In this inspiring commencement address, Trey Traviesa, member of the Busch School Board of Visitors, invites graduates to see their careers not merely as professional pursuits but as sacred callings. His message reflects the very heart of the Busch School’s mission: to form principled business leaders who build both successful enterprises and the Kingdom of God.
It’s an honor to be with you today at THE Catholic University of America, Busch School of Business - an institution where faith, reason, and enterprise form a unique triple helix thread that defines the Busch School curriculum, community and culture.
Graduates, today marks more than the end of an academic journey. Today marks more than the beginning of your career journey. Yesterday you studied. Today, you go to work. I hope in my brief comments to persuade you that what is important now, vital even, is that you see today not simply as the beginning of a life of work, but that you see today as the beginning of the sanctification of your life through work.
As St. Josemaría Escrivá shared in a homily, Your ordinary contact with God takes place where your fellow men (and women), your yearnings, your work, and your affections are. It takes place in your everyday life. In other words...your work - your business decisions, your leadership, your risks and responsibilities - can be made sacred. Your desk – as a metaphor for your entire professional platform -- can be an altar.
Viewed this way, work is never toil. It was not created to be toil. Rather, your work takes on the supernatural purpose for which all work is created, and work – even through the tough times and setbacks, becomes a great source of dignity and joy in your life. But it gets better. Through that joy, lived visibly in the middle of the world of your work in business, you can inspire others to see the life of Christ within you that powers every interaction, reaction and decision and that draws others to you as successful leaders and to Him as the Way.
In my experience, this disposition toward work – discovered through prayer and formation - offers a profound, too secret dividend...it is that one who really sees and embraces work this way finds deep stores of incremental and differentiated motivation, creativity and precision that catalyze professional, even financial, success, and maximize personal fulfillment. This is the way to work and this is also the only way to truly win.
My grandfather was a devout Christian and an accomplished entrepreneur. When I was your age, he observed in me a fiery, high-energy young man intent on building a successful business career but needing the right framework to guide my motivation. He sat me down one day and redefined my understanding of winning in business. He said that times will come when as a businessperson in a deal-making opportunity, you will have the disproportionate advantage such that you can secure for yourself a complete win and secure for another their complete loss. His advice, don’t ever take it. Even when you don’t have to, seek, find and secure the win-win. Why, I asked? Because when you do business this way, you will gain a valuable reputation as a businessperson who creates value not just for yourself, but for everyone. And then everyone will want to do business with you. He persuaded me that day that this “both/and” Golden Rule of deal-making is not only the right thing to do but that it becomes a powerful business advantage across the span of a career. You will be trusted, he said. And trusted people are always more successful (and happier) over time that distrusted people. He was teaching me virtue in business.
And there’s a bonus, he said. You actually feel better at the end of every deal. I have come to believe that this sage advice actually describes the simple way the Holy Spirit seeks to work through us in business to attract people through our business dealings to Him. St. Josemaria also wrote something in this vein. May your behavior and your conversation be such that everyone who sees or hears you can say: This man/this woman reads the life of Jesus Christ.
Skeptical? I’ll offer the best personal proof I have. Nine years ago, I negotiated a deal to buy my company for $ 2.5M (all the money I could put together). The business was failing, and I had a lot of leverage but, guided by the words of my grandfather, I negotiated a win-win deal with the owners. None of us got everything we wanted. None of us got nothing we wanted. We all got enough of what we wanted. Fast forward to today, this company is a national market leader and a super-billion $ enterprise. Through this enterprise, my investors win. My partners win. Most of all my 1,100 employees – all of whom are owners – win. I can evidence for you, with hundreds of examples over these nine years, that there is no way this moment – this supernatural level of “ROI” – ever arrives if nine years ago, I listened to the wrong voice in my head and made myself the only winner. This is the profound gift of my grandfather’s counsel; To always strive to be the 1st servant in the Parable of the Talents. To be one who creates virtuous value.
At the Busch School, you have been blessed to learn this -- you have learned that winning in business is not merely about markets and margins, but about people - about service, community, and the common good. In a business world often tempted by shortcuts, interrupted by noise, and defined by empty ambition, you carry with you special understanding, far more powerful than a resume or a degree: you carry the light of faith and the compass of virtue ... and you carry them into the world of business. I submit to you that this understanding - uniquely acquired at the Busch School - will prove to be your greatest career, and indeed life, asset.
Faith informs us why this is the truth – because every co-worker, boss, employee and counterparty is made in the image of God. Similarly, Virtue, which represents truth and trust, dictates that success without it is not success at all.
Faith informs us why this is the truth – because every co-worker, boss, employee and counterparty is made in the image of God.
I can assure you that if authentically and piously embraced in your business work, this faith-driven-virtue mindset increases empathy and humility. Through empathy and humility, we gain insight, and through insight, we gain advantage – to win and to do good.
So, I will leave you praying for two things for each of you in my daily prayers. One, that faith be your foundation and virtue be your voice as you go to work to secure business success. Two, that super-charged by faith and virtue, you go forth in fortitude as ethical entrepreneurs, just managers and courageous leaders who build valuable companies that also build up the Kingdom of God, because this is why you were put here; To co-create the kingdom, in the singular way your work – and your prayer - will help you discover.
Congratulations. May God bless, guide and vivify your daily work in business such that it serves to sanctify every single day of your very successful life.
Holy Mary, our hope and seed of wisdom, pray for us. Thank you.
