Soledad Speaks at Vanderbilt University

Soledad O’Brien to seniors: Finding your passion can take time

Finding the inspiration to live a meaningful life is more a “slow, chip-away-at-it process” than a thunderclap of revelation, Senior Day speaker Soledad O’Brien told Vanderbilt’s Class of 2016 during her address.

Mixing anecdotes about her parents’ courtship and marriage with memories of her early career, O’Brien urged graduating seniors to disregard naysayers like those who told her black mother and white father not to marry and have children in segregated 1950s and ’60s Baltimore.

People would spit on the couple as they walked down the street with O’Brien’s two older sisters, she said. Her mother’s answer? “’We knew America was better than that, and we knew we had a part in making it better.’

“That was her philosophy,” O’Brien said.