Armstrong Williams delivered a speech on the power of choice in the business world to Palm Beach Atlantic University students and faculty, using his Christian upbringing as a foundation. Audience members found his approach to success to be unique.
“This is the most important business in the world,” Williams said. “The business of morality and the business of free will.”
Williams shared various life experiences with a crowd of about 20 people in the DeSantis Family Chapel on Nov. 8, in a speech titled, “Crisis in the Classroom and Entrepreneurship.” Students seemed intrigued by his unconventional approach to this topic.
As both an entrepreneur and conservative political commentator, Williams was hosted by the LeMieux Center for Public Policy and the Marshal E. Rinker Sr. School of Business of PBA. He is known for implementing his Christian values into debate on American politics and culture through hosting the Armstrong Williams show and writing a conservative newspaper column for The Daily Signal.
Lindsay Findley, an accounting student at PBA, shared that the speech was not what she was expecting, yet was still valuable to her.
“It was interesting,” Findley said. “He talked a lot about how we should use our Christian values to better the world through our actions and decisions.”
The students in the audience were able to express their interest in Williams’ personal life and internal moral compass in a Q-and-A session at the end of the speech. One of the students asked Williams what his greatest life mistake has been, and he responded with a story about infidelity in his first marriage that appeared to be impactful for several audience members.
“The transparency impressed me,” said Dr. Robert Lloyd, the Executive Director of the LeMieux Center for Public Policy.
Dr. Brian Strow, the Dean of the Marshal E. Rinker School of Business also expressed appreciation for Williams’ honesty.
“He mentioned that he learned not to make the same mistake twice, because he treated those as learning opportunities,” Strow said. “Particularly with respect to entrepreneurship, that’s an important lesson to learn. A lot of entrepreneurs do a lot of failing, quite honestly.”
During his speech, Williams said that he chose to approach this speech differently by simply following the voice of God in what he shared.
“When I was coming here today, I had no idea what I wanted to say, but I always follow the spirit,” Williams said. “There’s someone in this room who needs to hear this message.”
Lloyd expressed that although the speech was not what he or other audience members anticipated, he found value in that.
“He definitely got off script,” said Lloyd. “When Armstrong Williams said he doesn’t usually give a speech like this, his assistant was like, ‘Yeah, he doesn’t,’ and he learned a lot too.”
Lloyd and Strow joined forces to host Williams with the broader goal of giving the PBA student body access to world leaders.
“We have a LeMieux Center, which brings speakers and opportunities to campus, and, because of the size of our university, students have direct access to this, and they’re not charged either,” Lloyd said. “When it’s a joint event, we try to get someone who’s kind of policy-oriented, or politics-oriented, but also someone who’s got business, that’s how we overlap when we have the joint events.”
Williams contributes to conversations on business and politics in a variety of ways, as he is also an author and daily radio show host. He emphasized the ways his experience has taught him a lesson on personal responsibility in these areas more than anything else.
“All the good and all the bad that happens in the world is because of choices that people like you make every day,” Williams said.
By Grace Mackey
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