So I asked myself, how did I get here? After a lot of thought, I realized there have been two life lessons that changed everything about me. These were moments that shook me, scared me and humbled me. In the end, these moments are two big reasons I am here today. And since my education came in the music business, you may recognize some of the names and think, how can this guy’s stories possibly apply to me? Yet I truly believe these two experiences apply to absolutely anyone and anything you want to do in this journey called life.

Let’s start with something I learned when I was 23 — not much older than most of you guys. It’s been the subtext to whatever success I’ve had. I have tried to instill this lesson in everyone who works for me, and the ones who have learned it, are still working for me.

I started my career as a second recording engineer, which sounds fancy but the reality is that I answered phones, I cleaned the floors, and I made tea and coffee. That may not sound impressive, but it allowed me to learn my business from the ground up and it’s the kind of entry-level job that anybody starting a career should be happy to take. And it got me in the same building with John Lennon who, after the 50th cup of tea I served him, felt my enthusiasm and willingness to learn and allowed me to sit in on his sessions.

From there, I got the opportunity to work with Bruce Springsteen to help him record an album called Born to Run. Born to Run became a landmark album. If you don’t know it, ask your parents. But to my mother and father and their friends, Born to Run wasn’t Bruce Springsteen’s album — it was Jimmy Iovine’s album. They thought it was all about me. And before long, I began to believe that too.

So I was thrilled when Bruce and his manager and producer Jon Landau asked me to engineer the follow-up that eventually became Darkness on the Edge of Town. Back in those days, the first thing you did when making an album was record the drums. The job of getting the right drum sound fell to the recording engineer — and that was me. We spent six weeks working around the clock trying to get the sound that Bruce had in his head. And no matter what we did, it just wasn’t coming.

You cannot imagine everything we tried. We put the drums in the hallway. We put the drums in the elevator. We put the drums in the bathroom. We did everything but put the drums underwater. All I can remember is Bruce constantly saying to me, “Jimmy, I hear the stick hitting the drum.” At a certain point, I looked at him, and said, “Bruce, it is a stick hitting a drum!” But he was “The Boss” and that didn’t satisfy him. We were stuck. The sound I was getting was clunk-clunk-clunk and the sound Bruce wanted was boom-boom-boom.

So eventually, Bruce suggested bringing in some other guy from New Jersey of all places who could help me get this elusive drum sound. And I thought, “Why do I need help? What am I, half as good as I was two years ago?” To me, it sounded like a massive vote of no confidence. After six weeks of putting a microphone everywhere you could possibly imagine, I felt humiliated. I felt embarrassed. To use a word I hear way too often from 20-year-olds who work at my company, I felt disrespected. I felt so disrespected I wanted to suggest one more place Bruce could put that microphone.

I went back to the hotel where we were all staying, and I told Jon Landau, “I quit, I’ve done nothing but support this guy, and now he’s embarrassing me.” Looking back, I was just a beginner in the record-making process, but in the arrogance of my Brooklyn youth, I felt as if I had already arrived — that I knew everything. Boy, was I wrong.

Bruce’s manager looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Hang on, Jimmy, I’m going to tell you something that will go against every instinct you have about how to react in a situation like this: This is not about you.”

Then Bruce’s manager said: “I want you to understand something called ‘The Big Picture.’ I’d never heard about this Big Picture. In my mother’s house, I was The Big Picture.”

Bruce’s manager continued: “And at a moment like this, it’s not about how you feel, Jimmy. It’s about Bruce Springsteen and his album. That’s the big picture — not your feelings, or anyone’s feelings.”

Inside, I had absolutely no idea what Jon meant. I wanted to scream. I wanted to argue. I wanted to walk. But for reasons I’m still thinking about three decades later, I did the opposite. I didn’t protect my ego. Instead, I paused for just a moment and listened to someone who might actually know better. So I told Jon, “You got it” because I did want to learn and this advice sounded like Aristotle to me. I had no idea who Aristotle was, but I liked the sound of his name. Jon told me, “I want you to walk in that room and tell Bruce Springsteen, ‘ “I am here to support you. I will do whatever you need me to do.’ ”

So that’s what I did.

Turned out, the other guy from Jersey couldn’t get the drums right either. Somehow we got closer to the sound Bruce wanted and we moved on together. Six weeks later, not only was I still on Bruce’s team, but he also gave me one of the greatest songs he ever wrote called “Because The Night” that I produced for Patti Smith. That was my first hit record as a producer and launched my career. Listening to Jon’s five words — “This is not about you” — became the tipping point for every gift that’s followed in my life.

At that moment, I began to learn how to push aside my own personal issues and my desperate need to be right so I could focus on what was truly important — the greater good. Don’t worry, I wasn’t cured — I still battle with these issues of insecurity, ego, pride and especially fear every day. Too often those issues get in the way of me seeing the “Big Picture.” But what I have learned is some of these powerful insecurities can be harnessed into life’s greatest motivator, the strongest five-hour energy drink ever. It’s called a little old fashioned fear.

I know about fear. I was once fired from two jobs within 90 days. I felt as if the sidewalk was collapsing behind me, but that insecure feeling always kept me moving forward. Rather than stop me in my tracks like a headwind, I began to learn how to make those same insecurities the tailwinds to propel me forward.

Okay, now let’s fast-forward a little bit … maybe 30 years.

My second pivotal life lesson came in 1999, and now I was feeling like the king of the world. I had built the hottest record company in the world, Interscope Records, the home of great artists like Dr. Dre, No Doubt, Eminem, The Black Eyed Peas and we had just signed U2. We were on a roll. We felt invincible. Nothing could touch us.

Except … Napster.

As a founder of Interscope Records, a company built on people paying for music, I was instantly scared to death. My God-given insecurities kicked in again. See I grew up in Brooklyn, so I knew the difference between going to a store and paying for something, and the opportunity to get it for free. I felt this stealing thing could really catch on.

So I went to see one of founding guys at Intel named Les Valdez. Somehow I thought I could reason with the industry that was about to destroy mine.

Fear, at times, makes us protect and defend what we think we already know. But sometimes in life, you need to learn a new lesson. And between you and me, in my experience, the most intelligent people that I meet are the ones who can best articulate what they don’t know. That’s not what I did with Les that day. I just kept trying to tell him how I thought things should be.

After listening to me for 20 minutes, Les finally spoke. He looked me in the eye, and said, “Wow, Jimmy, what a nice story. But you know what? Not every industry was made to last forever.” That statement was so profound and so true and so insightful and — to me — so devastating, I nearly retired right there and then. I walked into Les’ office thinking I was Elvis, and I was gently reminded Elvis was dead.

The lesson Les taught me is one I believe is increasingly important to learn in the fast-changing world we live in today. Think about this: Everything you know could already be wrong.

When I got outside Les’ office and stopped sweating, I called my buddy Doug Morris, the chairman of Universal Music and my boss at the time. I said, “Doug, we’re screwed.” Okay, I might not have used that exact word, but hey, I was upset. I said: “Doug, these guys don’t want our land. They want our water to take back to their land.”

At that moment, I was scared to death. In fact, at this moment, I am scared to death speaking in front of all you people. But I want you all to get comfortable with your fears because fear is a fact of life that you can use to your advantage. Because when you learn to harness the power of your fears, it can take you places beyond your wildest dreams. Because here’s the good news: Fear has a lot of firepower.

I’ve spent my life working with many of my heroes and maybe some of yours too. From John Lennon and Bruce to Bono, Eminem. And let me tell you, I never met a great artist who wasn’t afraid of not living up to people’s expectations. But all of the greats used their fear to inspire them. I think today of the way John Lennon broke ground by speaking of his fears and his belief in change in a song called “Working Class Hero.”

As John sang,

When they’ve tortured and scared you for 20-odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be

John was a guy who could really express his fears and conquer them.

In the music business back in 2003, we were standing at a crossroads. We could desperately defend the past and keep digging the same hole, or we could open our eyes to the future. Trust me, it’s a lot harder to change directions at 55 than at 25 — and I think your parents will vouch for me. Les inspired me that day to go find my way in a music business that was evolving. The old model was changing. So I began to think that maybe there was some way to harness the culture of the old music industry in a whole new way.

Around that time, I was lucky enough to get to know Steve Jobs from Apple. I was representing Universal Music dealing with iTunes. After three years of hanging around Steve and the team at Apple, I thought I could learn a lot from these guys. They were breaking new ground. They were changing the game. And they were winning.

I noticed how Steve took all the music and videos from the world and built a beautiful shiny white thing called the iPod to play them on. We loved this shiny little white thing. The only part my friend Dr. Dre and I didn’t like were the shiny white ear buds that came with the shiny white iPod because they sounded terrible, sound wasn’t Apple’s focus. So we thought what if we make a beautiful shiny black thing so you can properly hear what’s in Steve’s shiny little white thing? So with my friend Dr. Dre, there we had the beginning of Beats. It wasn’t that simple, but you get the idea.

I learned even at 50, I had to be a beginner again — and that’s as Zen-like a statement as you’ll ever hear from me. So who believed that Dr. Dre and I could sell hardware? No one. But we believed in ourselves. We harnessed our fear into power and turned it into action.

Today each one of you have an excellent reason to believe in yourselves. You’ve earned a degree from USC. You are graduating from one of the greatest universities in the world. Remember when you grew up hearing about people that are privileged? Congratulations you are now officially privileged. Because you know what privileged means — it means you have an edge. And whatever your background, wherever you come from, you now have the undeniable edge of a first-class education.

But please remember this: Your diploma does not represent the end of your education, but the beginning of your continuing education. Continue to listen and learn, with humility not hubris. Because that diploma you hold in your hands today is really just your learner’s permit for the rest of the drive through life. Remember, you don’t have to be smarter than the next person, all you have to do is be willing to work harder than the next person.

So now, that you’ve heard the stories that changed my life, it’s time for an announcement we hope will change some lives for the better in the future here at USC. Walking around USC today, it seems everyone’s a doctor. Which is funny because I brought my partner today who also happens to be a doctor. So in the words of Slim Shady, will the real Dr. Dre please stand up and join me onstage?

Dre: USC! Great to be back in my hood — up to some good. Congratulations to the graduating Class of 2013!

Iovine: At Beats, Dre and I have found it really difficult to find kids with an education that encompasses technology, the arts and innovation. So with USC, we’re creating a brand new program right here. It’s called the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy of Art, Technology and the Business of Innovation.

The class of 2013 is among the first in history to have grown up in our new world where the distinctions between the arts and technology are disappearing So Dre and I are teaming with this great institution to create a new kind of academy to address this reality. We want to do our part to prepare more brilliant students to do great and unexpected things.

What we need are schools — dream factories — that are broad enough to inspire, challenge and satisfy the curiosity of the next wave of game-changers that have a feel for technology and the liberal arts. That’s what we plan to do right here at USC.

In closing, because I believe in people doing the unexpected and being innovative, I would like to try something that’s never been done at a major graduation ceremony. Rather than quote William Shakespeare or Robert Frost, I close with the words of my favorite poet, R. Kelly, who penned my personal karaoke anthem. So let tonight be the reward for all of your hard work, and the “ignition” to a continuing education of the rest of your lives:

Today is your remix to ignition
You’re hot and fresh out the kitchen
You got the entire student body here
You got every graduate here wishin’
Parents they might be sippin’ on coke and rum
And they might even get a little drunk
So what, it’s their USC graduation baby
And tonight they’re gonna have some fun!

So have a fun weekend and a great life and especially a great night!

Dre: Peace! We out.

At the event, USC President C. L. Max Nikias spoke of USC Marshall’s legacy and its longtime ties to the city of Los Angeles and the global business community.

“For more than 90 years, the Marshall School has been a dynamic cornerstone of USC. The roots of its entrepreneurial DNA can be traced back to USC’s chief founder, Robert Maclay Widney, who is also considered the chief architect of modern Los Angeles,” Nikias said. “Today that entrepreneurial spirit is carried on by the school’s students, faculty and alumni, who take what is taught in the classrooms at USC into boardrooms and businesses around the world.”

The school seeks to raise $400 million to fuel globally relevant programming and opportunities. The funds will support endowments for academic programming, student scholarships and faculty research and teaching in addition to supporting capital projects and other critical priorities. The initiative is part of The Campaign for the University of Southern California, a multiyear effort to secure $6 billion or more in private philanthropy to advance USC’s academic priorities and expand its positive impact on the community and world.

“We are altering the business landscape across Southern California and beyond,” said USC Marshall Dean James G. Ellis, setting the tone for the evening by speaking of the school’s mission and trajectory.

USC Trustee Frank Fertitta III ’84, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas-based Fertitta Entertainment and Station Casinos, spoke to the crowd about the global franchise he and his brother, Lorenzo Fertitta, have built. He attributed his success to USC Marshall, saying his education gave him the tools to help their companies grow.

“We are now attracting the best and brightest from around the world and are creating the international business leaders of tomorrow,” Fertitta said.

Attendees also heard a keynote speech by USC Trustee Thomas Barrack Jr. ’69, CEO of Los Angeles-based Colony Capital LLC, who recalled the moment when the university and USC Marshall changed his life — when he attended one of the school’s business communications classes.

“My life would be totally different if I didn’t have a Trojan education,” said Barrack, who discussed his career trajectory and marveled at the “magic” of the Trojan Family.

Comparing the university to jewelry made of rare and precious pieces, Barrack said, “The faculty are diamonds, the students — rubies — and the administration — emeralds — all held together by a seamless chain of global alumni.”

The annual USC Marshall School of Business event, which was held at the Davidson Continuing Education Center, provides seed money to startups from across USC. Two startups were awarded $15,000 and four others were awarded $5,000.

One of the $15,000 winners was CoreTech, a team from USC’s Health, Technology and Engineering program, which has developed a device to harvest stem cells for recipients of bone marrow transplants who have life-threatening diseases, such as leukemia and multiple myeloma.

CoreTech’s product is an alternative to current methods that tend to be tedious, inefficient and costly. The company plans to use its device in the emerging regenerative medicine industry, harvesting stem cells for patients suffering from cardiovascular, neurological and orthopaedic diseases as well as diabetes.

The other $15,000 winner was International Career Guide, which intends to offer career preparatory services for international students who are seeking to find positions in the United States.

The $5,000 awards went to GymFlow, One of Many, Hip Traveler and Shanghai Baji.

GymFlow is a new iPhone app that offers traffic updates of gym usage to help customers avoid waiting for machinery at overcrowded gyms.

One of Many developed Tikr, an app that allows users to create their countdowns to movies, concerts, vacations, television shows, anniversaries, product releases, sporting events, holidays and social events.

Hip Traveler is in the process of developing a crowdsourced travel website based on the videos, blog posts, advice, photography and itineraries of those who travel.

Shanghai Baji is building an online logistics management and information platform for the Chinese trucking industry.

In a competition against rivals from eight other top West Coast MBA programs, USC Marshall MBA students took home the school’s fourth straight Golden Briefcase after a yearlong competition that wrapped up with the C4C event at Stanford University on April 19-20.

The award takes into account the school with the most volunteer hours, most funds raised, and best attendance at and performance in an array of 28 sports-related competitions during that weekend. USC Marshall C4C members spent more than 6,000 community service hours volunteering with three charity organizations: the Special Olympics, Junior Achievement and A Better LA.

“Getting over 400 people to contribute an average of more than 14.5 hours each in an academic year is not an easy feat,” said Diane Badame, assistant dean and academic director of the full-time MBA program. “Our students are competitive but collaborative and work together as a team to strive to higher levels of performance every year.”

USC Marshall MBA students raised more than $186,000 for the organizations, almost 25 percent more than the previous year. Over the last three years, USC Marshall students have raised nearly $500,000 for charity.

“I am incredibly proud of our students and the culture that they have embraced,” said USC Marshall Dean James G. Ellis. “They understand that leadership means being engaged, connecting and giving back.”

Designed for professionals who live and work in the North America, Asia-Pacific region — specifically the India subcontinent, Greater China, South Korea and the United States — the degree program will be available to the students both synchronously and asynchronously via the Internet.

The comprehensive program, which focuses on both academics and practical applications, will include two experiential trips to global logistics hubs in Los Angeles and Singapore. Online courses will offer the flexibility to access lectures anywhere and anytime. Integration of webinars and other online resources will be used to enhance the program. Classes will be taught in English by faculty at USC Marshall, and enrolled students will have the opportunity to earn Lean Six-Sigma certification.

“Our program is designed with the working professional in mind, combining flexibility with rigorous academics, hands-on learning, a global network and international travel,” said Ravi Kumar, MSGSCM faculty directo. “Given the growing opportunities in the field, USC Marshall’s Master of Science in Global Supply Chain Management comes at the perfect time.”

Sponsored by Disney/ABC Television Group, five-member teams from select schools gathered in Los Angeles to address a real-world challenge facing Disney and the industry at large.

Schools chosen to compete this year were evenly divided between domestic and international institutions: USC Marshall School of Business, UCLA Anderson School of Management, S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, Boston University School of Management, Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University (Montreal), Copenhagen Business School, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, IPADE (Mexico City) and KAIST, a public research university in South Korea.

Unlike case competitions where participants have 24 scant hours to prepare, the GCC offers three different prompts that begin a month before teams gather at USC Marshall to present their recommendations.

Participating teams had to make presentations in three categories —company, consulting and industry — to three sets of judges. Panels were composed of industry experts and executives from Disney/ABC, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Mattel and representatives from top consulting firms.

“The Marshall Global Consulting Challenge brings together the finest MBA students from across the globe, and it’s a great forum to hear their thoughts on the opportunities and challenges in the media and entertainment space,” said Paul Pastor, vice president of strategy and media planning for the Disney/ABC Television Group. “These students can give a unique perspective into the best ways to invest in our brands, content and products for the future.”

Copenhagen Business School won the overall competition, with McGill, Ross and UCLA winning the best industry recommendations, best consulting recommendations best company recommendations categories, respectively.

Beyond providing a firsthand experience to learn the goals of a renowned company, the event offered participants an opportunity to network with leading executives from an array of organizations.

“Case competitions require the application of concepts students have learned in business education in an interdisciplinary way. It’s not theoretical, but a real problem or issue facing Disney,” said Fernando Zapatero, vice dean for graduate programs at USC and holder of the Robert G. Kirby Chair in Behavioral Finance. “Students get the opportunity to interact with and present themselves to potential employers and experts who are interested in what they have to say.”

“One of the main motivators for hosting GCC is to create a signature event that MBAs can use to supplement their classes,” said USC MBA student Bertram Foster, who helped organize the event and communicate with participating teams over the past year. “We design GCC to be as much like a real-world consulting project as possible. Our hope is that this competition will be a differentiator for every student involved — something that every participant can include on their resume and talk about in interviews.”

A visiting professor at Harvard Business School and holder of the President’s Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College, Davenport was invited to speak to faculty and students about the exponential growth in the generation of digital data from the Internet, social media, video, genomic computations and the proliferation of billions of sensors.

More than 100 faculty and students listened to Davenport discuss future trends and challenges for companies looking to use both big and small data, as well as how companies will bring products and services to market.

Yehuda Bassok, chair of the Department of Information and Operations Management and professor of information and operations management at the USC Marshall School of Business, said the talk gave students and faculty an overview of the developing field.

“For managers, it’s important to understand this area,” said Bassok, who created the forum with Professor Omar El Sawy.

During his talk, Davenport defined small data as structured, lower-volume data. Big data, he said, is “either too big, too unstructured or too multisourced to be analyzed through traditional means.”

He dated the first generation of corporate analytics, which he called Analytics 1.0 from 1954 — when UPS started the first corporate analytics group — until 2010, when the concept of big data and Analytics 2.0 took off.

Today, he said, we are in the early stages of Analytics 3.0, in which big data and small data will no longer be kept separate, and there is blend of traditional analytics and big data analytics.

“The big companies that I speak to say they want to add big data to their portfolio, but they’re not really viewing it as a separate thing,” Davenport explained. “It’s going to be combined, which means different approaches to managing, gathering and structuring data. It means application of big data in relatively new ways so that even though big data hasn’t been with us that long, at least under that name, it’s been very influential and the combination of the two will yield a new era in thinking of this phenomenon.

“The future is not big data as a separate thing but giving people the tools to jointly manage a combination,” he added.

The rise of big data will also continue to reshape business functions, he noted, as it has already done for many marketing positions.

“For management the issue is going to be: How do we make decisions? How do we make decisions in a continuous way versus a batch way,” asked Davenport, describing the ongoing flow of information that companies must monitor and act upon today versus the old data warehouse model. “It keeps on coming so you have to establish processes to manage and decide on it.”

The annual accolade recognizes exceptional academicians, no more than seven years out of their doctoral programs, who have demonstrated outstanding achievements in research and teaching. Since the Western Academy of Management introduced the award in 1982, many of the management field’s most prominent scholars have been recognized as Ascendant Scholars during their early careers.

“Feng Zhu’s research is theoretically insightful, methodologically rigorous and practically relevant,” said Thomas Cummings, professor and chair of the Department of Management & Organization at USC Marshall. “It focuses on an important and rapidly growing sector of the global economy — platform-based markets — and it is interdisciplinary, drawing on concepts and perspectives from economics, marketing and information systems.

“Add to this scholarship,” Cummings continued, “Feng’s exceptional teaching record, including USC Marshall’s Golden Apple teaching award, and you have one of the field’s truly ascendant scholars.”

Zhu is being honored by the Western Academy of Management four years after receiving his PhD from Harvard University. His research on technology strategy and business model competition in platform-based markets has been published in American Economic Review, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Journal of Marketing, Management Science and Strategic Management Journal. Zhu, who teaches courses on strategic management and research methods, received both the Dean’s Award for Research Excellence and USC Marshall’s Golden Apple teaching award in 2011.

“I am truly honored to receive this award,” Zhu said. “I would not have received it without the nurturing environment at USC. My wonderful colleagues not only helped me tremendously with my research but also made me a much better teacher.”

Founded in 2008 by James Owens, associate professor of clinical management communication at the USC Marshall School of Business, the WIJABA aims to empower future leaders by promoting literacy and education.

“These libraries will serve more than 500 children, many of whom have never held a book before,” said Stephanie Wetzel, co-president of the WIJABA USC Club. “These libraries are built in very poor areas, either in Mexico or Indonesia. The books offered to the children are written in either the local language or English — a good mix of both.”

Co-presidents Wetzel and Aaron Barg coordinated this year’s event, which drew approximately 375 participants. The students were assisted by Emily Welch, vice president of operations; Claire Staggs, treasurer; Kelsey Knapp, vice president of programming; Claire Baugher, vice president of philanthropy, Panhellenic Council; and Kevin Koeller, vice president of philanthropy, Interfraternity Council.

In addition, Ken Park MBA ’05, associate director of MBA admissions, volunteered his time and played a key role in pulling the event together. Jonathan Schwartz MBA ’05 sponsored the event through the company he founded, Splits59, and Alexander Evans-Pfeiffer and Barak Federman donated cookies from their philanthropic business, Kuki Squared, for the race.

“This 5K was by far the largest yet,” Owens said. “The co-presidents did an incredible job expanding the event, initiating a 1K for children under age 10, including 30 USC fraternities and sororities and partnering with the USC Association of Indonesian Students. Having sponsorship through Splits59, along with Jonathan Schwartz’s and Ken Park’s time and energy, also made an enormous difference in helping to reach the fundraising goal.”

Many of the WIJABA USC Club’s current members are in fraternities and sororities at the university. In total, 127 sorority members and 88 fraternity members participated in the event. The library in Indonesia, opening this summer, will be named in honor of the Panhellenic and Interfraternity Councils of USC. The one in Mexico, which will open in May, will be named the USC WIJABA Club 5K Library 2013.

Since its founding in 2010, the WIJABA USC Club has raised funds to build a total of four libraries, including the two to be built this year. The national organization has built more than 50 libraries and launched two mobile libraries with 50,000 books for more than 27,000 underprivileged primary school children in Indonesia and Mexico.

“In the 16 years I have worked at USC, I have seen the power of Trojan networking,” Owens said, “and I am so proud to be part of this 5K race organized by USC students.

“The fact that 375 people participated and that it raised $15,000 to build two libraries for more than 500 children is an amazing illustration of the power of the Trojan Family coming together to do good in the world,” added Owens, who noted that the 14-person WIJABA board includes six USC alumni — four from USC Marshall — and that Dean James G. Ellis also serves on the advisory board.

Stephanie Soltis and her classmates developed a plan to provide rural Afghanistan with water filters, essential for clean water in places without central water sources, after a site visit to Hurley, where they initially went to learn about career options.

Hurley, an outdoor lifestyle brand that focuses on surfing, skateboarding, music and art, has partnered with the nonprofit Waves for Water program to provide filters to people in need throughout the world. The program was initially established to have surfers take filters to various corners of the world during their international travels.

Soltis, a surfer, a reserve major and a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, periodically flies C-17 cargo planes to Afghanistan on missions to support troops. She knew that she would be flying to Afghanistan in December and offered to take some filters for distribution to complement her mission.

“There aren’t waves there, but there is clearly a need for clean water,” said Soltis, who has flown about 260 combat missions during her service in the Air Force.

Soltis and fellow MBA students immediately began a short-term fundraising drive to purchase filters for the people of Afghanistan. Their initial goal was to raise enough money to purchase 20 filters; in a few days, they had raised enough money to purchase 32 — enough to provide clean water to more than 3,200 people for up to five years.

“It’s tough asking people for money around the holidays, especially college students,” Soltis said. “It was amazing to see how my fellow Trojans rose to the occasion and contributed to this cause.”

With the small, portable water filters in a backpack, Soltis headed to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in late December. Then, in a testament to the power of networks, she connected with a college classmate and A-10 pilot who coordinated with the U.S. Army units that his squadron supports and Air Force security forces patrols to distribute the filters in villages.

The experience was uplifting for Soltis, who saw how the power of the USC Marshall network could be mobilized to address real needs in the world.

She wrote to her classmates soon after she returned from Afghanistan: “I can attest from the ground level that you can and should feel very good about the fact that you very directly helped people in need. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this amazing Trojan Family than I am right now. You are truly exceptional people and being associated with you is a gift and honor.”