“I navigated the world of top leadership and corporate governance as fascinating as Wonderland with its Mad Hatter Tea Parties, Cheshire Cats and Queens of Hearts,” Tang, principal at Tangent2Cogent, board chairman of NowDiagnostics Inc., and former chairman, president and CEO of Orasure Technologies, said.
He told graduates his career was “like a game of leapfrog governed by quantum physics.” While things may seem crazy and unpredictable at times, his career wouldn’t have ended up the way it did without its unconventional pivots, he said.
“One or both of the frogs can appear anytime, anywhere, in different places,” Tang said. “This is how your career can be—full of surprises and exciting challenges, which only make sense to you.”
He told graduates their path very likely won’t be a straight line, like his college roommate, who just retired after 42 years at AT&T, but it will be just fine to have a career journey like his.
Tang’s address, as rain fell at Goodman Stadium, opened Lehigh’s 156th Commencement Weekend. The university conferred 548 master’s degrees and 123 doctoral degrees for the Class of 2024 prior to Saturday evening’s Baccalaureate and Sunday morning’s undergraduate Commencement. Those totals include the first cohort of master’s graduates from Lehigh’s College of Health.
As Tang began speaking to graduates, he highlighted three types of graduation speakers: superstars, pioneers and everyday humans.
CJ McCollum, Lehigh’s undergraduate Commencement speaker last year, he said, was an example of a superstar. Scott Willoughby ’89, Sunday morning’s undergraduate Commencement speaker, is a pioneer. The everyday human? Tang said that’s him—“the sojourning graduate whose life resembles Forrest Gump’s incredulous path from football star to war hero to shrimp boat owner.”
In using another children’s story to help convey his remarks—Goldilocks and the Three Bears—Tang said those everyday humans are just like Baby Bear’s porridge.
“We're the ‘just right’ choice for oddly relatable postcards from the edge and maybe nothing more,” he said.
Despite coming from a privileged background—his grandfather and father both had Ph.D.s and his father and uncle both were awarded NASA Lifetime Achievement Awards—he said his Lehigh grad school journey was “extremely challenging.”
He saluted those who were first in their family to earn an advanced degree, especially those who are international students or a child of immigrants.
Tang said he was confident the graduates could do great things, as long as their degrees inspired them to learn more, they continued to invest their hard work in curiosity to change the world, and remained humble, because luck is key to success. He also shared what he called crucial insight that he learned during his career.
“Life is more than numbers,” Tang said. “It’s more than the number of working years, the amount of wealth, the accolades of career accomplishments,” Tang said. “It’s about leaving a legacy of kindness, compassion, empathy and service to higher causes. For you graduates, I hope you’ll find big ways and small ways to save the world and to savor the world.”