Angela Ahrendts, who would later become Apple's Senior Vice President of Retail, returned to her alma mater Ball State University to deliver the 2008 commencement address. She told the story of growing up in tiny New Palestine, Indiana, dreaming of the fashion industry through the pages of magazines. Her father would tell her to take off her 'rose-colored glasses,' but she kept dreaming and praying and believing. Small signs began appearing—a book called 'As a Man Thinketh' that fell into her teenage lap, a campus visit where she discovered Ball State's merchandising program, a summer fashion course in New York City that made her fall in love with the industry. When she graduated in 1981, she flew to New York the next day, telling her mother at the airport: 'After I become the President of Donna Karan, I'll be home.' About ten years later, the phone rang in her new office on Seventh Avenue—her mother, asking when she was coming home now that she was, indeed, president of Donna Karan.