The one thing no one can ever take away from you

Dr. Lara Zibners Lohr (MBA ’23), co-founder of Calla Lily Clinical Care, gave this keynote address when UNC Kenan-Flagler celebrated the October 2026 graduation of Online MBA and Executive MBA Program students. Read a profile of Zibners here.

Good afternoon, Dean Frank, Associate Dean Gilland, faculty, family, friends and, most importantly, you, the graduates.

I am incredibly honored to be standing here, addressing this graduating class. It is my first commencement speech, possibly my last, so once you’ve finished Googling, who the heck I am, I hope I can share a few thoughts with you that will stay with you long after this day is over.

It really is both an honor and quite astonishing to me that I am the one standing here. Because only three and a half years ago, I was sitting in that chair. Waiting my turn to walk across the stage. Knowing the applause grew louder because we had finally reached the Z’s and the last graduate, but hoping my kids thought it was because Mom is super popular.

My life today is completely different than it was then, in no small part because of my decision to return to school at age 50 and take on a degree that was so far outside my comfort zone that it turned more than a few heads when I announced my enrollment.

I am a physician by background, but life threw some unexpected turns at me. I left fulltime clinical practice much earlier than expected. I found myself living in a foreign country, far from family and friends, starting a new life, growing a family. I found different professional roles, eventually obtaining a master’s in medical education to complement the time I was spending teaching doctors how to teach.

And one day I woke up, 50 years old, at a crossroads. I understood with stark clarity that I had gaping holes in my own knowledge and capabilities. These were skills that I suddenly needed, and I would need to fill those gaps. So, I Googled, “Best online MBA” and up popped “UNC Kenan-Flagler.”

When I announced my decision to return to school, that raised some eyebrows. Surely there is an easier, less expensive way to learn how to use Excel, isn’t there? But for me, this material was so far away from what I found familiar that it felt overwhelming. I remember thinking how do I force myself to learn? The answer in my case was “public shaming.” In other words, grades. I have always been a bit of a teacher’s pet and carry a competitive streak. The thought of being humiliated by showing up unprepared, not putting in the work, would far outweigh my reluctance to dive into topics that looked for all the world like Sanskrit to me.

And it worked. I remember orientation, feeling pretty confident about my past accomplishments for about the first 30 seconds of introductions. Then I met the Navy Seal. The astronaut. The Blackhawk pilot-slash-neurologist. The other doctors. The lawyers. Everyone was someone. My ego was reset pretty quickly. And I was honored to be part of my cohort.

Which makes my story more relevant to this class than a typical commencement speech. I’m not speaking to a room full of 22-year-olds who have traveled from their childhood home to a dorm room and then into graduate school. You are all, on average, a bit older than that. Some of you might even be older than me. You have mortgages. Maybe divorces. I see more than one child in the room and I’m guessing they belong to some of you. Several of you probably have gray hair that you didn’t have two years ago when you started this journey. And that means that all of you have more life experience than the average graduates sitting through a commencement speech.

Perhaps the choice to return to school for this program, this degree was an easy one. Maybe it was offered to you as a steppingstone to career advancement. Some of you might have had tuition incentives and time built into your work schedule. For others, maybe not so easy. You had to manage the substantial cost yourself. And work was done when it could be done, squeezed in around all the other parts of your life. As fully grown adults, that is more challenging than when you are young.

Remember those days, when all you had to worry about was yourself?

For me, my UNC Kenan-Flagler days would involve class at 2 a.m. Which sounded at enrollment much more appealing than it was in actuality. For two years I set the alarm for 1:45, 2:45 a.m., threw on a sweatshirt, pulled my hair back and logged onto my computer. The novelty of those early morning alarms wore off quickly and to this day, I have a hypervigilant response to many of the alarm options on my Apple device.

But I did it because it was important. Education has always been hugely important to me. For the opportunity it gives you. For the credibility it gives you. But also, because it is the one thing in life that you cannot lose.

Think about that for a moment. Everything else in life can be taken away. From the physical to the metaphorical.

At the risk of arriving in a new city, opening the phone book and calling all the people I don’t know, I am going to list just a few of the infinite number of things you can lose.

You can lose your keys. You can lose your glasses. Even when they are perched on top of your head. Just saying.

You can lose your balance. Your train of thought. Your courage.

You can lose your house. To a fire. A flood. The bank. A plane falling out of the sky or a felled tree in a storm.

You can lose your car. Your savings. Your investment portfolio. Money can disappear in between the cushions of a sofa or seemingly into thin air with shocking ease.

You can lose your job. Your impressive title. The corner office. The parking spot with your name on it.

You can lose people you love, to distance or to death. To misunderstandings or to betrayal. All of which carry their own kind of grief.

You can lose your reputation in a single afternoon thanks to the internet.

You can lose control. Of your dog. Your kids. Your temper. Your willpower when handed a second slice of cake.

You can lose control of certain faculties where in your 20s that are considered a wild Saturday night and in your 50s is called “Tuesday.”

You can lose consciousness. In my case that often happened during financial statement analysis.

Worse, you can lose your health. In my previous life that was something I watched for a living. Where the worst-case scenario was the loss of a child. A pain that no one wishes for and one from which you never fully recover.

Every one of these losses is real. Every single one of them is possible. And every one of you know that. Because you are all adults who have already set foot into the working world and, for whatever reason, chose to come back to your education in search of something that was missing.

Here is where I must bring up another very central fact to why I am saying these words on this day. Everything on that list is something you have. It is not something you are.

What you cannot lose, barring the one catastrophic exception I’ll soon get to, is what you know and what you have lived through to learn it. Even someone who loses a child is still a parent. If you lose a spouse, you are still a husband or wife. Because those are part of who you are, not what you possess.

Your MBA degree, from this distinguished institution, is not something you acquired in the way you acquire a watch or a new home. Education is something you acquire that becomes a part of you. It is now who you are. It belongs to you. Yes, you could in theory lose your academic credentials, be stripped of your degree. But that still doesn’t take away what you know. What you learned. Here in this place.

The last two years were not a series of singular assignments that you turned in on time. It was a series of experiences. Maybe you were exhausted from work or jet lagged from a family trip. And then you came to class and sat with the other people in this room and worked together through assignments. Perhaps, like me, your marketing group assignment would best be represented by a photo of the Hindenburg exploding midair. Or you threw up your hands during finance and let whoever seemed to have the most confidence choose the right answer while you offered to type up the assignment. Sometimes you were right. Sometimes you were wrong. The discomfort of returning to the classroom and pushing yourself a new direction. Well, that is now part of your brain. No repo man can show up with a trailer and haul that away. No employer can fire that. No fire can burn it down.

Now, I must caveat what I mean when I say education is the singular thing that can never be taken from you. Because you can lose your mind. Be it illness or injury. But at that point I would argue that you’d be beyond caring. So, I stand by what I say.

Tomorrow, I hope you all take a very deserved rest. But on Monday, what will you do with your shiny new degree?

In my case, it literally changed my life. I am now co-founder of a women’s healthcare startup and have crafted a platform that allows me to act as a thought leader in women’s health. I am an active investor and use that platform to elevate my portfolio companies and the younger women coming up behind me.

I have had the privilege of serving as a mentor to several UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA students through 100 Women and the Center for the Business of Health, of which I am now a board member. And I am part of the Tar Heel family, which I have learned is unique in its willingness to take a phone call, make an introduction or offer to help in a way that I’ve not experienced before.

To all the graduates, whatever Monday brings, be that a new promotion or a new job or a new career, remember that the outcome of the investment you’ve made in yourself is just that. It is a tangible result. You will receive a diploma today. But the capabilities you’ve gained here remain yours no matter what. If you have to start over at any point, you will do that as a person who has proven, to the world and to yourself, that you can do hard things. You can open your mind. You can learn something new.

I was told this speech would not be graded but I didn’t need that kind of motivation to come here today.

I have the deepest respect for the mountain you have climbed. Welcome to the other side.

Congratulations.