Whatever your talent or ambition, Harrison Ford has a simple charge: Put it to work.
The actor and Conservation International vice chair delivered that message Monday as commencement speaker at Arizona State University. The university had good reason to call: It recently launched the Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures in partnership with Conservation International, creating a training ground for the next generation of conservation leaders.
To the graduating class, Ford spoke of finding purpose to match your passion. His came relatively late in life, during a chance encounter with Conservation International that changed his worldview and his role as a storyteller.
“I hadn't found purpose higher than my job yet,” he said. “That changed in the late ’80s. I was living in Wyoming, and I was impressed by a group of people that I met there who had recently formed a nonprofit called Conservation International.”
For Ford, that clarity of purpose came from nature.
“A healthy natural world provides free services to mankind that we cannot provide for ourselves. Oxygen in the air we breathe. Pollinators for our crops. Fresh water and carbon capture from our forests, wetlands and ocean. Medicines present and future from the rainforest. They had their heads in the sky and their feet in the mud. And they encouraged me to join them.”
There it was, he told the graduates. “Purpose. A place to put my passion for storytelling to work.”
For a generation that grew up on extinction timelines and climate countdowns, he didn't soften the message.
“The world you're stepping into, the world my generation left you, is a real mess,” he said. “There are opportunities in the kind of lives we live. So find a place for yourself. Build something that didn't exist yesterday. Stand up for someone who can't stand up for themselves. Bring people together who weren't talking before. That's leadership. That's what moves the needle.”
Watch the full address here.
