Oregon State Representative and nonprofit founder Jefferson Smith delivered the commencement address at the University of Oregon in 2012. This passage came from the most personal moment of his speech, when he described his own experience of climbing the conventional success ladder — graduating as class president, attending Harvard Law School, landing a job at the highest-paying firm in Manhattan — only to realize the ladder led somewhere he didn't want to go. Smith told the story of standing in a McDonald's next to a working family arguing about whether they could afford Happy Meals for their children, while he was on track to earn a quarter million dollars that year defending big tobacco — the same disease that had killed his mother. The ladder metaphor shattered for him in that moment. He came to understand that success isn't a vertical climb but a series of choices about what to stand for and who to serve.