We were pleased to welcome Mike Bechtel ’94 to address the Class of 2025 and the Morgan Park Academy community as the commencement speaker at our 152nd graduation exercises on June 7, 2025.

As Chief Futurist at Deloitte Consulting, Bechtel leads a team that helps clients make sense of what’s new and next in technology. He also serves as an adjunct professor, teaching corporate innovation at the University of Notre Dame.

In 2013, Bechtel co‑founded and served as Managing Director of Ringleader Ventures, a venture‑capital firm that invests in early‑stage start‑ups building simple solutions to complex corporate challenges.

He began his career with Accenture Labs, where his team helped Fortune 500 clients put emerging technologies to profitable use. Twelve years later, with 12 U.S. patents, he was named the firm’s first Global Innovation Director, charged with creating strategy, process, and culture to foster company‑wide intrapreneurship.

MORE STORIES — COMMENCEMENT 2025

 

TRANSCRIPT

Good morning! Oh, that’s the energy I’m here for—good morning, class!

I’m talking to two groups at once, so let me get my notes ready.

***

First things first: a little gratitude. I want to thank Mercedes Sheppard, the Board of Trustees, and my freshman World History teacher from 1990, Tom Drahozal, for having me back home. Thank you—it’s a treat.

But if that feels a little sugary, let’s get real: Who’s this guy standing between you and your diplomas? And straight talk—what in the heck is a futurist?

When I heard Mr. Drahozal introduce me, I noticed about 25 percent of you leaning in, thinking, “This might be interesting.” Tragically, about 50 percent leaned back thinking, “I do believe this guy’s full of baloney.”

In truth, “futurist” is just a fun way to say I help world leaders—businesses, governments, you name it—make sense of what’s new and next in tech, business, society, and culture. If anything, it’s my job to inoculate those leaders against baloney.

But before we talk about future stuff, how about we jump into the Wayback Machine and talk a bit about the past?

***

Per Mr. Drahozal, we all start out as kids who weirdly think we know more than we’ll know as grown‑ups. When I was 13, growing up 20 minutes southeast of here in Calumet City, I had my future figured out: clearly I was going to play for the Chicago Bears.

I even built a plan:

  1. Attend Mount Carmel for high school and dominate at football.
  2. Get a full‑ride scholarship to Notre Dame and continue to dominate at football.
  3. Get drafted by the McCaskey family and enjoy a mediocre NFL career.

My mom wasn’t having it. In seventh grade she said, “You’re going to the little prep school on the Southwest Side where your dad works because, one, we get a faculty‑kid discount; two, we’ll save a fortune on bus money—you’re riding with Dad; and three, I hear it’s a very good school.”

Well, I wasn’t having that:

  1. There are eight kids at that school.
  2. They don’t have a football team.
  3. (With respect as a fellow graduate) the whole place was giving Hogwarts for Nerds.

But folks, always listen to your mother. You see, I stopped growing; I was this size in seventh grade. Still am. So the Bears would not be my ticket.

Mom said, “Try basketball at MPA.” Because MPA is a welcoming community, I went to basketball camp. My first memory: getting dunked on—literally—by your 2023 commencement speaker, Kareem Daniel. To learn that this guy with a 39″ vertical also had a 39 ACT score? Insult to injury. You see, I might have been small, but I made up for it by being slow, which is why I also got torched at the perimeter by Vincent Williams, MPA’s original Steph Curry, and laid out in the post by Chicago’s 28th‑Ward Alderman, the Honorable Jason “Swervin” Ervin.

So… on second thought, maybe don’t always listen to your mother.

***

It ended up okay. I found my people and my place:

  • Soccer: (I played mid—which was both my position and a description of my level of play).
  • Track: (I got faster… ish)
  • Arts: choir, theater (I starred in a couple of plays… more on that later).
  • Writing: Claire Concannon led the student newspaper and yearbook;
  • Jim Kowalsky ran WMPA radio, teaching us the importance of a smile in your voice. (My “innovation” was reporting traffic in the parking lot during morning announcements. “Looks like Sanjay Bhojraj double parked and blocked in Sudeep Bisla again…” replete with verbal helicopter sound effects. Elite broadcast journalism!)

I was into service: Kiwanis Key Club Peanut Day, Student Council, HOBY. And that spirit carried into my first summer jobs on the Buildings & Grounds crew—right here.

  • Year 1: sanitation engineer (garbage man).
  • Year 2: materials‑relocation specialist (heavy labor).
  • Year 3: vertical‑surfaces pigmentation technician (painter).

I’ve painted every vertical surface on this campus—twice. That third hot summer I had a hair‑brained scheme: “The Academy deserves a Digital Buildings & Grounds.” I pitched a website—on this newfangled contraption called the Internet—and they said yes. (Truth: I just wanted to work in air‑conditioning.)

***

Why this litany of lived experiences? This mixtape of random‑access memories? Because one huge thing I learned at MPA is that diversity is a super‑power.

  • Cultural and socioeconomic diversity here at MPA was a gift; it led me to major in anthropology to study diverse cultures and societies.
  • Experiential diversity—The ability at a small and inclusive school to do a little bit of a lot—it taught me to rise above labels and approach my future as a creator and cross-pollinator.

At Notre Dame—not playing football—I picked up a double major in Government, and minors in Economics and Philosophy… because why not? MPA folks are more than any one thing, right?

And that MPA mojo carried into work: My first tech‑consulting interview, the guy said, “So, you’re an archaeologist, but you build websites (so you’re technical) and you played Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man (so you’ve got sales skills)” I imagine them reflecting later: “It says here he’s a vertical‑surface pigmentation technician too—let’s give him a chance.” They did.

That same Breadth-as-Depth mojo set me up for moves into nonprofit, venture capital, futurism, and teaching—businesses I had no business being in—because at MPA you learn you’re not here for elbows‑out competition; you’re here to create.

***

Straight talk: It’s felt like the world is moving in the other direction—toward relentless specialization. I sit on Notre Dame’s business‑school board, and I’ve seen this first hand: In 2000, employers said, “We’ll hire anyone with critical‑thinking skills.” By 2005: “Maybe be a business major.” By 2010: “We hire finance, specifically.” By 2015: “Finance plus computer science.” By 2020: “Got a Nobel?” Fewer and fewer chairs when the music stops.

But that’s changing. In the past three cycles, we’ve seen the pendulum slowly turning back towards a more diverse set of majors. Anyone able to hunch why? One little two‑letter word stealing a lot of oxygen: AI.

Now, AI isn’t new. It’s whatever computers can’t do yet. In 1996 my engineering professor said a machine could never beat a Russian grandmaster at chess. Then it did. Eleven years later I watched Ken Jennings get smoked on Jeopardy! by a computer. An attorney friend told me AI vs. junior associates in case review is “Navy SEALs vs. mall cops.” My friends MPA ’90 grad Dr. Biren Patel and his wife Dr. Nisha Patel—both radiologists—say, “What can I see in a scan that a computer can’t?”

Sounds bleak for a commencement speech, but read between the lines: AI isn’t coming for us; it’s coming for known, past‑tense specializations. The people best positioned to rise above automation are… MPA people: theatrical athletes, musical mathletes, charismatic coders—dot‑connectors.

But then again: This isn’t really new either: Breakthroughs have always come from dot‑connectors, not dot‑perfectors:

  • Leonardo da Vinci mashing up biology, art, and engineering.
  • Gutenberg connecting coin‑printing and a wine press to create the printing press (the OG copy‑paste).
  • Persian polymath Avicenna, a millennium ago, merging biology, philosophy, math, and astronomy to write The Canon of Medicine.
  • Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr reverse‑engineering a player piano to invent frequency‑hopping spread‑spectrum tech—fueling everything from WWII guided missiles to your phone’s Wi‑Fi.

***

Bringing it home: MPA uniquely sets you up for a future of mash‑ups, mixtapes, and remix artistry. MPA doesn’t build NPCs—(non‑player characters for the olds). It builds polymaths.

Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” I’d humbly add: be all your selves. Marry up everything that makes you you. The future favors learn‑it‑alls over know‑it‑alls; multi‑tool players who realize that winning others’ games isn’t as nearly as cool as creating your own.

Class, the future favors:

  • Ingenuity – asking great questions (machines know the answers).
  • Empathy – leading with need and serving others (take it from a geek, tech comes last).
  • Initiative – getting busy without needing to be asked.

AI needs prompting. You don’t—you’re graduates of Morgan Park Freaking Academy.

A year and a half ago, before my mom passed—the same mom with dubious basketball advice—she asked why I make things so complicated. I said the enduring human capabilities are ingenuity, empathy, initiative. She simply said, “This is the the Wizard of Oz all over again: Those are just fancy words for brains, heart, and courage.”

And so on third, and final thought:

Always listen to your mother.

***

All right, let’s get a little rowdy. The future is more knowable than it feels, and take it from a professional: I have more than a feeling. I have a downright thesis that your future, Morgan Park Academy Class of 2025, will be beyond bright.

Thank you, and onward, class!