The Human Pursuit of Business

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2019
10:00 AM | AUDITORIUM, GROUND FLOOR | Flyer

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What makes a job interesting and a company successful, with Paul Chibe, President and CEO of Ferrero North America, and William Linton, Founder and CEO of Promega Corporation, and Co-Founder/Executive Director Usona Institute, moderated by Anujeet Sareen, Portfolio Manager, Brandywine Global

Speakers will share some unconventional stories that shaped the success of their companies, and speak about what, in their personal experience, makes a job ultimately interesting.

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The visible is born from the invisible: works are born from something that may seem abstract or sentimental, but instead is not. Work is an expression of our being. This awareness truly gives breath to the employee who spends eight hours a day at his desk, as well as to the entrepreneur who struggles to develop his business. But our being is a thirst for truth and happiness. It is what the Bible calls “heart” - courage, perseverance, astuteness, hard work. There is no work, not the humble work of the housewife nor the genius of the designer, that can ignore this reference, that can escape the search for complete satisfaction, for human fulfillment. It is a thirst for truth that comes from the curiosity to enter into the mysterious enigma of a search. It is the thirst for happiness, which begins as an instinct and swells into a dignified concrete form. It is the only thing that saves the instinct from becoming corrupt, from becoming as false and ephemeral as a breath. It is the heart that mobilizes everyone in whatever task he undertakes. All of life is compelled by this logic. There is no other source of energy that more compels and enables man to care about his work, even in its most minute details. In this sense the encyclical Laborem Exercens affirms that the aim of work is not work itself, rather it is man.

~Luigi Giussani, “Talk at the National Assembly of Compagnia delle Opere,” December 5, 1987

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Featured image: Tightening bolts to permanent riveting on one of the water distributors of the Dnieper Dam, 1931 | Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Image