Welcome, everybody. Welcome. And please be seated. Please be seated. I'm Susan Collins, the Joan and Sanford Wilde Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and it was such a pleasure to meet so many of you yesterday at the Ford School's graduation open house. And it is truly an honor to welcome all of you here at Rackham Auditorium this afternoon for our 2016 commencement ceremony, truly a really special occasion. I'd like to begin by introducing the members of our platform party. With me on stage is our keynote commencement speaker, the legal director of Human Rights First and a distinguished alum of both the Ford School and the University of Michigan's Law School, Hardy Vue. Hardy, we are honored to have you here, and we look forward to your remarks a little later in the program. At stage right is writing instructor David Morse, who will be reading the names of our graduates as they cross the stage. And to David's left is Timothy Lynch, the university's vice president and general counsel. Well, officially Tim is here to represent the University of Michigan, but it is our great fortune to count Tim as among the friends of the Ford School, and we're really honored that he is joining us here today. Tim, welcome. We're joined as well by our two associate deans, Katherine Dominguez and Paula Lance, and also by Izair Henry, who has been elected by our graduating students to deliver the faculty address. And I'll say a bit more about each of them a little bit later. And finally, elected by their respective classmates to provide the student commencement addresses are soon to be Ford School MPP graduate, Grace Evans, and BA graduate, Alexis Farmer. Well, we're gathered here this evening to celebrate the achievements of these very, very special people who are sitting among us in caps and gowns. Our graduates wear the teal hoods and tassels that signify the field of their study, their coursework, their internships, their research, the field in which they've earned their degrees. That is the field of public policy. Well, that field, of course, is deeply familiar to the students, the faculty, the staff, the alumni of the Ford School. In fact, we've been pioneers in the study of public policy for over 100 years. We were the first program of its kind at our founding in 1914. And then in the late 1960s, the first school to bring rigorous social scientific methods to bear on deep brooded social problems. Today's graduates leave the Ford School prepared for careers tackling some of our world's most urgent and challenging and complex challenges. But I suspect that some of them are spending at least a little bit of time this weekend answering the question. Congratulations. But just what is a school of public policy anyway? So as dean, I am delighted to get this chance to tell the families and the friends who are gathered here a little bit about the Ford School, about why these students came here and about what they've accomplished and what we know that they will do in the world going forward. At its core, the Ford School's mission is to improve lives, to advance the human condition. Public policy is about the institutions, the understandings, the structures that we build together and that connect us together as a neighborhood, a nation, a global community. You might say that public policy is the scaffolding of society. And that might be easier to see looking back through history. Public policy from 10, 30, 100 years ago helped to shape the lives that we lead today. Public policy was instrumental in delivering America from the Great Depression, in rebuilding Europe after 1946, in radically reducing disease, providing safe food, protecting our environment, expanding civil and human rights. Public policy provides the infrastructure around which the modern day refugee crisis is being debated and managed around the world. And undertakings like these we know take time and take collaboration. They were and are actions rooted in the simple principles of decency, a principle that we cherish as central to the legacy of our namesake, President Gerald R. Ford. But yet, let's also be blunt. Because it was also public policy at work, just down the road in Flint, Michigan, where a generation will suffer the devastating permanent health impacts of lead poisoning from drinking water that they had every reason to expect should be safe. Indifferent or ill-equipped public servants, short-sighted accounting for costs and benefits, environmental injustices, that too was public policy. And so from Flint to Fukushima, our world's challenges are only becoming more urgent and more complex in speed, scale, scope, technological and demographic developments. All of these are dramatically shifting the ground beneath our feet. And we can all see and feel our world becoming smaller in some ways and more and more interconnected and changing at break next speed. So what do we do with these? How do we address these challenges? The solution, our bright hope for our future, is right here. It's among our Ford School students and alumni. And I believe that we have prepared these graduates to build careers that represent the very best of the field of public policy because we've provided our students with the analytic, creative and leadership skills to harness the complexities of the 21st century society. We teach our students to analyze complicated data sets, to evaluate benefits and costs, to speak and write clearly and persuasively, to think critically, ethically, and also compassionately. We teach them to recognize and incorporate multiple perspectives. As Lin-Manuel Miranda reminds us through the lyrics of Hamilton, it matters who gets invited to the room where it happens. We teach our students to craft and enact creative solutions where others might only see dead ends. And I have no doubt that our graduates will often be in those critical decision-making rules really making a difference. And I'm so proud of that. So that is our curriculum. That's the professional toolkit that our students take out into the world. And those are the tools also of business, finance and non-profit enterprise as well as the tools of the public sector. Our alumni are serving in public office, managing campaigns. They're helping reshape Detroit. They're leaders in the State Department, the Department of Education, International Aid Agencies, the National Science Foundation, DT Energy, Accenture, and so many, many more. Those sorts of careers, the talented and courageous people who will be tackling the big problems for the next half century, that's the group that you are joining now as alums of the Ford School. Our school is governed and led by its excellent faculty. Their connections across the university range from economics, political science, sociology, math, history, psychology, business, law, social work, education, public health, national resources, information, urban planning. And so the faculty expertise at the Ford School is both broad and deep. They're thoughtful, enthusiastic teachers and mentors. And they're actively engaged with critically important public policy challenges as well. To give just two examples from right here on the stage, Catherine Dominguez is an internationally known macroeconomist, one of the world's leading experts on global financial markets. Last summer, President Obama nominated Catherine to serve on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the nation's top monetary policymaking body. And Paula Lance has dedicated her career to improving population health and reducing inequalities in health. She's currently leading a major effort to provide timely, actionable policy research that will accelerate progress towards health equity. That engagement is as present throughout our faculty. Ford School Professor Susan Donarski saw years of research and persuasion come to fruition last year when the Department of Education took her recommendations and dramatically shortened the FAFSA to make it easier for low income youth to go to college. And Luke Schaefer's book, $2 a Day, Living on Almost Nothing in America, was recognized by the New York Times as among the 100 most notable books of the year and was just selected for the 2016 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism. Policy recommendations of Luke and his co-author inspired a $2 billion emergency aid initiative in President Obama's budget proposal. The Ford School's professional staff are also a source of our school's great strength. Today's graduates have been recruited, counseled and prepared for their careers by the work of our terrific staff team, a team that keeps the education, research, public service and engagement missions of the school all moving forward. And at this time I'd like to ask all of the Ford School faculty and staff who are here to please stand so that we can thank them. Please join me in thanking them for all that they do. Now speaking of people who deserve thanks, our audience tonight includes over 700 family members and friends, along with perhaps some 400 others who are tuned into our live web stream. Our graduates we know did not arrive at their accomplishments alone. They value the love and the support provided over the years by their families and friends. Graduates, please take this chance to thank your loved ones and to say how much you appreciate all they have and continue to do for you. Thank you so much. Now I'd like to talk a little bit to you about our graduates about what you have accomplished and what you've given back during your time at the Ford School. Let me start with our newest PhDs, six of whom will receive their doctoral hoods here tonight from their faculty advisors. You'll hear about their dissertation titles as they're hooded and see that their work represents an incredible range of issues, methodologies and disciplines. They'll leave the Ford School having already lined up work at Harvard, UC San Diego, Tulane, Mathematica and the departments of Housing and Urban Development and the Treasury. They are quite simply a truly amazing group and we could not be more proud of their accomplishments. 103 students will receive a master's degree tonight. They hail from eight different countries and between them they speak an astounding 28 different languages. This year our master's graduates raised over $12,000 for Save the Children's Syria and they did so with tremendous creativity. I have to say I especially enjoyed the Monday morning Top Chef tasting events. Thank you very much. They also founded a successful new student organization called Global Forties to give our many international students collegial support and a network and for that we're grateful as well. This is the cohort that translated economic principles into Dr. Seuss that speaks fluent GIF and that beat President Obama to Cuba. We were first. They will keep policy leaders on their toes and for that I say the more the better. Go at it. There are 64 students graduating today with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy and they have been part of the university, one of the university's finest liberal arts programs. In small classes with some of the University of Michigan's top faculty our BA curriculum trains students to think critically and across disciplines to understand policy challenges and to develop solutions. Our BA graduates include a Hopwood Award winner, 15 Phi Beta Kappas, 14 Angel Scholars and seven recipients of the MLK Junior Spirit Award. These students are truly the leaders and best across a wide variety of campus activities. Have we ever seen these BA students falter? Well, those of us who sat through the holiday skit, I suspect that many of them were cramming for finals instead of their rehearsals. They definitely built the midnight oil but perhaps didn't exactly start the fire during their special interpretation of what they believed to be a 1960 Billy Joel classic. The good news is we know you are all in for public policy and I and all of us applaud your priorities. Great job. Well taken together the classes of 2016 are serious students. They're hard workers, they're dedicated leaders. They have changed this place for the better, volunteering in large numbers and in so many different ways, welcoming incoming classes, serving on school committees, leading student organizations, supporting our public lecture series and much, much more. The classes of 2016 have been at the Ford School and the University during a time of increased focus on issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion. In fact, these students have actively led the way. They've shared and participated on campus-wide initiatives. Here at the Ford School, they led diversity summits and community conversations. They worked hard in the classroom to both speak and listen with respect for difference and several of them courageously shared their own personal experiences with race and racism on camera as part of an incredible documentary that students produced last year. In September, President Mark Schlissel announced a campus-wide strategic planning process to produce a five-year plan that will enhance diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the University and thanks in no small part to these graduates and the leadership that they have shown, our school was well positioned to move quickly and with authenticity on developing the Ford School strategic plan. It's something that I'm proud of that we have produced collectively and I'm also proud of the process we took to get there. And so, speaking directly to our special graduates, I'd like to say on behalf of the Ford School, thank you both collectively and thank you individually. It has been a true pleasure to work with you and to get to know you. I know that most of you may have very mixed feelings about what today represents. You'll miss your friends and classmates. You'll miss Jim Harbaugh's second season. You'll miss me hearing me announce my full dean's title. Perhaps most of all, you'll miss belting out Tina Turner power ballads during karaoke night at the circus. But despite all of those losses, today is also full of such promise. The promise of new work, new cities, new friends, new challenges, new opportunities to solve big important problems. Legendary activist and long-term Detroit or Grace Lee Boggs once said that and I quote, it is this exquisitely connected world in this exquisitely connected world. It is never a question of critical mass. It's always about critical connections.  You have made those critical connections here at Michigan. Nourish and maintain those connections. Our world needs the very best that you can accomplish together. Graduates, we are so proud of all that you've done and all that you will do. Congratulations and my very best wishes to the classes of 2016. Go blue. And now it is my great pleasure to introduce our commencement speaker, our own distinguished alumnus, Hardy View. Since graduating in 1997 from what was then simply known as the School of Public Policy and with a dual degree from Michigan law, Hardy has forged an incredible career in human rights law and policy. He is currently the legal director for the human rights first, an influential nonpartisan non-profit that Susan Rice has called a clarion voice in defense of human dignity and the rights and freedom of people everywhere. Hardy recently concluded a policy fellowship with Save the Children International in Amman, Jordan and there he handled child protection policy issues impacting Syrian refugee children living in Jordan. After earning his dual degrees from Michigan, Harvey enlisted in the Navy's JAG Corps and eventually went to work for a private law practice. In 2010, the D.C. Barr recognized him as its pro bono lawyer of the year for his litigation stemming from the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to juvenile detention impact litigation and asylum representation. Hardy is on the board of visitors of Duke Sanford School of Public Policy where he earned his bachelor's degree and it is truly an honor to welcome him to the podium. My mother would have loved that. My father would have submitted it to a fraud investigation. But good afternoon graduates, family members of graduates and throngs of adoring fans of graduates, Dean Collins, faculty, administrators, alumni and staff. It is comforting to return to the place where my graduate and law school days were spent and occasionally misspent. I remember finally the start of each semester when flush with financial aid cash, I called places like Amir's, Zingerman's and Ray's Red Hot's home. By semester's end these places seemed overhyped. Who needed fancy sandwiches and loaded hot dogs when one has found peace in the simple elegance of ramen noodles, saltines and craft macaroni and cheese. As a first-generation graduate student where my next meal was coming from was not my only struggle. I often felt like I had more than I could handle as I shuttled between our old public policy home in Lorch Hall and the law school quad just across at Tappan. I looked harried and harried. I felt beset and besieged. But I was never without support. This school and the friends I made here had my back. They along with my family helped me successfully navigate through my four years here. As I'm sure each of you graduates can attest whether it is parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, partners or children who take on the role of support in our lives without them this day would not be this day. And so to the families of today's graduates, one more time we applaud you. It is encouraging to see that this room has far more color on stage and in the audience than when I was here in May 1997. I'm a child of Brooklyn and Port-au-Prince. I've been a resident of Mexico and Jordan and I have soca, compas, hip hop, salsa and jazz coursing through my veins. Simply put I love me some diversity. So I would be remiss if I failed to tip my hat to the Dean, the faculty and administration for making this school of ours as a welcoming to those from Kinshasa as it is to those from Kalamazoo. In this audience today I see brown, black, white and every color in between and I'm proud to say that one color unifies all of us today. Go blue. So it should now be readily apparent to you that I'm a proud Michigan man. I'm also a lawyer, a former naval officer, an uncle, a human rights champion and an advocate. I advocate for children. It is exciting and perhaps a little nerve wracking to deliver the charge to this class of graduates because you see my charge is really an ask. I'm asking all of you graduates to do more. I'm asking you to do more, to make more a part of your daily professional nomenclature, to live and breathe and strive to do more. Why this ask? As Mayor Bloomberg alluded to early this morning, the world faces serious problems and we need serious people to solve those problems. I work at human rights first, a nonprofit that seeks to protect refugees. For us, the plight of children takes center stage on a regular basis. In summer 2014, our country saw surge of unaccompanied minors and families from Central America enter the United States. These children and families embarked on a treacherous journey north, fleeing persecution and violence to the south. They did so reluctantly, but knowing full well that his decision to stay was a decision to tempt death. When those families reached our country's borders with Mexico, our government's response was to detain these migrant families in jail-like settings where children manifest symptoms of depression, behavioral regression, and anxiety. When we cast our eyes overseas, there too the plight of children is precarious. The crisis in Syria makes that point all too well. In more than five years of war, the fighting in Syria has left an estimated 470,000 dead, more than one million injured, and driven 11.3 million from their homes. But the most vulnerable are the children. According to UNICEF, 8.4 million children, more than 80% of Syria's child population, has been affected by the conflict. In the face of these world problems, I am indeed asking you graduates to do more. Let's pause and keep it real for a moment. You don't know me, and I don't know you, or your stories or what lies ahead for this class of graduates. And yet, I'm asking you to do more. Perhaps some of you will lean back when I make that request, thinking, I have done more throughout this journey to this place, to this day. Some of you may lean in, eager to hear more defined with the pristine and explicit exactitude of a differential equation. I assure you that my great and Professor Carl Simon's class would certainly clearly establish that there was nothing pristine or exacting about my work in calculus or in any other subject where numbers were employed. Those of you leaning back, I need you to lean in because though ostensibly unfair, I'm going to ask you to do even more. And those of you leaning in, temper the enthusiasm, because what I have to say about doing more is as imprecise and amorphous as you'll know it when you see it. Some examples might help. Let me tell you the story of poor Joshua, who was the subject of an infamous case that reached the Supreme Court. When Joshua was three years old, the Wisconsin Department of Social Services suspected that he might be the victim of abuse by his father. When his father denied those allegations, the department pursued them no further. A year later, Joshua was admitted to a local hospital with bruises and abrasions. Joshua's treating physician suspected child abuse and notified the department. He was placed in the court's custody but was returned to his father after a child protection team determined that there was insufficient evidence to retain him in the court's custody. In the following seven months, Joshua was twice more treated by hospital emergency room personnel for injuries suspected to have been caused by child abuse. The department's caseworker observed and recorded numerous suspicious injuries during monthly visits and twice was told that Joshua was too sick to see her but determined that there was no basis for action. Four months later, Joshua's father beat four-year-old Joshua so severely that he fell into a life-threatening coma.  In its opinion in the case, the Supreme Court observed that the caseworker dutifully recorded these incidents in her files along with her continuing suspicions that someone in the household was physically abusing Joshua, but she did nothing more. She did nothing more. Joshua was just 36 years old when he died last fall. Joshua deserved more years. Joshua deserved more compassion. Joshua simply deserved more. About 50 miles north of here, Flint's residents continued to wrestle with the aftermath of a water crisis not of their own making, an opaque swirl of allegations and figure-pointing abounds while Flint's residents fear the lasting effects of lead on the city's youngest children. Watergate-like questions proliferate. Who knew what? When did they know it? Where were the policymakers charged with protecting the children? These questions have not yet fully given birth to transparency-inducing answers, but this much is already clear. Those children also deserved more. While Joshua's case was about negligently failing to do more, and the Flint case may be a cautionary tale of what happens when public officials intentionally fail to do more, there is also the good old run-of-the-mill, I'm just too passionate to step to stop and figure out what more really means kind of failure to do more. Let me illustrate that type of failure with a tale of my own experience when I served as a Navy JAG lawyer. If you've seen a few good men, which I have way too many times to admit in public, you know that a JAG is a military lawyer. One of my clients, a Navy sailor, was court-martialed for writing more than his fair share of bad checks, which he passed both on the base and throughout the city of Norfolk, Virginia. Eventually, he was caught, bled guilty, and sentenced to the naval prison, the brig. With just a few months left in the brig, the sailor contacted me to tell me that he needed to be released early because the woman who single-handedly raised him, his grandmother, was on her deathbed. He wanted to be with her when she died. While there was no clear legal basis for the early release he wanted, I was sympathetic to a model prisoner's desire to be with his dying grandmother and decided that justice called for me to step into the fray. I canvassed my fellow JAGs and diligently searched for a way to make a miracle happen. Lo and behold, I ended up finding a solution for his early release. Let the chest thumping begin. When the call came telling me that my client was just set free, the caller, after giving me the good news, paused and added, Lieutenant, there is something else you should know. Your client was rearrested moments later. Say what now? He was picked up by the city police who had outstanding arrest warrants on him. It turns out that the city chose not to prosecute my client when the Navy opted to do so. But they changed their mind when they learned that the Navy chose to release him early. Of course, I knew nothing about the warrants. I knew nothing about them because I never asked. I never did my homework. The city went on to prosecute my client, and he was sentenced to serve a term longer than the few months remaining on his Navy sentence. In effect, I helped him extend his time in prison. He never did get to see his grandmother before she died. Hashtag epic failure. This failure came about because in my zeal and headlong passionate sprint toward justice, I failed to ask the right question. I failed to do my homework and I failed to do more. But for every failure to do more, make no mistake. There are those moments when more is real. When it comes into full relief and reveals our best professional selves. Such was the time in 2014 when I was in Jordan working at a nonprofit in the throes of the Syrian refugee crisis. Almost all of our time, energy and money were focused on doing what we could to address the needs of the Syrians, who by force of circumstance now called Jordan home. To address those needs, we often conducted needs assessments that tried and true public policy tool used to determine what we should focus on, how to improve our work, and how to allocate our limited resources. On one occasion, a program development coordinator felt that the result of a recent needs assessment based on some 240 family interviews seemed off. He thought too many Syrians were reporting vulnerabilities at high rates where he didn't expect it and low rates where he expected to find higher ones. The coordinator's skepticism nodded at him for some time but he could not fathom doing 240 interviews again. So instead, he decided to send a group of us out to the same community in Northern Jordan where we would interview a small subset of families. And even that subset would require a substantial investment of time. A team of four would spend hours with 10 families over the course of three days, driving almost three hours each day just to suss out a hunch. Off we went. But this time, the collaborator urged us to listen attentively and go off script if it made sense to do so. He directed us to get it right, even if that meant taking more time than usual. During the course of one of these interviews, our team gathered in the living room of a Syrian married couple and some 10 members of their extended family. We used the script but took care to spend all the time necessary to establish a rapport with the family. We played with the children, introduced ourselves to all the family members, and ingratiated the family as sincerely as we could. And this non-coffee drinker drank more coffee in one day than I had in my 40-some-odd years on the planet. At one point during the interview, the mother hesitated when we asked her if her children were safe. Until that moment, she had spoken to us directly, usually making eye contact. But this time, she broke off eye contact and seemed to fidget with her head covering. Remembering our directions to get it right, we decided to take a break from a formal conversation and take the mother aside into another room. It is there that she told us that her young son had been sexually assaulted by a stranger as he made his way home from school. The mother told us that we spent so much time with her and her family that we made her feel comfortable enough for her to share what happened to her son, having never done so outside of her immediate family. This revelation enabled us to address the son's psychosocial needs while also doing what we could to ensure the safety of the other children in the community. The coordinator in Jordan chose to do more. He compelled us to do more. And in the end, more is what this boy and the children in the community needed. Though the bulk of my work was done in the name, has been done in the name of protecting children, my message to you applies to all of you and the various careers that await you, whether protecting the homeless or the homeland, advocating for social safety nets or sound fiscal policy or speaking on behalf of a tribe or a transgender teen, doing more possesses crossover versatility. And although more will be something different according to the person and the context of few things are consistently true, more is not just doing your job. Showing up is only a part of it.  If that judgment suggests a more difficult path, take it. But do not take it without good strategy and process. More is chess, not checkers. More is also risky. Risk often means failure. But failure often be gets success. I should know, among other colossal failures, I almost didn't graduate on time and I once effectively extended a man's prison sentence. So as you prepare to embark on your professional journey, I guarantee that there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to do more. I ask you to do so, whether it be to craft or implement new policies or refine solutions to the world's most intractable problems, more is the order of the day. When we dutifully do less, when we fail to do more, there are consequences. The challenges of today's world call for more. They call for more intellect, more creativity, more integrity, more, more. For school class of 2016, this is your charge. Do more. Go Blue. Thank you very much, Hardy, for that very special charge. And now I am delighted to welcome to the stage members of one of the university's outstanding acapella ensembles, and they will perform two classics from the University of Michigan sound book. Thank you very, very much. Each year, the Ford School graduating students are asked to elect people to play key roles in commencement. One faculty member is chosen to speak to the class and both sets of graduating classes choose a representative student speaker. As the faculty speaker, the classes of 2016 elected Yazir Henry. Yazir was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. He first came to the Ford School in 2007 as our Towsley Foundation policymaker in residence. Yazir's intellectual work focuses on the relationship of political structure and violence to civic, indigenous, and human rights. Since 2008, he has taught courses at the Ford School on professional and political ethics, on social movements and democratic processes in the global south, and on transitional justice following political conflict. Yazir has written and lectured widely on issues related to peacemaking, political memory and trauma, and post-conflict reintegration. Many of our graduates have already spent long hours with Yazir during his office hours and despite or more likely because of that, they chose him to deliver the faculty address. And I'm delighted to welcome him to the podium now to speak on behalf of the faculty. Yazir. Good afternoon all. Bonjour. Graduates. No. Policy graduates. Honored family, friends, loved ones, colleagues, and guests. I've chosen not to change my speech after the last two, so I'm going to power through it and trust myself. Public policy graduates, today you lose the right to ask the question, what is the meaning of public policy? If you have not used several years that you've been here to make sense of its complex meaning, then I'm going to help you and I'm going to be very clear, something I don't often do in my office hours. It means all and everything. Look at that, that was when you were supposed to laugh. Come on. There is not a single thread of cotton here in this auditorium today untouched by policy. There is not a grain of sand here at the University of Michigan untouched by it. There is not a single brick here that is not imbued with our meaning. Today I chose to greet you in English and in Anishinaabe Mohan, if I pronounce that correctly, a language without which an arbor could not be the University of Michigan or the slogan glow blue could not have been. From a time when Washtenaw was translated into the English great river or the distant waters to when it became just the county, a street that I travel home to in English. I greet you in English and in Anishinaabe Mohan because for me it is important to know where it is I live, where it is I've chosen to make my home, to spend my time and appreciate the care with which I've been appreciated and welcomed by my colleagues and by you, the student body, Michigan has been incredibly good to me. It is a special privilege to live and work here with so many people that care about the world such a diverse political environment. It has been a privilege and an honor to walk alongside you. For these reasons I accepted the responsibility you gave me to mark this day in your lives on behalf of the Ford School staff and faculty. Those here and those who clean the building at night and may not be here. There are days when I wonder whether what I do professionally is enough given the turmoil in the world. But today is not one of those. I have marked this moment before and it is by far the happiest moment in the academic and the institutional calendar for me.  I think days like these should be up there with the seven wonders of the world. And I know my face is serious so you don't have to smile. But it was meant to be funny. I have learned to derive and to develop faith in you so that my life develops meaning intellectually.  But never forget that you are always and also required to walk alone. And in order to do so effectively you will be required to manage the social, the political, the emotional dissonance that is also a part of our world. That is also a part of me. That is also a part of you. Today we the dissonant part of this institutional fabric can be as one without the immediate pains of office hours, the tensions and the minor traumas associated with the individual sacrifices that go into our intellectual labor and application during our time year, during your time year without the rigors, the complex regimes of training and preparation without the force of having to submit to the multiple hours of reading, thinking and writing, of having to meet and engage each other and other intellects, other hearts, other souls, other spirits in dialogue. Dialogue is an act, not just words. Your convocation today further marks your professional entry into the intellectual and the institutional, political and societal elite of this world. Do not fear the notion. It is fitting to celebrate you today. Congratulations. Well done. This is not my conclusion. You are the intellectual resources of our world. I repeat and I wish to reiterate.  Meet it where it is at, not where it may be tomorrow or where it was yesterday. Every day, yes, every day. This is not the only, this is not only the nature of our mortality as human beings. It is the time of life and of living and of being in the world. We have a short time here. A hundred years if you are lucky. Now this figure is both statistically and factually wrong. But today I'm going to remain with a metaphor of spending only a short time in this world if you are as blessed as I am to breathe every day without the concern, without the worry of having to care about where my next meal is gonna come from. Literally, figuratively, metaphorically. How will you be remembered? Graduates, nay, policy, graduates. The last time I stood here, I was funny. I chose not to be so funny today. Present is precious. After celebrating the splendor of this day, do the work so that when you go home every day you can look at that mirror at midnight and smile with yourself and say, I have done enough today. I have had to learn to become humble. I was a very, very arrogant young man. It takes practice. A mentor of mine said to me, Yazir, put this note on your mirror until you understand its meaning. A year later I looked at this note and it read, thank you very much, Yazir. I don't need your help today, God. If only I had realized that I was not Luke Skywalker and he was not Yoda sooner. But I continue to learn to be humble and I wish the same for you. I have seen many things. I saw apartheid defeated in South Africa. I saw Southern Africa free itself from colonization. I saw the Berlin Wall fall. I saw America elect its first African-American president. And when I was growing up, I knew the society that I lived in was unequal theoretically. I also knew that it was not lawful nor was it moral. But I had no choice but to understand that it was reality. It was actuality. In practice is in part responsibility. Yours, mine, has leaders, as thinkers, as policy professionals trained to influence and to make policy in this world, in our world, in this world, and the places that you will find yourselves in over the next period. It is our collective and democratic ideal that the dialogue that needs to be heard should not be silenced or shut up. Now after you have taken pause to celebrate, to laugh, to cry even with your loved ones, those who have joined your year, it is my opinion that is your responsibility as global citizens who care about the world, the one we share collectively to build the systems, the structures that make life prosper, that make life more peaceable, not just for a few, but for us all. All lives matter. All lives matter equally. It is the law. It is constitutional. It is one of humanity's most recent values and ideals written into the very definition of what it means to be human. Equally, all our lives matter equally.  It is an ideal. It is your responsibility to hold that value and make it practicable. That is your responsibility. That is my responsibility. That is the responsibility of us all who consider us ourselves democratic citizens. In conclusion, our education comes with this responsibility to a larger social reckoning beyond and not opposed to our personal happiness and well-being. Carry the happiness you feel today as a blessing and not as a burden, just as I carry my skin as privileged, as blessing, and not as burden. Celebrate the excitement you feel today fully and do not fear tomorrow until tomorrow. Derive from your degrees the freedom to contribute to our greater well-being. Do not be paralyzed by fear. Do not be paralyzed by the difficulties that weigh. Learn from your mistakes and remember, as it's been said before, affirmation comes after success. Do it with practice, claim no easy victories, and do not easily be discouraged. Believe, have faith in the human beings that sit beside you, that walk with you today through the streets of Ann Arbor and be beautiful. And I have come to learn, and I know my colleagues feel the same way, that that is what you are, and you can be that if you so choose. Love, love, be proud, and hold each other's relationship with joy. Thank you, Miigwech. Thank you, Yizir. And now we will hear from the student elected to speak from the bachelor's class of 2016, Alexis Farmer. Alexis is from Detroit, and she has excelled here at the University of Michigan academically as well as in the community through her extensive service and engagement activities. She has completed a number of policy internships, including work for Governor Rick Snyder and gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer. She's a colonist for the Michigan Daily, writing bi-weekly articles on political and social issues, and she's mentored dozens of younger students supporting the successful transition of underrepresented students from high school to college. In recognition of her leadership, she was given the MLK Spirit Award this January. Alexis graduates with university honors with a BA in public policy and a minor in international studies. She has secured a position as a research and program associate at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York. And I'm so pleased to welcome Alexis Farmer to the podium. Alexis. Everyone doing okay so far? Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Rest in peace to Prince. My fellow four school students soon to be alumni, family, friends, faculty, and staff. We gather to celebrate and acknowledge one of many transitions in this thing called life. Graduation is a point of transition, a pivotal moment in life in which we must reflect and commemorate our journeys at the University of Michigan and the Ford School. This thing called life that we are living is filled with glorious and arduous endeavors, each of which contributes to the development of our character. Our character comprises of the mental and moral qualities that are distinct to our individual egos. The Ford School has challenged both of these dimensions, questioning our intellectual and ethical ethos in uncomfortable ways. I had an idea that the policy-making process was a difficult decision-making procedure, but my first simulation of this experience occurred in Public Policy 320, an introductory course for BA students titled Politics, Political Institutions, and Public Policy. During one of our lectures, we were discussing human rights and counterterrorism, specifically in the Middle East, in order to better understand the challenges confronting terrorism, which laws and norms apply, and the roles of individuals, institutions, and unofficial actors in the policy process. The discussion was framed by narratives of who a terrorist is, as defined by the media and propagated by political rhetoric. While I recognize that 320 was an introductory course that covered a wide range of issues with insufficient time for depth, I sense the fear of a single story being told. I was uncomfortable in a classroom where terrorism only seems to be attached to foreign affairs, when there is domestic violence happening within our borders, such as rampant anti-blackness and unlawful police shootings, mass shootings invading safe spaces known as schools and churches, and the criminalization of homelessness. I felt compelled to speak, but I was anxious to do so. I was very aware of my identity as a black female and very cognizant of the space that I occupied in the classroom. I did not want to be the angry black girl, but in that moment I was okay with owning that title because it was less about me and more about what had been left unsaid, and so I spoke up. To my surprise, my classmates acknowledged my bravery once the discussion had ended, and my GSI even offered me the space and office hours to further dissect the issue. This moment was only the beginning of many conversations within the four school, in which my classmates and I had to reckon with the dissonance embedded in the policy process. Speaking up taught me that growth demands a temporary surrender of security. There will be many times in life where we find ourselves uncomfortable, and when we need to expose a little vulnerability, whether that's in the classroom, like quantitative evale, that struggle, okay, you feel me? Okay, the holiday party mentioned, a little embarrassing, right? Okay, or the diversity, equity, and inclusion townhouse, or the workplace. We allow ourselves to be honest, fully present, and committed to working through these uncomfortable moments. We are better able to address and adhere to the truth. It is imperative to recognize how our identities are directly tied to our pursuit of justice in order to recognize the truth. We must apply the lessons learned from our moments of internal and external conflict as we prepare to become public servants. Those lessons are pertinent for those of us who are seeking to be a part of the same institutions that are responsible for deteriorating conditions of human equality. There are government establishments that have undermined public trust, perpetuating dehumanizing policies that fracture independence and liberation, such as a display of anti-queerness in North Carolina, environmental injustice in Flint, and immigration discrimination from Syrian refugee intake, just to name a few examples. In our efforts as public servants, we have a moral and mental responsibility to not perpetuate the structural violence that is ever present in our society. Now, more than ever, do we need to be active solicitors of peace and security. In an article by New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, he observed, it seems as we grow older, we are haunted less by what we have done than by what we have failed to do, whether through lack of courage and attention or insufficient readiness to cast caution to the winds. What's done is done, but the undone is another matter. In the spirit of the MLK symposium theme, hashtag who will be next, I charge that all of us have the courage, attention, and sufficient readiness to adjust the policy problems that have been left undone. The gravity of power that we have and will acquire as our expertise sharpens requires for us to be considerate of the spaces we occupy and thoughtful about what we do with the power that we hold. Today is a culmination of years of hard work, and I have hope from my experiences after 320 that we will all continue to ask ourselves the difficult questions necessary to catalyze real and lasting change. As Maya Andrew wisely noted, history, despite its retching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faith with courage need not be lived again, history has its eyes on us. We need to have the courage to honestly and meaningfully engage with the present that history has brought us in order to transform the world that we live in from the inside out. I have no doubts that we are capable of doing so.  You all are accomplished human beings who are going to continue to strive towards greatness defined on your own terms. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from you all and from the fourth school community. Thank you. Thank you very much, Alexis. The MPP and MPA class of 2016 elected Grace Evans to speak on their behalf. Grace earned a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, with a double major in mathematics and non-profit leadership from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, she served with AmeriCorps working with at-risk youth in Pittsburgh and as a fellow in public affairs with the Coro Center for Civic Leadership. Here at the Ford School, Grace co-organized the annual joint student conference with the University of Toronto School of Public Policy and Governance. She completed her internship last summer in the deputy mayor's office for economic policy, planning, and strategy in the city of Detroit. And in June, she'll join Harvard's government performance lab as an innovation fellow advising state government leaders in Providence, Rhode Island. Grace, it is now a pleasure to welcome you to the podium. Thank you, Dean Collins. Thank you all for being here today. Class of 2016, you look pretty good out there. The Ford School's first female student graduated two years before the University of Michigan had a social gathering place that permitted women. Due to low enrollment, the Ford School's degree program was discontinued for two years during the Great Depression. The first dual degree program offered it forward was with the School of Engineering and focus on public works administration. These are just a few of the things you learn, if, like me, you've spent too much time learning about the Ford School's history or what is also known as speech writing procrastination. You'll also learn, however, that the Ford School has undergone an incredible transformation in its 102 years. Founded strictly as a municipal management program in 1914, the Ford School soon grew to prepare public administration professionals for all levels of government. And as the Dean mentioned earlier, in 1968, it became the first public policy program in the nation. Throughout this transformation, the Ford School's mission has remained the same. To prepare leaders who will advance and improve the world. But who those leaders are, and the variety of things that those leaders go on to do has changed dramatically. Today, Ford School graduates are future lawmakers, academics, entrepreneurs, executives, and activists. And this group whom we join the ranks of today is differentiated by more than just what we go on to do. We hail from every corner of the world. We have different skills, experiences, and academic backgrounds. And we're different ages, different races, and different cultures. On our thing, some of the Ford School's history helped me realize how vastly different 40s are and have been for decades. And that, in fact, we really only may have one thing in common. And that is that we are here because we care about something and we want to do something about it. That may seem pretty general, but I don't think that commonality is insignificant. I actually think it's anything but. While what we care about may range from voting rights to environmental policy to health care and everything in between, we all feel a drive to make change. And this passion existed long before any of us stepped foot in Wild Hall. This became apparent to me during my first semester when I met classmate Brenda Duvers. I mean, she was kind of cool. She seemed like a pretty interesting and intelligent person, but later I learned that prior to relocating to Ann Arbor, she co-founded Young Love, a Botswana-based nonprofit that connects young people to lifesaving sexual health information. And throughout my time at Ford, I've been continually reminded of the passion of my peers. A few months into our first year, while many of my peers and I were struggling to find balance between classwork, internship searching, and staying plugged into what was happening out there in the real world. But then there are also people like Pete Haveland-Edua. While learning his MPP, Pete has been serving as the National Policy and Communications Director of Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, an organization within the Black Lives Matter movement working to end the marginalization and criminalization of communities of color. Can we clap for that? I'm actually just trying to raise my clap count above Mr. Views, so thank you. I think that's four. OK. And while our time at the Ford School has ended, alumni from the class of 2016 will go on to pursue their passion just like each class before us. Meg Blair, also out there in the crowd somewhere, is pursuing hers by launching a new organization that aims to tackle issues with school readiness through a game-based application. Now, I know the methodology I used to select a few people I've highlighted did not yield a representative sample in the technical sense, but I can assure you that you can pluck any 340s from the bunch and you'll be equally impressed by their hard work and dedication. I hope that 102 years from now, the commencement speaker for the class of 2118 will look up the history of the Ford School and be inspired by each of you sitting in this room right now, as I have been in writing this speech today. Congratulations. Thank you for indulging me. And let's get one more clap. Thank you, Grace. Well, we are now at the moment that our families and friends have been looking forward to all evening. And our graduates are ready to come to the stage to receive official congratulations on a job really well done. This year, the names will be read by David Morse. David is a lecturer in expository writing at the Ford School, where he tutors graduate and undergraduate students. David is an outstanding teacher and a very talented writer. He has a master's degree in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, and his work has been published widely. His first play was performed at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 2010. I'm very pleased to introduce David to call the names of our graduating students. And I'd also like to invite the members of our platform party to step forward and join me to help congratulate our graduates. Thank you, and good evening. To begin, I will call graduates earning doctoral degrees. First, for doctoral students receiving their Doctor of Philosophy in Public Policy and Economics. I'd like to welcome Dean Yong to the stage. Dean is a professor of Public Policy and Economics to hood our first graduate. Paulo Martin F. Abercar. Paulo's dissertation title is Essays on the Economics of International Migration and Return. Paulo will be joining Mathematica Policy Research as a researcher within the International Research Division. Next, I will call Sue Denarski to the stage. Sue is a professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics. Monica Hernandez. Monica's dissertation title is The Role of Out-of-School Factors on Student Performance and Educational Attainment. She will be a post-doctoral fellow with Tulane University Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. Next, I will invite Jeff Smith to the stage. Jeff is a professor of Economics with an appointment at the Ford School. Catherine Lim. Catherine's dissertation title is Three Essays on Female Self-Employment. She will be an economist at the US Department of the Treasury and the Office of Tax Analysis. Next, for students receiving their Doctor of Philosophy and Public Policy and Political Science, I'd like to welcome Professor Vincent Hutchings to the stage. Regina Gauss. Regina's dissertation title is The Advantage of Disadvantage, Legislative Responsiveness to Collective Action by the Politically Marginalized. Regina is joining Harvard University in the Ash Center for Democracy for a year as a post-doctoral fellow and then in fall 2017 will be an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. Portia Ray Hemphill. Portia completed her doctoral degree in 2015. Her dissertation title is Rebel Without a Pause. Discovering the relationship between rap music and the political attitudes and participation of black youth. Portia is a Presidential Management Fellow in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Next, Dean Yang will join us again as we welcome to the stage Niko Ravenela. Niko completed his degree in 2015 and his dissertation title is Essays in Political Economy and Governance, Lessons from the Philippines. Niko has been at Stanford University since last year as the Walter Shorenstein Post-Doctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia. This fall he will join UC San Diego in the School of Global Policy and Strategy as Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy. Now we will welcome our graduates receiving a Master's Degree in Public Policy or Public Administration. Mohamed Alameen Abadi. Corey Ackerman. Sang June On. Jenny Alfaro. Sarah Anderson. Sherilyn Arnett. Shuqi Arunika. Abiyadun Aziz. Jay Isaiah Bailey. Jacqueline Baroccio. Tabitha C. Bentley. Matthew Bishop. Meg Blair. Zach Bloomfield. Jennifer Boll. Grady Bridges. Allison Carey. Rini Chan. Hunter Cox. Jeremy D'Aloisio. Athitia Dahagama. Kamalika Das. Luis De La Cruz. Catherine Antoinette Derbys. Brenda Duvers. Katie Eddins. Maya Efrati. Jen Enquist. Matt Erickson. Ryan R. Etzkorn. Grace Evans. Andrew Floyd. Megan Foster Freedman. Brittany Lee Foxhall. Masato Fukushi. Ryan Garcia. Zuleika Godinez. Paul Gully. Rajep Gunduz. Hayunok Ha. Peter Haveland Edua. Alexander Herman. Mitch Hurz. Satoshi Hori. Maab Ibrahim. Daiki Ikeda. Michonne Johnson. Aliza Kazmi. Kayo Kilibru. Kazma Kuide. Mika Kuizmi. Andrew Paul Kramer. William Victor Lamping. Damar F. Lewis IV. Jonathan Luke. Rashid Malik. Alfredo Martin. Hiroshi Matsushima. Ruth Elizabeth McDonald. Salamuit Nuri Miscano. Sreepriya Mohan. Edgar Morales. Moe Nakamura. Seiya Ninomiya. Zachary Ormsby. Christopher Sherman Owens. Rachel Podesfinski. Sneha Rao. Meredith Reed. Tori Ryan. Carlos Robles. Emily Rusca. Luis Salvador. Arnav Shah. Kushmanjit Singh. Aubrey Sittler. Erica Sievertson. Austin Slaughter. Sonya Swanbeck. Mary Alice Truett. Tomohiro Wakabayashi. Amy Wallace. Kerri R. Welton. Oyaan. Sabiha Zenobai. Nathaniel Zimmer. And now we will welcome to the stage students receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy. Jennifer Nicole Arnold. Caroline Alice Barron. Nicholas Boyd. Erin Bozek Jarvis. Fatah Matuz Zura Chumuk. Marcus Cho. Tanner Cooper. Nathan Crockett. Kevin Dickey. Jessica Eller. Jill Lilianne Epstein. Alexis Kathleen Farmer. Sloane Catherine Forbush. Hilary Forrest. Eli Gerber. William R. Greenberg. Samuel Greenglass. Mohammed Adam Hamden. Rebecca Alexandra Hart. Madeleine Molly Hartlebe. Thomas Doyle Hoyt. Mark Edward Hakume. Jessica Johansson Cuban. Fri Cammerman. Micah Carson. Krista Landis. Hannah Lee. Max Lerner. Robbie Linden. Grace Letfi. Sarah Maggan. Rebecca Maher. Marjorie Ann Henderson Markwart. Lindsey Martin. Megan Tamario McDonald. Hattie McKinney. John Morse. David Nauheim. Micah Nelson. Elizabeth Oliva. Andrea Payne. Brett Palmer. Nina Catherine Paluso. Austin Raymond. Eric Vincent Riley Jr. Nick Reinhart. Andrew Reising. Gabriella Romon. Emily Ann Rosenthal. Matthew Rosenthal. Sean St. Julie Rachel Sarney. Blair Satcher. David Tenenbaum. Leo Weisberg. Graduates, if you would please stand now and face your guests in the audience. And BA students, if you would at this time please move the tassel on your mortar board from the right to the left to present to you the proud of the Gerald R. Ford classes of 2016. So please, if you would be seated for a moment, I would like to thank all of you again for coming and joining us for a very special occasion today, the culmination of the Ford School's academic year. I ask you to please remain in your seats until the platform party and then the class exits. We have light refreshments in the lobby. And I hope that you will stay, visit, take photographs, enjoy the company, and continue to celebrate the classes of 2016 of which we are so, so proud. Go Blue!


Hi everyone, I'm Joe for jasperjasecasebreaks.com here with another random number block randomizer for this group of teams here This unlocks pick a teammate which will be in a separate video. That's how it works right here I don't think we're gonna have to deal with a non numbered situation here in this I think everything's numbered in an impeccable big. Thanks to this group. Thanks to the folks who bought their spots straight up Congrats again to the people who won their spots Got into the action for a fraction of the price There are the numbers here. Let's go. Let's roll it. Let's randomize names and numbers six and a four ten times one two three four five six seven eight And 10th and final time got a couple atoms up there down to Tim six and a four ten times for the numbers one two three four And tens and final time After 10 we got six down to zero Zero gets any in all redemptions including one of one redemptions one still gets live one of ones It's alive So adam with six and nine jimmy with five Hans with eight and two jack with three tim with four peter with seven haunt with one tim with zero Let's sort by column B by number And we'll see you for the break in the next video. Jasper's case breaks.com


For us it was our first game in four months, we just did the review today, there are some areas that we did really well. We just need to be a little bit more consistent for longer periods of time. That's what we took out of it. When we do things well, we look well organised and we look dangerous. We created some decent opportunities there to finish the game. It was only a matter of time that we were going to score, maybe score two. We had some good opportunities to do that and obviously Coxie took his goal very well. He's an important player for us, so is Peerman. They're both in the same boat. We've got to make sure that we manage them properly, that they're available to us for every game. Our mindset is that we'll go in every game to win games. There's 12 points up for grabs and we'll do our best to get the 12 points. We'll go in every game with that mindset. If we do that, we know that we can play against the best team. We know that we're a good team. If we do things well, we've got a lot of threats in our team and we'll be dangerous. That's our main objective is to challenge ourselves to get to where we were the last game of the break.


Are you sad that spring break is coming to an end and you haven't done anything exciting? Well, I'm Charity Mostafa with this week's Berkeley Hotspot and I'm here to tell you all the entertaining things to do in the Bay Area this week. This Friday, the Beard and Mustache Club is hosting an event at Zeitgeist Club where there are over 40 beers on tap. If you like, have, or want beards, make sure to check out this event from seven to 10 p.m. On Saturday, April 1st, San Francisco is hosting Holi, one of the largest color festivals worldwide. It only costs $20 and you can throw color chalk powder on your friends, family, and even strangers. Now, if you're looking for something a little bit more chill since it's a lazy Sunday for April 2nd, make sure to check out the picnic and food truck event from 11 to 3 p.m. There will be a variety of food trucks and different activities such as yoga and photo booths. This event is free, but make sure to have money for food and drinks. I'm Charity Mostafa and thank you for checking out this week's Berkeley Health Spots. Make sure to check out these events because I'll see you there. Oh, hello there.


and Hyperledger's Capital Market Special Interest Group. So this is a focus group that talks about anything and everything to do with capital markets and technology. So how can we make things better? Before we get into the subject of the call today, which is to do with tokenization and insurance link securities, I'd like to kind of talk about Hyperledger's antitrust policy and code of conduct. So what this simply means is we have to treat everyone on this call with respect and professionalism and fairness. So it's a mandate to be on these calls. Otherwise, there's a whole set of antitrust spit as well, which was covered as a part of this meeting. So the links are in the coordinated space. If you need to refer to any of that content, please feel free. I'm also going to quickly update a link in the chat. So if you can, please do register your names there so we can send out the decks and slides and everything at the end of the meeting. So that's all from Hyperledger perspective. Marta, did you want to cover anything at all?  Oh brilliant, okay. No pressure at all then. All right, thank you everyone who's made it today to be a part of the Hyperledger's Special Interest Group, Capital Market Special Interest Group. What we're doing today is we're doing a subset of the Special Interest Group today, which is focused on insurance markets. The whole idea of talking about this project is to take you guys through the whole journey that an insurance contract takes and how it converts itself into a financial asset. So insurance link securities and everything about it. So Habib, this is where I want to introduce Habib. He's one of the mentors and leaders at CVTAS Fintech. The project is being led by CVTAS Fintech and we're working with a couple of members in Bermuda and Guernsey, Jurisdictions, to try and put a regulatory structure which converts it into a clear financial asset. So off to you Habib, while I just please introduce yourself while I quickly pull up the slides that we want to share as a part of this call. Thank you, so just in terms of introducing myself, I have recently retired from investment management. I spent over 30 years investing in European equities, primarily for institutional clients and for retail clients across a wide range of sectors. I guess probably my starting point was I started off in the UK, some of the companies that have expanded across to a pan-European focus. Just looking to see where we are on the slides. Thanks, Cathy, great. So just really, I guess my bid was just give a bit of background on why insurance link securities are interesting to invest in. And I guess the key point I would make about that is we have the three reasons for people to be interested in insurance link securities. Cathy, can you? Thanks. So why are they interesting? So I'd say for an investor, I think the really most important part is uncorrelation. So these assets are uncorrelated to other markets, so equity markets, bond markets. And that's very important when people are looking to improve their risk-adjusted returns for their funds. And it's also important for the issuers as it provides capital. Particularly in a hard market, capital is short. So for an insurance company, the ability to optimize its capital and to get additional capital to underwrite is very important. So those are the two reasons. And then the first, please, Kofi. This is a very generic slide explaining the concept. It is a bit busy. It gets even busier later on. But Kofi will come to that. In the most simplistic terms, the way I see insurance companies securities is the ability to provide capital to an insurance company who would use that capital to underwrite risk. That risk can be across a number of sectors. Everything from aviation to weather related to even cyber risk. And the people who provide that capital are looking for a return. There are many different derivatives of how you think about insurance and securities. But the core part, the ones we're going to talk about today, you are operating as a special purpose vehicle, insurance special purpose vehicle. So I talked about why it would be attractive as an asset class. I said about a low correlation. That is really important. If you think about what is described as a risk-free rate, the 10-year risk-free rate, which this slide illustrates. So actually these rates have come up a little bit in the last few days, but still incredibly low interest rates. That you're going to get for your 10-year risk-free rate. So US Treasury is 1.35%. UK Guilds 0.7. And call your resume. So primarily bonds, actually negative rates over 10 years. So if you lend your money to the German government for the next 10 years, they'll promise to take only 0.3% off you for the per annum. Which kind of illustrates why people should be looking to uncorrelated returns, to diversify their portfolio, and to actually find some returns. So here we show that the ILS market. And there's an index out there for the performance of the ILS, which is a Eureka ILS advisors index has produced returns actually that have range from minus 5.4% in the worst year, which actually was 2017 to 13.2% in the best year. I think that the key here is understanding that actually the annualized return, which is really what people are looking at over a 15-year period would be 4.25%. That's an important number. When you think about the 10-year risk-free rate as it stands today. So there is attractiveness in returns and there's also attractiveness in fact that they're uncorrelated. Given the time, I probably don't wanna go into every single part of this. I think it may be useful to take questions at some stage. So if people do have questions about the ILS structures, who is the, who the investors could be, et cetera, we could touch on that, but I just thought it would be useful to have that slide there. So that was my bit about the ILS before we get into talking about project Gainus. Would it be a good point to take some questions? Cool then. I think people... May I ask a question? Yeah, go for it. Yeah, I just think that you're comparing these ILS to a risk-free rate there, but obviously they're, presumably investing in ILS would not be risk-free. I suppose it's a difficult question, but how would you characterize the level of risk that there is in the ILS products out there at the moment? Well, if you, yes, I mean, clearly there is risk. And look, let's be honest, the risk-free rate is a phrase that's used. That basically means that they're guaranteed by governments. For example, U.S. Treasury Mark is guaranteed by the U.S. government. So it is fairly low risk. Doesn't mean that returns are guaranteed even there. You can have negative years in a U.S. Treasury market. So as I said, if you go back one other slide, please come through in terms of... So the performance range. Actually, the key things that people would look at is that performance range, the maximum drawdown as people talk about in terms of risk. And the fact that, is it correlated to other markets? So those three things suggest that. I think ILS should be a lower risk than many other assets, but not as risk-free as government bonds. So characterizing that range, if you think about drawdowns that you could see in equity markets, for example, the maximum drawdown of 12.5% would be much better than you'd see in equity markets over the last 15 years as well. Obviously, we've had at least two times where markets formed by 40% or 50% in equity markets. So lower risk than equities in theory, judging by those 15-year numbers, but obviously higher risk than government bonds. I give you, this is Manny. Hi, Manny. I agree. Can Habib talk about what kind of products are out there today in the ILS? What's floating today in the marketplace today? Well, as it stands today, there are a large number of different end-market risks, which I guess is... I hope I'm answering the right question. So when you think about ILS, those insurance risks are what defines the variations in terms of what you're investing in. And those insurance risks can be everything from whether related cap bonds to, as I say, other insurance risks. In fact, I believe there's over 20 different types of markets that actually have taken advantage of insurance, in terms of underwriting bills. But it's a very wide range. And you can also have, within an ILS, more than one market risk, so you can combine risks as well. So it is a very wide range. I see Gary's got his hand up. Yeah, thanks. I was just curious to understand what the difference is between an insurance-linked security and having an investment in an insurance syndicate. So the Lloyd's model is actually a very similar concept. It's a different structure with a very similar concept in terms of... If you think about an ILS as a syndicate, so you'd have a managing agent, members would give money to that syndicate and that syndicate would go and write underneath the Lloyd's umbrella. And obviously, within that, what does that syndicate do, it would be defined. And so in some ways, it's very similar to the Lloyd's model, but it's primarily, I guess, no, I don't know, it's... The important point is that, is that it is sharing that risk, just like a Lloyd's unwriter. It is also, now that Lloyd's has moved to a, what I would describe as a, I'm just trying to find the right words to define a difference because within the Lloyd's umbrella, you have lots of different rules which are controlled by Lloyd's. The ILS is not necessarily under that same umbrella. That would be more the SBV's own rules. So there's more flexibility to underwrite. But yes, I think it's, in principle, it's very similar. Okay, thanks. Oh, can I... I'm trying to work out how to raise my hand and I can't even though I've been on, I'm a mainly a Teams user. Is the answer there that presumably ILSs could operate along a certain class of products, for example, so not across the whole piece for a syndicate? Is that, because obviously the cap bonds is the primary example, isn't it? And that's obviously related to certain products. So would you, as an investor, you'd be able to choose, say, I want to get, I don't know, cyber ILS or I don't know, would you have more flexibility basically, is that in the answer somewhere? It is. I mean, obviously syndicates can also have very broad categories as well. So it depends on the syndicate. So you're right, the ILS can choose exactly which book of business it writes. Right, yeah. So you can build a portfolio of ILSs which would give you a broader thing. Or you could say, I want an ILS which has a very broad remit. But yes, it's, there's quite, as I said, there's a very large array. When I went through the list, there's literally hundreds of ILSs out there. And they all do have that different exposure, so yeah. Okay, thanks. Any more questions? No? Okay, so we'll move on. So the last slide that Habib touched upon is just some of the needs for a need for efficiency in the ILS structures that exist in the markets today. So this is a key output which was generated by Willis Tower Watson and a survey which was openly published recently. And what they say is there are some very clear areas which are deemed to be as great opportunities by us. And what they say, I think I just want to touch upon a couple of themes here. So one is transparency is one of the biggest characteristics that most end investors want to see. Copper risk managers would like a little more of diversification. That's a key theme that I want to cover as well. And of course, the insurance and reinsurance firms are looking to access for better capacity using ILS structures by the end of the day. So, and more flexibility as well. So that all brings us to three specific teams and those themes can be characterized as the ease of flow of capital, say from the end investor to sponsor, the improved liquidity that we could possibly look at because today, cap bonds and ILS and all of these structures are not very liquid per se. There are some companies, disruptors are getting into the space of creating secondary markets to be able to trade these risks but we're still in a lower sense of maturity there. So we'll probably get there soon enough. And the third bit is to do more with costs. So the cost of managing an ILS. The cost of bringing capital in is one specific element of the whole capital adequacy piece but the second piece is to be able to manage this with a low expense ratio for the funding itself. So Project Janus touches on all these themes. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to ease the whole value chain but we're starting small and I'm gonna cover some of those themes going forward. So the first piece that we wanna talk about in phase one of Project Janus and what we are trying to do is we're trying to create better capital efficiency and how do we wanna do that is what I wanna cover. So this talks about how we foresee or how we envision the tech stack which complements some of the capabilities that ILS requires today, right? So for at least for the UK jurisdiction today most of the ILS funds and ILS structures and special purpose vehicles sit into this framework, regulatory framework which is governed by three specific bodies. So one is Bank of England. The other one is FCA, the Financial Conduct Authority and the third one is PRA, the Prudential Regulatory Authority. So all of these three specific entities, regulatory entities to a certain extent have to govern rules and specific rules which are clearly defined by the Solvency II framework. So if you want to create an asset today, if you want to transfer risk from your book and you want to seed it further that is transferred further down the lane and you want to ring fancy it in such a way that you create what is known as a financial asset out of that, that's where the Solvency II framework comes in and the newer technology that exists today which I call Blockchain 2.0, not Blockchain 1.0 has some of these key fundamental capabilities that help us model that very, very effectively with the models, some of these things very, very effectively with these technologies. Now we also see that in the specific tech stack, it all starts. So all of those guys who have a little bit of understanding of technology, there's always a user interface in the front end. That is something that it's like a browser, so something that you feel, click, interact with on a day-to-day basis. There is something which works underneath all of these stacks, which is something like a simple cake. Think about it as a cake, right? So there's icing on top of it, that's a pretty bit that you like and interact and then that's where you choose to pick up that pastry and try to sample it. But this is something very, very similar. The layers kind of help you understand how the whole tech stack comes together. So the first bit is user interface. The second bit is where all of the legal contract interface comes in. This is where we feel that the contract technology that is now live and now existent in the market can help move some great, some financial risks with great clarity into the digitization space. So which is now great. And we can do that using the Solvency 2 framework. Now the third bit is artificial intelligence logic layer. These are the things that actually drive the entire bit of business rules and everything that's associated with managing the fund, managing the ILS as well as managing the contract. And of course, the rest of the structures are more very technical in nature, which are to do with the substrate or the blockchain and other oracles which integrate with a specific structure. So I'm gonna cover that a little more in detail later. What I wanted to talk about is also the ability now to kind of look at multiple blockchains and be able to have like a common set of validators for that. So what that simply means is if you look at a specific ILS structure, the capital is ring fenced on a specific ledger. So, and there is data associated with that ledger and there's identity associated with that ledger. Now having a common set of validators can actually ease management of all of these multiple blockchains together. So that simply means that we now can work at a lower cost point and this kind of eases quite a bit of overhead that manually existed historically. And some of the other advantages that I probably want to cover now is more to do with expense ratio. So I touched upon that point on expense ratio, the ability to bring in on-demand capital. So the time required to see the risk from a book and writing book to reinsurance and into a financial instrument can be done a lot more quickly. Anything which is associated with your fund that is paying out coupons or passing that return, investment return to the customer is done through what you call is block smart contracts can execute quite a few of those things. And of course the ability to fill that reserving capital pool with not only with stable coins but other assets in the future state, hopefully. And of course create some very, very innovative ways of linking this model to parametric insurance that exists out there. Imagine some of the reserves that you have to make when there is a trigger event which can instantaneously happen over a period of time. So if there is something, if there is an insurer who's got great technology platforms and they have a parametric trigger which can pass information very, very quickly onto us, this is more to the claims area that I'm speaking about. We can reserve the capital that they've passed on to us as a risk immediately without any delay whatsoever while the issue is being investigated. So I think some of the capabilities that are unlocked by using a great tech stack or phenomenal and I think it's a great opportunity for us to push this forward. Now on to the next slide in a second. Now in the previous slide Habib showed us the classic version of how insurance link securities work and how the whole structure is set up. In the digital era, what we envision that to look like is completely unique and different. So I've kind of taken the first slide that we've spoken about and kind of created a visual around it to say how we envision that to work in the real world scenario. What we talk about here is by the end of the day is trying to get capital so that we can help insurers take on more risks. And if we can do that in a non-demand fashion then it's absolutely great. So we've layered some of these technology stacks here. We've spoken about how sponsors, brokers, reinsurers can interact with each other on web 3.0 interfaces. I won't talk about the technology yet because we don't have the right NDAs in place. We have contract specification languages which can help transfer the risk from their books to, I would say, the prefront of the ledger. And then of course there's contract logic and all of those things which creates the specific structure which is required, business logic layer. And then compartmentalizing that capital into specific cells which themselves sit on specific ledgers which are then facilitated by bigger technologies which are out there. For example, Polkadot, Ocean Protocol and Polymath. So these are the technologies that we envision to work with in the future state. And that's where we think that we will open up the onset of bringing capital more seamlessly into the insurance ecosystem and give that benefit of clear visibility and transparency to regulators and investors at the same time. So that's what we're trying to achieve as a part of this project. Where we are today, we're simply at the contract specification language stage where we are trying to digitize the front end of the contract. So the word which is specific to a reinsurance contracts is in, I can't even see that, right? But it's a contract which is black and white. It's, when I remember the word, I'll surely tell you what it is. It's a clear legal term. And I can't recall that on the fly right now. So... Incontrovertible. Incontrovertible. Thanks for being, that was useful. Okay, so the whole premise is we take an incontrovertible contract in its digitized element. We use certain layers of logic and AI to be able to convert that specifically into enough rigor which models around Solvency 2 frameworks so we can create these specific cells and these cells that contain ledgers for ring fencing capital. So hopefully that was not too complicated for anyone. I'll pause briefly here and take any questions if anyone has any. So this is Dan, I've got a question. I appreciate that by embedding the description and the business logic in the contract, maybe even all the way through to the SPV, you get, we ought to have a higher level of control. But what do you do to test that the contract behaves as expected? I mean, if I were to contrast, on the one hand, human managers of the SPV and we're hoping that they live up to the terms and conditions of the SPV, with automated version of the same where maybe there's a wallet attached to the SPV and it's moving out collateral, what have you as is necessary. But how do we know that the logic is, like how do we know that the logic is good so that we're replacing the potential for human error or malfeasance with something that it can't be? It's a great call, but how do you know? I think it's to do with definition of roles and how those roles sit within the compliance of the business logic layer. Now, of course you have the whole set of AML and KYC, but all of this stuff works on web 3.0 swarm. So these swarms are created specially for specific users who have access to specific wallets. So everything is contained in the specific form when the business logic executes itself on that specific common domain language. When some of the languages that we are currently looking at to venture further into this is CDM. Is there CDM we think is a great fit for us at this specific stage. So it mitigates most of the risks that we could possibly experience from contract structure perspective at least and even from managing these SPVs perspective. So that's clearly highlighted and clear. And of course we look to the Solvency 2 model, which gives us a lot of control and rigor that needs to be put in place for specific SPVs. So that gives us like the second, I would say pillar by process and design to prevent that. And the last, I would say the pillar to contain the risk would be manual intervention where required. Kill contracts or anything that we could possibly execute on the ledger to control the issue. If the first two fail at all. Does that help, Dan? I mean, yes and no, yes and that. So it just highlights that controls need to be built up regardless of the embedding of the business logic and the smart contract. Yep. But no, in that it seems like and frankly after months of thinking about CDM and smart contracts, it just dawns on me that there's a question, an overall question about the validity of any individual contract making certain where they correctly describes the financial performance of what has been agreed. And that was really what I was getting to you. Is there a testing framework or some other mechanism that you've employed that says, oh, this is the loss that's described in the underlying agreement. And these are its codisols and its protections and how do we know that that's correctly been translated into the smart contract that's supposed to represent it. So I think this is where the contract specification language comes in when you say that it's an introvertable contract wherein the clauses are completely defined and clear. The Solvency 2 framework says that if capital is put into a ring-fenced environment, then the obligation for that specific capital is more towards the insurers rather than the investors. So the capital is protected no matter what with the primary obligation towards the insurers rather than the investors. And that clarity is provided with the way the contract is built. So there is no possibility of, I would say, a gray area that exists within the reinsurance contract. And look, it might be worthwhile moving past this but let me try a different way and say, what if that's what we believe, but it happens to be that in a certain circumstance, collateralism drawn down in the way that's expected. For whatever reason, the event has a three in it in the fourth digit and for whatever reason, the business implementation didn't catch, the testing didn't catch it. And all of a sudden the behavior of the SPV is no longer what's expected. And it's a broader, in the end, I realize this is a broader question than just the insurance thing product. It's actually... I think it's a very valid question and we'll probably come back to you with a good answer. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Thank you for raising that. And just to, what we're not changing is we're not automating the underwriting process and the creation of that underwriting contract. Underwritten, sorry, underwritten contract. It is still being done by humans in terms of that contract logic phase. It is still the same process that's been done in terms of the still human interface there in terms of the underwriting is done. And that creation of that contract is something that's been done for many, many years already. So we're not changing the structures of how the underwriting process works. We're just changing the, and again, this is excuse my lack of technology experience here. We're not changing, we're still reliant on that creation of that agreement which then creates the irrefutable contract. So that is still the process. The reason why that then goes into the SPV is the same thing that's been done for many, many years. So there is still the human interface at that point. We're not getting rid of humans at that point. I see a point down about, could there be an error further down, but it's that, the key is that contract. And that's what we're focusing at this stage which is making sure that the contract is still the right way of putting things together. It has been agreed, and it may go back and forth from the broker to the underwriter to have that dispute. But once it's agreed and it's sealed, if that's the right way of putting it, that is what we're trying to achieve in a digital manner. Yes, so once it's achieved, once it's agreed and sealed, then it becomes immutable, what you say, it's completely legalized as a contract. So yeah, and it's binding. So that's the word that I was looking for. So what we are doing in the contract specification language and what we are doing in that specific stage is the next step I'd like to cover. And the way we've envisioned this contract is to look at it in form of structured data and unstructured data. So there could possibly be some unstructured data, but we won't include that as a specificity of that contract. So we look at it in specific layers and how these layers are structured in form of fluid data. That's an IP that we float. We have what is known as a layer of intelligence which sits on top of the fluid data which is called Axon AI. And all of that is linked to the third layer, which is a digitization layer which converts it into different friendly formats. So what we talk about in these specific contracts is one. Fluid data helps you monitor certain aspects of change which are proactively defined as a part of a structural hash algorithm. So any change that you are agreeing upon is real time and life. So if there are three parties which are coming together to negotiate this contract, then it reflects one truth. There are a lot of people who are already doing this in the market. This is not something which is being done very, very uniquely by us. But what we're trying to do at this stage is we're trying to build the AI that simply works very seamlessly with fluid data at the specific stage. What does this AI do? It simply ensures that we capture some of the basic rules which are required at a very, very earlier stage in the contract to do some simple mathematics which is associated with tax, cadule exposure and credit line. So these are the things that we can kind of do at a very early stage just by looking at some part or some segment of that specific risk contract. The last bit is more to do with the digitizer which is highlighted in yellow. So what it does is it helps transmit that information successfully from the contract layer into the whole what you call as a business logic layer where we take up that information and we look at ways of making it a lot more interoperable across different ledgers. Whoever wants to access it, if it's a swarm third party who's got access to this, they will have clear access to the contract and that digitized format can work in any JSON related format or XML related format that can help them extract the data and model that data specifically to their need. Moving on from here, I just want to quickly show you guys what flu data and axon AI does. So we take up bits and pieces of information, we sort them, we structure them and then what we do is we run specific AI algorithms which help us do this really well at an earlier stage. And we envision certain, I would say efficiencies. What we are keyly underpinning today is we're saying that it gives us a lot of flexibility to kind of take that contract and convert it into any of the digitized ISPV formats that people are looking for. They can have multiple cells under the same SPV, special purpose vehicle. They can create on demand products, they can model it the way they want. It has great accessibility to data, so we don't have to worry about data. Virtual presence, yes. Web 3.0 ensures that you have clear virtual presence. Of course, there's an underbit element of savings which is absolute reduced cost because of clear workflow. And of course, the ability to share this one reflective truth, especially upstream with all the parties who are involved as a part of this value proposition. So that's something which is really interesting. And I also see that when we tackle some of these efficiencies, what we project the expense ratios for at least on the fund side to reduce from 15 to 20% on the total expense ratio of the specific fund. This is something that we want to do in a part of our first MVP. What we're trying to do is, in this specific slide, what we're trying to highlight is we are linking, we have color-coded specific layers and we've spoken about what layer of that specific contract type would interact with what parts of the specific business, how does it convert itself into finality? So what does finality mean? Finality means that when a business logic is completely executed itself to the final state, only then can you say, you can put something on the blockchain to say it's a confirmed transaction. So until it goes into those specific stages and layers, then we feel that some of these things are best kept in business logic layer. We feel that there are certain areas which are suitable for smart contracts and there are certain areas which are not suitable for smart contracts. So we want to keep that level of control in business logic layer rather than the blockchain layer. So we're kind of moving the delegation up and down. And by the end of this first proof of concept, what we want to achieve is we want to achieve the integrity management of the full contract. We want to be able to show automatic, I would say accounting and settlement because we feel that we can work really well with polka dot structures to do cross-chain settlements, which it enables us to do at this stage. We haven't explored so far yet with it. And of course, build some sort of a full digital structure to automate and digitize aspects of the contract. So that's what we are trying to achieve. Last but not the least, some of the teams and of course, I've included some slides on specific ILS cell structures within Svaldbland C2 frameworks. If there's someone else who wants to look at this, I'm going to send them across to you as well. So that concludes our presentation for today. If there are any questions now, I'll take them. What's the time scale for the MVP? The time scale for MVP is end of July. That's something that we initially targeted. And the MVP only covers the digitization aspect of the contract. So we are not going after all classes of business. We are picking a very specific class of business and then we are trying to work through it as quickly as possible. Okay, so looking at scale and the magnitude of the MVP, I would just be certain, which July you're talking about. July 2021. Okay, thank you. Cool, questions, anyone? Okay, I think that concludes our session for today. Marta, do we need to do anything else from a hyperledger perspective today in form of closure? No, it's all taken care of. Cool, that's, all right, guys. Thank you so much for joining us today. So that concludes our session and hopefully we can come back to you next time with a demo and show you how this actually works in a real-life scenario. Okay, thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. Cheers, take care. Thank you. Take care, Nick. Bye-bye. Thanks so much. Thanks, this was great.