Good afternoon graduates, College of the Atlantic community members and family and friends. My name is Vickie Helton and I'm a graduate of the COA class of 2007.

I'm very excited for this opportunity to introduce out guest speaker but before I do I'd like to tell you about an informal survey I conducted of the 2007 senior class. I asked them to give me their thoughts on fundamental values that embody COA. Some of their answers were as follows:

"Compassion: The faculty and staff genuinely care for their students. They truly want their students to succeed. The length to which they go to help out a student is incomparable to any other teacher-student relationship I have had before....They take time even after work hours to help students out."

Another student mentioned the emphasis on "conscious community-based living".

And finally my favorite quote, that exemplifies COA "the reconciliation of human and spirit, good food, asking really hard questions and not giving up when searching for the answers".

It occurred to me that our guest speaker today manifests these qualities perfectly. Chellie Pingree lives on the island of North Haven, off the coast of Rockland. Right after college Chellie spent several years running a small farm and selling milk and eggs produced locally. She also established a successful retail yarn business that expanded quickly. Ms. Pingree started her political career in 1992 when she was elected to the Maine State Senate. In 1996 she was chosen by her peers to be the Maine Senate Majority Leader. She helped lead the Senate for four more years, until leaving office due to term limits.

As a Senator, she fought for economic and social justice, taking on powerful adversaries - most notably the pharmaceutical lobby. In her last session, Pingree sponsored on of the nation's first prescription drug pricing bills. After a legal fight that led all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the bill became law, and has since been a model for states around the country working to lower prescription drug prices. In the last four years, Ms. Pingree served as the National President and CEO of Common Cause, a non-partisan citizen activist group. Common Cause's mission is to help citizens make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest. Under Chellie's Leadership, Common Cause diversified its agenda to include limiting media concentration and consolidation, promoting Net Neutrality and election reform, while continuing to pursue its traditional goals of campaign finance reform and oversight of government ethics and accountability. Finally, Chellie Pingree is now preparing for her upcoming run for the United States Congress in 2008.

I am pleased to introduce to you our honored guest speaker Chellie Pingree!