I decided to choose a path for myself and whatever I did for a living was the physical manifestation of walking down that path.

I had to pour myself into doing something meaningful or there was no point. I knew it didn’t matter how much money I made, how much status I had, or what kind of things I could accumulate. I vowed to myself that I would choose happiness and fulfillment above all else in my life’s direction. Striving for money brought him neither wealth nor happiness. “I was terrible at selling books,” he said. That fateful junior summer, Wilmore opted for financial stability-or so he thought. “As a product of a broken family… at the edges of poverty,” he said, “it felt irresponsible of me to not think practically.” Wilmore fell in love with entertainment, but in college, he struggled to find the courage to pursue it wholeheartedly, knowing he “was possibly throwing away the most important time in my life chasing a foolish dream.” Wilmore grew up poor and felt pressured to chase economic stability. In the living rooms of dozens of discontented customers, Wilmore diagnosed a lack of self-examination: “Most people spend more time planning a two-week vacation than they spend planning their lives.” In his Class Day speech, Wilmore encouraged Harvard College’s class of 2023 to think deeply about their paths. He learned a lot: how to convince people to overlook their initial doubts and make a purchase, how to stay excited in the face of rejection, and how to face so many people who seemed unhappy with their lives. Now an Emmy Award-winning writer, producer, and actor, Wilmore still thinks back to his summer working for Southwestern Advantage. In the summer of 1982, then-college junior Larry Wilmore traveled to Rhode Island to sell books door-to-door.

Pulitzer prize the road