Daughter leads her own movement

"The times of greatest growth, the times that really define who we are, are the times of challenge, are the times of difficulty," Naomi Tutu, daughter of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist Desmond Tutu, told a crowd of more than 400 women Saturday.

The women gathered from across the world, some hailing from locales as far off as the West Indies and Nepal, to cap off the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders, which convened at the university last week.

The three-day conference aimed to empower female students to make a difference in their communities with workshops on leadership, personal finance and even yoga. Tutu, the conference's keynote speaker, called on the women to stand up to hardship and define themselves in way where they could contribute to the world.

She spoke at the Hoff Theater Saturday morning, framing her speech around Gregory Nobert's poem "There is a Pearl of Great Price Within You." Tutu, who has spoken across the country to create partnerships between the United States and South Africa, quoted the poem to challenge listeners to find their own gifts and use them for good.

"You are someone of great value … who has a gift that the world needs," Tutu said, citing a theme from the poem. "The question is, how do you direct that gift into being something for good?"

A huge part of this question, Tutu said, is overcoming stereotypes and expectations - even those with positive connotations. For herself, she said this has meant transcending the label of being "the daughter of Desmond Tutu."

"While I am 'the daughter of…' and that is part of my identity, the bigger part of my identity is being Naomi, and finding out what Naomi wants to do," she said.

Tutu added that growing up in apartheid South Africa with a highly controversial father also taught her how "irritations" can prevent people from discovering their gifts.

"I was raised in a family where my parents were constantly telling us that apartheid, which said that as black people we were 'less than,' was an abomination," Tutu said, "Just because we were not respected by people in our country didn't mean that we should be disrespectful of ourselves and of others."

Tutu offered that "self-nurture" was the key to dealing with irritations. She said this could be achieved through wise attention to the places you go, the company you keep and the time you spend for yourself.

Tutu received a standing ovation, after which the audience had a chance to respond.

Students, mothers and professors stood in line for their chance to share how her words had related to their personal lives and encourage the audience by repeating key ideas from the talk.

"I just want to thank you," Chanel Harris, who traveled to the conference from Los Angeles Valley College, told Tutu. "Hearing you speak today is like the icing on the cake for this whole conference."

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