Commencement speaker stresses power of choice
”Destiny is not a matter of chance, it’s a matter of choice.”
Every day that Laura Ellsworth walks into her office at Jones Day in Pittsburgh at 7 a.m., she sees that quote by Jeremy Kitson taped above her desk.
The quote is not only her inspiration for her speech during Waynesburg University’s commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 18, but it is her inspiration for life, a certain power that has existed in all of us since the dawn of time: the power of choice.
”The theme of the remark is that everything has happened to us in life involves our choice, how we choose to react to it, how we choose to find ourselves in the first place, and it is talking about different stories in my own life that has helped me understand the power of choice that lies within all of us,” said Ellsworth.
Ellsworth did not live a normal life growing up, probably because her father wasn’t a normal dad. A world famous doctor who Ellsworth said was the “top man in his particular field in the world,” her house was consistently filed with some recognizable names.
”We grew up in New York and he had a lot of fancy friends–Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra–I grew up with them as my Uncle Bob and Uncle Frank,” said Ellsworth.
While a variety of talented individuals were around Ellsworth when she was younger, the one that she looked up to the most was the one she shared a bloodline with. To Ellsworth, her father was the one who showed her just how powerful choices could be.
One day, when her dad was in his office, she walked in on him looking over a pile of resumes for a fellowship to work with him. While his head was in his hands, she looked down at the resumes, which all had lines of A-pluses from prestigious universities and colleges around the country, and she asked, “Wow! What’s your problem? These look amazing.”
”You don’t understand,” her father responded. “I work with a disease where 80 percent of the children die. I’m looking at these people, and I’m having trouble finding anyone who’s ever failed.”
His response was odd. Why would he want someone who has experience with failure?
”When 80 percent of your patients are going to die no matter what you do, if you have never failed that will destroy you; and you won’t be able to do what I do if you haven’t experienced failure and learn how to overcome it,” he answered her.
His answer shocked Ellsworth initially. She said that day she learned that great accomplishment could come from choosing how you deal with failure.
”If you choose to deal with it in a way that makes you stronger and better and able to deal with life or challenges, you will ultimately be able to do greater things, because great things are really hard, and you will inevitably fail at great things,” said Ellsworth. “But if you learn to grow from that and choose to do it again, and you choose to make changes in yourself as a result from you failures, you will ultimately be able to achieve great things and, more importantly, you will never be able to do them had you not failed in the first place.”
While she was studying to get her Bachelors degree at Princeton University, a very enticing offer came Ellsworth’s way.
Ellsworth was studying theatre at the time, and was approached by someone for a role on a soap opera.
After initially wanting to take it, Ellsworth’s dad quickly brought her dream back to reality.
”I went home and reported to my dad that I’m going to go be on that soap opera, and he said he didn’t pay that kind of money so I could have our years of Princeton so you can be on TV,” said Ellsworth. “He said to go to law school and see how it goes, because I could always be on TV. So for 20 years after, when I’d have a really bad day at work and I’d pop on the TV, there would be my character. But in the long run, I’m glad I got it right.”
After turning it down and graduating from Princeton, Ellsworth made another crucial choice that would change the course of her life.
She moved to Pittsburgh with her boyfriend at the time – the man is now her husband – and applied to law school for what she said was a lack of anything better to do.
”I got to Pittsburgh, and on the first day of law school I opened the law book and I was just blown away. I found my passion that day, just by coincidence,” said Ellsworth. “So that day I made the choice that this is what I was going to do with my life, and here I am over 40 years later doing something that I never saw myself doing prior to that self discovery.”
Since then, Ellsworth received her juris doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh, graduating magna cum laude in 1983.
Ellsworth joined Jones Day, an elite international law firm, in 1992, and is now the partner in charge of their Pittsburgh office. She also serves as the vice chair of the board of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and on the boards of three other organizations.
In 2008, Ellsworth was named one of Pennsylvania’s “Best 50 Women in Business” and currently is involved extensively in electronic discovery, serving on the Jones Day e-Discovery Committee.
Ellsworth said she chose Waynesburg because she saw a lot of herself in the university’s students after working with them at various points in her life.
”You can choose to do something big in the world; don’t be afraid of doing something big. Sometimes, it’s that joy and conviction that you can do anything, it’s that power and personality that can really change things, and I’ve seen that 100 times in students at Waynesburg,” said Ellsworth. “There are a lot of scholastic organizations I could choose to get involved in, and the reason I’ve been so captivated by Waynesburg is because Waynesburg students have an amazing personal power, a spark, a very quiet conviction. I’ve seen it with such consistency in the students that I’ve met from the university that I believe there are people there who are like me; someone who no matter what it takes, they’re going to [succeed].”