St. Lawrence Geology Alumni
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St. Lawrence University Commencement
May 18, 2008
Mark
Erickson and Carol Newell '79 after the ceremony
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President Sullivan,
Mark Erickson and Aileen O'Donohue present
Honorary degree & hood Carol Newell '79
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Your heart and your mind have always been in synchrony
with the natural world. A geology major at St. Lawrence, you have
founded several philanthropic foundations whose focus is the ways in
which we can work in closer harmony with that world, and with each
other.
In 1991, you founded the Sage Foundation, which
developed and designed environmental education programs used in more
than 300 British Columbia schools; the foundation continues to promote
leadership and conservation programs including the Hollyhock Leadership
Institute. In that same year, you also founded the Endswell
Foundation, which makes grants to grass-roots environmental
conservation issues, leadership development and capacity-building in
British Columbia. That foundation has helped start and support
the Tides Canada Foundation, which has awarded grants of more than $36
million to develop funding for environmental sustainability and social
change. In 1994, you co-founded Renewal Partners Company, which
provides seed capital investments and networking to fledgling
businesses promoting a sustainable economy.
Your organizations have played instrumental roles in
several significant environmental initiatives, including the successful
preservation of the Tatsenshini – Alsek Park, which became the final
part of a bi-national UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the conservation
of the Great Bear Rainforest, a 21-million-acre coastal temperate
rainforest in British Columbia. You have placed over $60 million in
organizations, individuals and businesses that are working on
sustainable economic development and social justice throughout Canada,
and encouraged others to apply their resources toward social change.
In recognition of your pioneering charitable work and
social investing, you were accorded one of Canada’s highest honors in
2007, when you were appointed a member of the Order of Canada.
Also in 2007, you were named a recipient of the inaugural award for BC
Women from the Minerva Foundation.
St. Lawrence has recently made environmental
sustainability one of its core principles. For your descant voice
in the chorus of humanity, a voice singing the songs of Mother Earth,
your alma mater is proud to award you the degree Doctor of Humane
Letters, honoris causa.
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Carol Newell address at St. Lawrence
University Commencement May 17, 2008
From "http://www.stlawu.edu/commence/newell_speech.html"
Thank you so much for this wonderful recognition.
To say that I am amazed to be receiving an honorary degree is truly an
understatement. I see myself more as an independent thinker than
a scholar. So, I give thanks to SLU, the faculty, and fellow
students who year after year helped to engender independent
thinking!
Many of you will now begin your professional work lives, and a big
focus of that will be on making money. And, here I am being
honored for giving most of mine away! Or more accurately, for granting
and investing and leveraging it in ways that maximize many kinds of
returns, not just financial ones.
Why have I done this? I wanted to stimulate change.
I had far more money than I needed, so I decided to devote the rest to
a purpose that had more meaning to me than simply making more money. I
called it my Mission Money, and my mission was to stimulate a socially
just and environmentally sustainable economy and way of life in British
Columbia, Canada. I focused on one region to maximize
impact, to help build community, and because it was the place I loved.
My time at St. Lawrence prepared me for what has become my life work in
ways I couldn’t have anticipated. It was here, studying geology,
and puzzling through folds and faults and layers upon layers upon
layers - laid down through millions of years of earth history - that I
fell in love with the earth and succumbed to a perpetual awe with the
beauty and the mystery of this planet.
And these were just the rocks!
But those rocks got me out onto the land where I saw living nature,
with it’s profoundly complex and interconnected systems - thriving
because of it’s diversity - and I experienced the beauty of this planet
in a way that has sustained me and inspired me ever since.
In our madcap world, I wonder how often do we ever really take a moment
to be grateful for all this planet does for us? Let’s right now,
together, say a great big, resounding, “Thank you Planet Earth! “
I think she needs to hear that every now and then.
Because really, when you think of it, the earth is the mother of us
all. Yet we often take advantage of her generosity, and ravage
her beauty. We forget the natural cycle of replenishment –
like the trees that take up nutrients from the soil, transform them to
make leaves, and then offer those leaves back to the earth to decompose
and begin another cycle.
Nature, without fail, recycles her riches.
Humans …tend to move riches along a linear path.
Soon we will have depleted her reserves and beaten her down so she has
nothing left to give. But really, there is no
wealth but life.
I don’t have to tell you that the planet is in bad shape. The
time when we can turn things around is running short. The United
Nations Environmental Program observes that there is, and I
quote: “a remarkable lack of urgency” to reverse these trends.
However, I feel a sense of urgency. As a culture, we are living
beyond our means on this planet.
A Cree Nation saying cuts to the chase:
In the end,
When the trees are gone
When the potable water is gone
When the fish are gone and the soil is all washed and blown away…
…we can’t eat money.
We live in a culture that focuses extravagant attention on building
capital. We used to strive to become millionaires – now a billion is
the new standard. Rapid and exponential growth …on a planet with
limits.
At some reasonable point along the personal wealth continuum, I have to
ask,we build capital …to what end, and for what purpose?
Well, I think we can Re-Purpose Money. I think that individuals and
institutions can invest and deploy money - quite consciously as a fuel,
a catalyst – to help restore the health of the planet, and
re-connection between ourselves. We can go beyond
philanthropy, beyond business. We can build on the synergy
between the two sectors and integrate them, so they might inform one
another creating a blended best of both worlds.
But it’s not just money that we need to harness.
In the last decade alone, we have pooled massive intellectual capital,
creative capital, and now with the web, connectivity capital, as well
as those huge pools of money. We’re bursting with
potential. Let’s put it to use – now.
Imagine a world with this incredible genuine wealth focused and
harnessed to a shared goal, where we can use our hearts and minds and
assets of all varieties to help shift this world back on to a course
that supports everyone and all things for unlimited generations to
come.
We can grow philanthropic and investment sectors, social and
institutional sectors, even entertainment sectors that are all so
integrated, so organically intertwined, and co-creative, that we can
actually begin to shift the orientation and intention of our dollars –
and our life energy - from simply making more, to making better.
What a breath of fresh air.
Can you imagine coming together around health and happiness and helping
one another instead of consumption? I think it is time for a
renaissance, a new renaissance, of life-affirming initiatives.
My hope is that you go on to inspire all the organizations you touch to
rise to this challenge. May yours be the generation that gets to bring
their children up in a bright new age of co-creation and
collaboration, and of renewed respect for the importance of life energy
and it’s natural diversity.
Thank you so much for the great honour of sharing your day with me
today. I know that each of your unique perspectives and talents
will add to the future in profound and important ways. Dont be
afraid to question the status quo. That’s how change
happens.
And stop every now and then to smell those gorgeous roses. I’m
not kidding! Good Luck!
- Announcement of Carol Newell to receive Honorary
Degree
- SLU Main
Commencement Web Page
- Link to Carol Newell's speech at SLU Web Page
- Link to Carol
Newell's
biography from the Commencement Program at SLU Web Page
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Photo from SLU Web Site
Other photos courtesy of J.M. Erickson
Last Updated:
July 2, 2008
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