St. John’s welcomed former U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power to campus earlier this month as part of the Brother Robert Sullivan, C.F.X. Lecture Series presented by The Center for Mission and Research. The serial programming aims to bring globally influential innovators and leaders to St. John’s to explore how an ethics-based education can shape decision making in the modern world. More than 500 parents, guardians, students, educators, alumni, and guests from neighboring towns came to hear Ambassador Power’s remarks, which focused on individuals’ capacity to influence their own slice of the world. 

The youngest-ever U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power has been a leading voice internationally for principled American engagement in the world. Power was a member of President Obama’s cabinet and served as the 28th U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2013-2017. From 2009 to 2013, she served on the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. 

One of TIME’s “100 Most Influential People,” she spent the early part of her career explaining complex geopolitical events as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, war correspondent, and Harvard professor. In April 2017, she returned to teaching as a professor of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and just recently completed her newly released book, The Education of an Idealist, which chronicles her years in public service and reflects on the role of human rights and humanitarian ideals in contemporary geopolitics.

Ambassador Power arrived at St. John’s ready to hit the ground running. 

“She stepped out of the car and was ready to go,” said Chris Bauer, Director of the Center for Justice and Peace. “She wanted to know which student groups were there, what they had read—she wanted a briefing.”

Before her address to the wider audience, Power met with student leaders on campus for  dinner as well as a question-and-answer period. She began on a light note by telling the audience that it was a testament to how much she wanted to appear at St. John’s given that as a life-long sports fan, she was willing to miss Game One of the 2019 World Series. 

Students from the Multicultural Affairs and Community Development Student Advisory Council, Model UN, student life, and Middle School representatives asked questions ranging from the function and efficiency of the United Nations, her personal feelings about her work, and her thoughts on how much power an ambassador wields to perceived parallels between Tiananmen Square in 1989 and Hong Kong in 2019. Dr. Hardiman, Dr. Crowley, and trustee Katie O’Dair, who would later moderate the discussion with Ambassador Power, also joined the pre-event gathering. 

Before Power took the stage inside the Mahoney Wellness Center, she had four pieces of advice for those students in attendance. The first was to separate from technology. “It’s so important to be able to truly focus on something, anything, for an extended period of time,” she said as she held up her own phone, “and that’s difficult to do with these things around.” 

The second was to find credible sources to challenge their thinking, followed by her recommendation to read the newspaper. “I read the New York Times—the physical, paper issue every day.” she reported. “Even if I just skim the headlines in a section I might not be that interested in, I’ll still learn new because my phone isn’t holding me in an echo chamber of what I usually click on.” 

Her final piece of advice was born out of something many college students have asked her, and something that drives at the heart of her theme: “influencing your slice of life.” She urged that as students are beginning to see the world differently and become aware of issues they care about, they can be best served by drilling down into just one topic area. “Know something about something,” she said. “Some students are spreading themselves very thin, so at first, really focus on one issue that you care about and learn all that you can.”

Once the event moved into the Mahoney Wellness Center St. John’s Prep trustee and Dean of Students at Harvard, Dr. Katie O’Dair, moderated the conversation with Ambassador Power. After a welcome from Dr. Hardiman and a word of gratitude from Dr. O’Dair, Ambassador Power began by giving the audience a brief background beyond her bio, and then read a passage from her new book

In the 40-minute, fireside chat-style conversation, Ambassador Power and Dr. O’Dair covered everything from Power’s early transformational moment watching coverage of one man challenging a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989 to feelings of personal doubt, and from how to be an upstander to her most public failures. With self-effacing humor and a sense of humility, but also a strong sense of determination and conviction, Ambassador Power took the audience on a journey that included stories of meetings in bars, recording superstar Bono, and even the power of witness testimony in the face of human rights crises. 

Referring to her own feelings of doubt and the daunting prospect of being only one person (working a huge problem), she said, “Those never go away. That sense of feeling small never goes away. But no matter how big the problem is we are facing, you can always focus on the small things you can do to tackle it. Becoming better informed, the small acts of kindness or decency you can take or show. It might change someone’s world.”

A 20-minute question-and-answer period followed the moderated discussion, with questions from audience members hitting on specific policies and current humanitarian crises as well as the United State’s place in the larger geo-political landscape. A standing ovation followed as Ambassador Power  made her exit from the stage to the book-signing area. 

“It was an incredible experience,” said senior Tyrese Francis as he reflected on his time with the former ambassador, both at the student dinner and at her public talk. “Listening to her story shows me that I can do anything I want if I focus and put my mind to it.”

More photos of the event can be found on SmugMug.