In his Dec. 18 commencement address at Missouri S&T, Keith Bailey, ME’64, told new graduates to expect to be confronted and bombarded with exciting choices.

“Jobs and careers that literally didn’t exist five years ago, today offer some of the greatest opportunities,” he said. “What I garner from the lessons of the past is this: The world you live in by the end of your career would be unfathomable to you today,” said Bailey, former chair, president and CEO of The Williams Companies, a global energy company in Tulsa, Okla.

He admitted that it might be easy to be discouraged about the future, based on headlines in the news. “But I believe there has not been a time in my life when the world has objectively been a more hopeful place,” he said. “The reason is that the opportunity to realize one’s dreams rests much more fully within your own control than at any time in our history.”

Bailey is currently non-executive chair of Cloud Peak Energy, the nation’s third-largest coal producer. He is also on the boards of Apco International Oil and Gas, Aegis, Markwest Energy Partners and Integrys Energy.