Academics

Sredni to Penn State Smeal graduates: Choose to be happy

Salomon Sredni, the retired president and chief executive officer of TradeStation Group Inc., delivered the 2016 Penn State Smeal College of Business commencement address. Credit: Photo by Steve Tressler / Penn StateCreative Commons

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Salomon Sredni, the retired president and chief executive officer of TradeStation Group Inc., delivered the 2016 Penn State Smeal College of Business commencement address on Sunday, May 8. Sredni is a 1987 Smeal accounting graduate and member of the college’s Board of Visitors.

Sredni joined TradeStation, which offers analysis and trading tools to the active trader and institutional trader markets, in 1996 as vice president of operations and chief financial officer. He previously worked at IVAX Corporation and Arthur Anderson, LLP. He is a member of several professional accounting organizations and has also served on the boards of several community organizations.

Sredni had the unique distinction of not only delivering the commencement address, but also watching his twin daughters graduate.

Sredni’s commencement address can be found online, at the 17:30 mark of the video.

He started his talk by giving a brief sketch of what his life was like when he was the age of the graduates. He said he was too busy to attend his commencement, already working toward his ultimate goal, of becoming a CEO one day.

That, he said, is a noble goal, but not the ultimate goal graduates should pursue. Instead, he encouraged them to seek a path that leads to a happy, fulfilled life. He stressed that happiness is a mindset.

“The reality is you have the world in front of you and you have the ability to mold what you are and what you will become and what you do,” he said.

Sredni cited Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech and said dreaming big, dreaming often and visualizing what they want to do would help the graduates achieve their goals.

“My friends, I don’t know of anything stronger than having a dream, anything that will help you shape who you will be and what you will be than visualizing where you will be in 20 to 30 years,” he said.

Sredni then invoked a Mark Twain quote that read, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

“That ‘why’ is your gift,” he said. “If you tap into that, the sky is the limit.”

The trip won’t be without it’s hurdles, he said, but “failure is not fatal.”

He then told the story of famous Italian chef Massimo Bottura who watched as one of his chefs dropped a plate featuring a lemon tart. Bottura intervened when the chef was going to throw the dish away, pointing out that even broken, the tart on the plate made for a beautiful image.

“Failure is not fatal, it’s just a different way to learn,” Sredni said. “But more importantly, when others see something broken, please remember to find the beauty in it.”

Last Updated May 13, 2016

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