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Thunderbird Oath provides anchor, hospitals president tells graduate

Thunderbird School of Global Management’s Oath of Honor provides an anchor for the school’s graduates in an era of rapid change that has industries such as health care scrambling to adjust, the president of a hospital network said Aug. 21 during commencement exercises.

“The village has gone global faster than we can keep up,” said Linda Hunt, service area president for Catholic Healthcare West Arizona, which includes Chandler Regional Medical Center, Mercy Gilbert Medical Center and St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. “It demands a new breed of innovative leaders.”

Hunt said these leaders will see dramatic changes as the global economy emerges from the financial crisis, but the values embedded in Thunderbird’s oath will remain constant.

“The way we conduct business, consume resources, raise our families and plan our futures will all have to evolve in new ways,” Hunt said. “But our values -- derivatives of the sacred oaths and vows of our leaders -- are the constants that guide us from one day to the next.”

Hunt delivered her keynote address at the Renaissance Glendale Hotel & Spa after watching 158 Thunderbird School of Global Management graduates stand and recite the oath, which the school adopted in 2005. Graduates included 34 LG Electronics executives from South Korea, who represented the fourth cohort in a custom Executive MBA program for high-potential LG managers.
 
“This declaration holds the potential to be a real beacon for your profession,” Hunt said. “I hope those words moved you deeply when you recited them.”

She said similar declarations guide the way Catholic Healthcare does business. Doctors follow the Hippocratic Oath, while faith leaders follow religious vows. Hunt said she took the Florence Nightingale Pledge when she started her career as a nurse.

“Those commitments shape our entire organizational culture,” she said.

Hunt said many business leaders in the past disregarded or exploited the goodwill, the labor, the natural resources and the health of faraway countries and their people, often in the name of maximizing returns for shareholders. She said such a mindset no longer can work in the 21st century.

During the ceremony, the LG Electronics students were joined by students in the traditional and accelerated MBA in Global Management programs, the Master of Science in Global Management, the Master of Arts in Global Affairs and Management, the Thunderbird/IUKD Master of Global Business/MBA dual degree program and students in Thunderbird’s Post-MBA Master of Global Management program.

“And here you come, this new class of Thunderbird graduates, having just sworn an oath to do what the world needs most,” Hunt said. “Lead us into tomorrow with confidence, resolve, compassion and respect for humanity.”