Jorge Aroche

Thank you for your generous introduction, Vice-Chancellor, and for the key role that you yourself played in laying the foundation for torture and trauma services in Australia.

Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, academic staff,  special guests, ladies and gentlemen, and most importantly, graduands.

Let me start by offering you my heartfelt congratulations! Today is a terribly important day, a day for which all of you have worked very hard for many years... first to get into Uni, and then to succeed in your studies to make it to this day. For some of you, like myself, this journey may have also involved learning a new language and how to make sense of a new country and a new way of doing things. This only adds to your achievement.  I am also sure, judging from my own experience at both sides of this equation, that it hasn't been any easier for your families and supporting crew, so congratulations to you too... The results of your investment and hard work are certainly worth it, and you deserve to feel proud. Today, by becoming an alumni of the University of Western Sydney, you join a great group of people who do the University proud. I am well qualified to say this, since quite a few have joined the ranks of STARTTS in recent years and have become key members of our team.  The privilege of addressing you on this occasion, therefore, is a great honour that I certainly don't take lightly...

In fact, thrilled as I was to receive this honour and the chance to address you today, I must confess it did become an increasingly terrifying prospect as the date drew near... To begin with, it was "what can I possibly tell you that is meaningful and uplifting..." yet after a while and a little reflection about what I've learnt in our work, it became "how can I possibly tell you everything I'd like to tell you in five minutes..."

You see; working with torture and trauma may not sound terribly glamorous, and it is certainly hard, challenging work that confronts us with some of the worst aspects of humanity... but it also sometimes provides a window into the most redeeming, beautiful and noble sides of human kind...  making us privy to real life stories that once upon a time I thought only belonged in works of literature. Raising to the challenge of helping people recover and undo the work of torturers has also provided us with the challenge to explore further, to seek new and more effective ways of doing things, to understand better how our brains are affected by trauma and how these effects can be reversed.

I have been incredibly fortunate in my life, to end up working in an area that I am passionate about and is aligned with my values, to have the privilege to get to know and work with incredibly inspiring people all over the world, both as clients and colleagues, and to contribute to build a team, an organization, a service philosophy, a body of research and a reservoir of knowledge that continues to make a difference to so many lives...  But I am not encouraging you to wait for fortune, but rather the opposite...

Life throws some amazing opportunities every now and then, but it is up to us to look for those opportunities, to seek the wisdom to recognize them for what they are, and to put in the hard work to transform them into something tangible. So let me share with you a few of the pearls I learnt from my work in this field.

Our work with torture and trauma survivors would be impossible  without a team, without the camaraderie with people with similar objectives and beliefs, although sometimes very different ideas on how to achieve these shared objectives. This applies to most areas of life. Cultivate good team work skills; the ability to really listen and work with others, to make the effort to understand their worldview and integrate it with our own to achieve common objectives, and at times, to forfeit or postpone your individual  ambitions to those of the team. This makes us stronger, more effective, and  way more successful in the long run.

If you can, try and succeed in something that is aligned with your values, whether as your main job or your voluntary contribution to the community... You'll go a lot further and you will enjoy the journey a lot better if your passion and your efforts are aligned...

My favourite piece of advice, perhaps, stems from our work involving the practical application of neuroplasticity principles in therapy, but it also applies to life in general: Remember that you make who you are by what you do, in a very literal sense, now well supported by an increasing body of neurobiological research. Every decision, every action that you take or don't take, every habit you develop, shapes your brain, in the same way that what you do or don't do with your body changes your physique. We are all stewards and sculptors of our own minds. Be mindful of this.

Most of you, by virtue of what you have achieved today, are already or will become leaders, whether formally or informally, by design or accidentally. Be mindful of this too... the responsibility to direct or influence the actions of other people can be a great privilege, but also a great burden that must be carried respectfully and responsibly, and once assumed cannot be put down lightly.

I could go on and on... But I will just finish with one more... perhaps the most important one... Never stop learning... Perhaps STARTTS best attribute as an organization, and one I like to think I share, is that we got used to operating in a changing environment where we never knew everything about what we were doing, and could never reach a comfortable routine, and constant learning became a very good habit that shaped who we are; a learning organization, and who I am, I suppose.... Hopefully forever learning...

Thank you, and congratulations once again on your achievement, and best of luck on the rest of your amazing life journey!