Dr. Bryan Luizzi
New Canaan High School Class of 2014 Graduates [VIDEO]
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Recently graduated from the University of Chicago, carrying a degree in English and philosophy and grand ideas of what lay ahead, a 22-year-old Robert Darken took a position in the mid-1990s with an international relief agency operating an emergency winter food distribution program halfway around the world, in Azerbaijan. Eager to travel and write though with little thought given to what skills he actually possessed, Darken in his romantic vision for what this experience would be played a major, central role in solving enormous problems of want and hunger. Yet as his plane descended into the Azerbaijani capital, a thought—uncomfortably clear in its truth—occurred to the young man. “We emerged from cloud cover, and suddenly a million yellow lights spread out below,” Darken recalled early Tuesday evening as he addressed the 2014 graduating class of New Canaan High School and their hundreds of families and friends as commencement speaker at Dunning Field. “What had been nothing more to me than a blank spot on a map was being filled in beneath my feet.