Serena Sets an Example for 2,133 Graduates

“History has found you. Together we have understood that we must change, become more responsible, find new solutions that give rise to sustainability, equality and inclusion. To do this, we need your creativity, your energy, your fresh ideas, forged not only by your youth, but also by what you have learned and experienced in the last two years here at Bocconi, in our community ”. 

 That is how Antonella Carù, Dean of the Bocconi Graduate School, greeted the 2,133 graduates of 2020 on the occasion of the Commencement event. She expressed her strong wish to meet, even if only virtually, with her students who were unable to attend university due to the pandemic last year and had no copportunity to discuss their work in the classroom in front of their professors and with the warmth of their classmates and family. Not a ceremony but an opportunity to reflect, once again together, on the legacy of this difficult year and on how to rebuild a new normality that starts with a renewed assumption of responsibility.  

To do this, with Gianmario Verona, Rector of Bocconi, Antonella Carù chose to present an example, that of an alumna, Serena Porcari, president of the social enterprise Dynamo Academy.  Through the story of her experience she laid out the teachings and values learned during her university career. In her intense and very heartfelt speech entitled Making the everyday extraordinary: sustainable choices in uncertain times, Serena told how she and her staff reacted to the pandemic by focusing on responsibility, innovation and social impact. 

The year of the pandemic imposed profound change on a community like Dynamo Camp, the first recreational therapy camp in Italy.  The camp hosts children and young people suffering from serious diseases and their families free of charge, offering programs aimed at regaining confidence in themselves and their abilities. The goal was not to stop, but instead to relaunch its mission of reaching those who could no longer participate  in the various activities in person. 

"We had to completely reinvent ourselves", explains Serena Porcari, a graduate in Business Administration and Community Advisor of the Paul Newman's Own Foundation, "by launching the At home like at Dynamo program, which allowed us to virtually reach our children in their homes by offering activities targeted toward the problems of each of them". 

The meeting with Serena Porcari on the occasion of the Commencement event was not, however, the end of the story involving the graduates of 2020 and their university.  It was the beginning of a new path in the world, a world that requires, in the words of Antonella Carù “the courage to propose new ideas to face the changes that this unknown situation, the pandemic, demands. For this reason, as Queen Elizabeth said to the British people in her memorable speech last April "We will meet again". Yes, we will meet again at Bocconi, in our Alumni Community ”.