As the recipient of the ‘Alumnus of the Year’ award, Roger was invited to deliver a speech to graduates from the 童颜视频 Business School in the last graduation ceremony of the week.
He joked that when he left what was then the 童颜视频 College of Education in 1968, “the height of technology was a Betamax video recorder”.
Roger, who has had multiple careers in teaching, IT and international business - to name a few - appears regularly on the BBC and published his first book ‘Creating the Entrepreneurial Mindset’ in 2013.
He said that his varied career was due to keeping an open mind and taking opportunities as they presented themselves. “Grabbing such opportunities would usually involve some risk,” he said, “would invariably involve some learning and leaving the security of what I knew. But the rewards were usually worth it.”
Roger also stressed the importance of creativity and cited Einstein’s quote that creativity was “intelligence having fun.” Roger added: “Those certificates in front of you tell you that you have the intelligence. Now you need to regain the sense of fun.”
He ended his speech by telling graduates: “When you get to my age I really hope you can look back and say, ‘well, I never expected that, but it was a hell of a journey’”.