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Moving Day 2012
As Dean Nitin Nohria told the audience on Baker Lawn on May 23, this year’s Class Day was an occasion for both celebration and mourning. Just days earlier, Nathan “Nate” Bihlmaier (MBA 2012) had passed away in a tragic accident. Throughout the afternoon, speaker after speaker invoked his memory and expressed condolences to his family, whose wish was that the ceremonies proceed as planned. “I join all of you in grieving for your classmate,” Distinguished Speaker Sheryl Sandberg (MBA 1995), COO of Facebook, told the gathering upon taking the podium.
Sandberg proposed to the graduates that they think of their professional progress in terms of an unusual metaphor: not as a ladder but as a jungle gym, featuring the kind of counterintuitive career shifts she herself had often made. “Move sideways, move down, move off,” Sandberg said. “Do real work. Take a sales quota, a line job, an ops job; don’t plan too much; and don’t expect a direct climb.” During this process, she urged graduates to speak the truth as well as seek it, and to remain true to their authentic selves, including at the workplace. She concluded with a call for women to aspire to the highest professional levels, in order to close the leadership gap, a goal that men, she noted, should help women realize. “Give us a world where half our homes are run by men and half our institutions are run by women,” Sandberg concluded. “I’m pretty sure that would be a better world.”
Prior to Sandberg’s talk, student speaker Andrew Sternlight (MBA 2012) related how his bout with cancer taught him profound lessons about community, family, and purpose. “With your extraordinary talents, give completely of yourselves to your community and embrace your capacity to love,” Sternlight urged his classmates. “Figure out your purpose and pursue it with everything you have.”
Another highlight of the afternoon was the presentation of faculty teaching awards, as voted by the Class of 2012. Honored for classroom excellence and for enhancing the learning experience at HBS were Professors Rawi Abdelal (BGIE), Benjamin Esty (Finance), Jan Rivkin (Strategy), and Tom Nicholas (Entrepreneurial Management).
At the School’s 102nd graduation on the following day, with Nate Bihlmaier’s wife, Nancy, and family present to receive his diploma, Dean Nohria awarded 876 MBA, 7 DBA, and 10 PhD degrees, urging graduates “to keep in mind generosity, grace, and gratitude as yardsticks.”
The Nate Bihlmaier Memorial Fund, an education savings plan for Nate and Nancy's child, has been established by his sectionmates. For information, contact Wes Janson (MBA 2012) at wjanson@mba2012.hbs.edu.
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