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Speaker to ASU grads: 'Find what you love'

• More than 300 Albany State students receive degrees during the university's spring commencement ceremony.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — As more than 330 of Albany's best and brightest donned academic regalia to collect their hard-earned degrees Saturday, the founder of a world renowned philanthropic fundraiser urged them to carve their own niche in life and to not be chained to roles society may have for them.

A total of 331 Albany State students received degrees Saturday morning during the university's spring commencement ceremony, capping years of hard work, ASU President Everette Freeman said.

The keynote speaker for the event, Dan Palotta, founder of the Los Angeles-based Palotta Teamworks, has raised more than a half-billion dollars for a variety of causes including AIDS research and possible breast cancer cures since he donned his robe and mortarboard at Harvard.

Saturday, he urged ASU graduates to challenge the roles has created for them and to dare to find the thing they love. Palotta told the class that when his time at Harvard was nearly up, he was struggling to choose a path in life. He said that while he knew the direction many of his colleagues would likely trod, he felt the need to do something big. To find "that big idea that would change the world," he said.

That idea came in the form of a cross-country bike ride with 39 of his classmates to raise money for AIDS research. The first AIDS ride, as they would late become known, raised thousands and was one of the first major fundraisers to draw attention to the growing epidemic.

Since then, Palotta and his team, which is comprised of more than 150 employees, have raised more than $300 million for AIDS and breast cancer research and more than a half billion dollars for various other charities by creating what Palotta said were new "paradigms" that continue to change the way people think about raising money.

Saturday, Palotta spoke of the idea of breaking free of the often mundane, mind-numbing jobs that he said many of the graduates were expecting to find by thinking big and being determined to change the world.

"When I was in college I had no idea to do what I wanted," Palotta said. "But the truth is, I was limiting myself. I wasn't thinking big enough because that's the way society wanted me to think. To change the world, you have to create a new way of thinking."

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