A Time To Celebrate: As with every year, Class Day and Commencement were filled with many memorable moments. Among the general scenes of pomp and pageantry were (middle) the faculty recipients of the Class of 2011’s awards for excellence in teaching, Professors Marshall, Kaufman, Frei, Elberse, and Malhotra. Pictured at lower right are this year’s Leadership Fellows.

Photographs by Russ Campbell

Every new day is a good day for Kathy Giusti (MBA ’85) since that morning in 1996 when her oncologist took her hand, looked her in the eye, and told her to get her life in order because she was going to die within three years. So 15 years later, standing before 936 graduating MBAs, family, and friends on a sunny May afternoon full of hope and promise, Class Day speaker Giusti had as much to celebrate as her audience, as well as hard-won wisdom to impart about purpose and meaning in one’s life.

A pharmaceutical executive at the time of her diagnosis with multiple myeloma, an incurable, rare, and little-researched blood cancer, Giusti went on to found the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium. The two organizations have greatly streamlined the sometimes glacial pace and antiquated norms of cancer research; doubled patients’ lifespans; and raised in excess of $165 million for research. Giusti urged graduates to set goals and build a plan around their passion; choose colleagues wisely; take risks; and persevere. Most importantly, she said, “Don’t wait for a crisis to do something amazing with your life. Ask yourself today, how can I make a difference?”

Giusti’s remarks were preceded by those of student speaker Jacquie Sandberg (MBA ’11) and by the hon-oring of five faculty members with student-voted awards for teaching excellence: Associate Professor Anita Elberse (Strategic Marketing in Creative Industries), Professor Frances Frei (TOM), Senior Lecturer Stephen Kaufman (TOM), Professor Deepak Malhotra (Negotiation), and Professor Paul Marshall (Entrepreneurial Management in a Turnaround Environment).

The following day, at the School’s 101st Commencement, Dean Nitin Nohria told the graduates (including 9 DBAs and 11 PhDs), “Our faculty, students, and alumni are called upon to help solve the world’s most intractable problems because society at large believes that this institution is home to individuals of competence and character. So it has been. So it is. And so it must always be.”

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