of Public Affairs can do to help transform your life. I stand here knowing that my story is part of what you call “the American Dream.” Which is about being given the opportunity to live up to your individual potential in a free country. But today, if just for today, let’s call it: “The Costa Rican-American dream;” and let’s call it the “Afghan-American Dream’’ of Rafi Sherzad who came here to learn how to build democracy in his country that has been rocked by conflict. And let’s call it the ‘’Albanian-American Dream’’ of Ivi Demi who immigrated to America as child with his family to build a new life. And let’s call it the “China-America Dream’’ of Maggie Yundi who is learning how to help her country to take its place as a leader in a globalized world. And let’s call it the “Indian-American Dream” of Abhinav Pandya, who is here to learn how to help his country meet its infrastructure challenges. And let’s call it the ‘’South Sudan-American Dream’’ of Ayuen Ayok, who was a refugee for 12 years as one of the “lost boys” of Sudan, and who will be returning to help build his newly independent nation. Together with the other international students, and with the Americans graduating today, who come from every walk of U.S. life--veterans and school teachers and legislative staffers--and every social and economic strata, and all of us graduating today from Cornell and living out our personal version of the American dream. Yes, we all have our great personal dreams. But we have to also ask ourselves what is the common dream that all of us who graduate with a degree from this great Institute today share with each other? It is a question we need to ask ourselves. What is the dream we share? What is the dream that unites us? And I think the answer to that question can be found in our name. Think about it for a moment. There are 18 different programs at Cornell that offer postgraduate degrees. And all of them without exception are excellent programs worthy of the name of Cornell. But what distinguishes us here at this Cornell Institute for Public Affairs - CIPA from the other graduate programs? The answer I believe lies in our name. We are only one of two that has the word “public” in our name. Each person who came to this institute came because he or she explicitly desired to serve the public. This is not to say that the other great graduate programs here at Cornell do not serve the public in their own ways. But no graduate program proclaims it as clearly, and as loudly, and as proudly as we do at this institute by including the word “public” in our degree. The dream of public service is the common dream that unites all of us graduating today [turn and look teachers and administrators], and all of those of who led and taught us so well here at the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs. From the mountains of Colorado to the deserts in Afghanistan; from cities like Beijing to the valleys of Latin America; from the streets of Delhi to the power corridors of DC the dream of public service unites us all at this great Institute. My mother imagined me going to the best schools in America, even though she wasn’t rich. In America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential. And Cornell is one of the best schools in the world, not only of because it is a power research house with Nobel prize laureate professors, not only because of the size of its endowment or the height of the clock tower. Our pride today is based on a very simple premise stated by our great founder Ezra Cornell: “Any person can find instruction in any study”. What he meant was any person regardless of race or religion, social class, or gender could attend Cornell--at attitude that was many decades ahead of the other schools. I am aware that my mothers dream has been accomplished today. I stand here grateful for the values that she and my grandmother thought me, to never surrender and to keep moving forward despite the odds. My mother’s dream also lives on in my beloved daughter Valentina, who thanks to this opportunity is also attending one of the finest public schools in the land of the free. Greater things are yet to come and greater things are still to be done. I see a near revival led by the people sitting in this room today, leveraging their experience at Cornell in order to use their knowledge, skills, energy and hope to stand against corruption, thrive with excellence and despise government inefficiencies—so that more countries can became more democratic and better governed, so more people can have the opportunity to live their dreams –like you and me - in a free society. I want to close my remarks with 3 suggestions from a poster that my lovely wife Karla [look at Karla] had put up in our apartment, addressed particularly to our daughter Valentina who is the light of our life: Be the hope for the hopeless Be the peace for the restless Be the light in the darkness Strength is for service not status. Each one of us needs to look for the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, how can I help? Thank you, thank you very much and God bless you all. Dana Westgren Luis Javier Castro Roberto Artavia Loría Jose Aguilar Jose Aguilar Berrocal Rafi Sherzad Ivi Demi Maggie Yundi Yang Abhinav Pandya Rafael Ortiz CalvoGaby Saborio Ana Ruth De Zamora Andrea Zamora Marco Obon Pedro Muñoz Marco Vinicio Ruiz Gutiérrez Juan Carlos Barahona Juan Pablo Gómez Tití Uribe Daniel Uribe Marianela Herrera Tina Nabatchi Tití Uribe
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 01:34:38 +0000
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