Commencement speaker urges students to reinvent themselves

In the new global economy, you have to be able to re-create your professional persona from scratch in order to survive – even if you’re in a traditionally secure job like teaching.

So says University of Florida alumna Elizabeth Van Ella, the teacher-turned-corporate-CEO who delivered the address to graduating seniors at the UF College of Education’s Spring 2007 baccalaureate commencement.

“I think my own story suggests that if you’re a jack of all trades, you can do quite well,” Van Ella (BAE ’65) said. “Most people in the workforce today are going to have a number of careers, and you need to be able to reinvent yourself.”

Van Ella is herself a highly successful career chameleon, and her career started right here at Norman Hall. After earning her B.A.E. here, Van Ella used her teaching skills as a ticket to see the world – teaching at a school in Orleans, France; serving as an instructor for adult education programs on a military base in South Korea; and studying at the Universidad del Atlantico in Barranquilla, Colombia.

Soon she made a major career leap, becoming an investigative reporter for WBBM-TV in Chicago. While working in the Chicago area, she met and married James Van Ella, founder of Van Ella and Associates, a private investigation firm specializing in high-level, white-collar crime investigations.

When her husband died in 1992, Elizabeth Van Ella found herself at the helm of the company – a business that had lost one of its primary assets.

“Van Ella and Associates was built largely on my husband’s investigative skills and contacts,” she said. “There was really no one who could match his ability in this area.”

So Van Ella remade the company, shifting its focus to the growing field of pre-employment background checks. She also invested heavily in information technology, foreseeing the day when “data mining” would become a standard part of any background investigation. Those changes spurred a five-fold growth in the profits of the company.

Van Ella says her ability to learn and adapt was always her greatest career asset. For denizens of the 21st Century, she says, adaptability is more than an asset – it’s an essential career skill. Adaptability, she says, is a quality teachers must possess if they want to stay relevant in the classroom.

“I think it’s also important to teach for change,” she said. “My generation had a sense that there were no limits to how far we could go. Young people who are entering teaching today need to know that they can, and should, make a difference.”