our commencement speaker, Dr. Tim Cook.

[cheers and applause]

Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, GW.

[cheers and applause]

Thank you very much, President Knapp, for that kind intro.

Alex, trustees, faculty and deans of the university,

my fellow honorees,

and especially you, the class of 2015. Yes.

[applause]

Congratulations to you, to your family,

to your friends that are attending today's ceremony.

You made it.

It's a privilege, a rare privilege of a lifetime

to be with you today.

And I can't thank you enough for making me an honorary Colonel.

[applause]

Before I begin today,

they asked me to make a standard announcement.

You've heard this before,

about silencing your phones.

[laughter]

So those of you with an iPhone,

just place it in silent mode.

If you don't have an iPhone,

please pass it to the center aisle.

[laughter]

Apple has a world-class recycling program.

[laughter]

[applause]

You know, this is really an amazing place.

And for a lot of you, I'm sure that being here in Washington,

the very center of our democracy,

was a big draw when you were choosing which school to go to.

This place has a powerful pull.

It was here that Dr. Martin Luther King

challenged Americans to make real

the promises of democracy,

to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

And it was here

that President Ronald Reagan called on us

to believe in ourselves

and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds.

I'd like to start this morning

by telling you about my first visit here.

In the summer of 1977, yes, I'm a little old,

I was 16 years old and living in Robertsdale,

the small town in southern Alabama that I grew up in.

At the end of my junior year of high school,

I'd won an essay contest

sponsored by the National Rural Electric Association.

I can't remember what that essay was about.

But what I do remember very clearly

is writing it by hand, draft after draft after draft.

Typewriters were very expensive,

and my family could not afford one.

I was one of two kids from Baldwin County

that was chosen to go to Washington

along with hundreds of other kids across the country.

Before we left, the Alabama delegation

took a trip to our state capitol in Montgomery

for a meeting with the governor.

The governor's name was George C. Wallace,

the same George Wallace who, in 1963,

stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama

to block African-Americans from enrolling.

Wallace embraced the evils of segregation.

He pitted whites against blacks, the South against the North,

the working class against the so-called elites.

Meeting my governor was not an honor for me.

My heroes in life were Dr. Martin Luther King

and Robert F. Kennedy, who had fought

against the very things that Wallace stood for.

Keep in mind that I grew up or when I grew up,

I grew up in a place where King and Kennedy

were not exactly held in high esteem.

When I was a kid, the South was still coming to grips

with its history.

My textbooks even said

the Civil War was about states' rights.

They barely mentioned slavery.

So I had to figure out for myself

what was right and true.

It was a search.

It was a process.

It drew on the moral sense that I'd learned from my parents

and in church and in my own heart

and led me on my own journey of discovery.

I found books in the public library

that they probably didn't know they had.

They all pointed to the fact that Wallace was wrong,

that injustices like segregation have no place in our world,

that equality is a right.

[cheers and applause]

As I said, I was only 16 when I met Governor Wallace,

so I shook his hand as we were expected to do.

But shaking his hand felt like a betrayal of my own beliefs.

It felt wrong,

like I was selling a piece of my soul.

From Montgomery, we flew to Washington.

It was the first time I had ever been on an airplane.

In fact, it was the first time

I'd ever traveled out of the South.

On June 15, 1977, I was one of 900 high schoolers

greeted by the new president, President Jimmy Carter,

on the south lawn of the White House,

right there on the other side of the ellipse.

I was one of the lucky ones who got to shake his hand.

Carter saw "Baldwin County" on my name tag that day

and stopped to speak with me.

He wanted to know how people were doing

after the rash of storms that had struck Alabama that year.

Carter was kind and compassionate.

He held the most powerful job in the world,

but he had not sacrificed any of his humanity.

I felt proud that he was president,

and I felt proud that he was from the South.

In the space of a week, I had come face-to-face

with two men who had guaranteed themselves a place in history

They came from the same region.

They were from the same political party.

They were both governors of adjoining states.

But they looked at the world in very different ways.

It was clear to me

that one was right and one was wrong.

Wallace had built his political career

by exploiting divisions between us.

Carter's message, on the other hand,

was that we are all bond together, every one of us.

Each had made a journey

that led them to the values that they lived by,

but it wasn't just about their experiences

or their circumstances;

it had to come from within.

My own journey in life was just beginning.

I hadn't even applied for college yet at that point.

For you graduates, the process of discovering yourself,

of inventing yourself, of reinventing yourself

is about to begin in earnest.

It's about finding your values and committing to live by them.

You have to find your North Star.

And that means choices.

Some are easy.

Some are hard.

And some will make you question everything.

20 years after my visit to Washington,

I met someone who made me question everything,

who upended all of my assumptions

in the very best way.

That was Steve Jobs.

[cheers and applause]

Steve had built a successful company,

he had been sent away,

and he returned to find it in ruins.

He didn't know it at the time,

but he was about to dedicate the rest of his life

to rescuing it and leading it to heights

greater than anyone could ever imagine.

Anyone, that is, except for Steve.

Most people have forgotten, but in 1997 and early 1998,

Apple had been adrift for years, rudderless.

But Steve thought Apple could be great again,

and he wanted to know if I'd like to help.

His vision for Apple

was a company that turned powerful technology

into tools that were easy to use,

tools that would help people realize their dreams

and change the world for the better.

I had studied to be an engineer and earned an MBA.

I was trained to be pragmatic, a problem solver.

Now I found myself sitting before and listening to this very animated 40-something guy

with visions of changing the world.

It was not what I had expected.

You see, when it came to my career,

in 1998, I was also adrift, rudderless.

I knew who I was in my personal life,

and I kept my eye on my North Star,

my responsibility to do good for someone else other than myself

But at work, well,

I always figured that work was work.

Values had their place,

and, yes, there were things that I wanted to change about the world

but I thought I had to do that on my own time,

not in the office.

Steve didn't see it that way.

He was an idealist.

And in that way, he reminded me of how I felt as a teenager.

In that first meeting, he convinced me

that if we worked hard and made great products,

we, too, could help change the world.

And to my surprise, I was hooked.

I took the job and changed my life.

It's been 17 years, and I have never once looked back.

At Apple, we believe the work should be more

than just about improving your own self.

It's about improving the lives of others as well.

Our products do amazing things.

And just as Steve envisioned,

they empower people all over the world--

people who are blind

and need information read to them because they can't see the screen,

people for whom technology is a lifeline

because they're isolated by distance or disability,

people who witness injustice and want to expose it,

and now they can,

because they have a camera in their pocket all the time.

[cheers and applause]

Our commitment goes beyond the products themselves

to how they're made,

to our impact on the environment,

to the role we play in demanding and promoting equality

and in improving education.

We believe that a company that has values and acts on them

can really change the world.

And an individual can too.

That can be you.

That must be you.

Graduates, your values matter.

They are your North Star.

And work takes on new meaning

when you feel you're pointed in the right direction.

Otherwise, it's just a job,

and life is too short for that.

We need the best and brightest of your generation

to lead in government and in business,

in the science and in the arts,

in journalism and in academia.

There's honor in all of these pursuits.

And there's opportunity to do work

that's infused with moral purpose.

You don't have to choose

between doing good and doing well.

It's a false choice, today more than ever.

Your challenge is to find work that pays the rent,

puts food on the table,

and lets you do what is right and good and just.

[applause]

So find your North Star.

Let it guide you in life and work

and in your life's work.

Now, I suspect

some of you aren't buying this.

[laughter]

I won't take it personally.

It's no surprise that people are skeptical,

especially here in Washington,

where these days, you've got plenty of reason to be.

And a healthy amount of skepticism is fine,

though too often in this town, it turns to cynicism,

to the idea that no matter who's talking