On May 19, 2024, Becton alumni Mr. Scott Willoughby gave a speech at the prestigious Lehigh University located in Pennsylvania.
Mr. Willoughby has come a long way since his days of being a ”bit more of a troublemaker than anything else,” as he quotes, since high school. His upbringing and ultimate career path is an admirable and accomplished story – it becomes clear that truly anything is possible, and he wanted to construe this through his speech at Lehigh, where he explained, “I am going to talk about what it means to be a kid growing up without anything…figuring out who I was and applying it, and doing something that I would consider as equal in accomplishment to anyone else’s in this world.”
Mr. Willoughby was not handed all the good things in life on a silver platter, but he was gifted with one thing; an exceptional ability to problem solve. “I honestly thought, coming out of high school, I wasn’t going to go to college,” Mr. Willoughby shares, “I knew if I could go into an office one day and solve a problem, it didn’t matter where my pedigree was. It didn’t matter if my parents went to college or not. It was just ‘what Scott was doing’ and ‘Scott’s doing something that’s pretty good’.”
Mr. Willoughby’s ability of problem-solving, however, was so superb that despite not being the most responsible he could have been at Becton, his application to Lehigh University was enough to land him a scholarship. The decision to apply to Lehigh was not his own, though. “I told my friend Rick that I might as well be a bartender. He put a college application in my hand. He said, Scott, you’re too smart to not just go try and do something. And he forced me to fill out an application for college.”
When Mr. Willoughby attended Becton, our Internship Program was not yet offered – but he encourages any student who is offered an opportunity such as that, to take it! “I think it’s so terrific. Take as full advantage as you can of a program like that because you may have an idea in your mind of what you can do, but truth be told you don’t know– the only way to get through that is experientially.”
The changes and upgrades we have had at Becton since he has been here, he feels, are undoubtedly for the better, “I would have loved the Internship Program, and knowing how to focus myself maybe a little sooner. And again, it’s that experience that whether it’s a success or a failure, you’re learning something in both situations. It’s a huge privilege to be able to have the opportunity to try things out.”
Mr. Willoughby’s career in Engineering led to his pursuit working under NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a well-known and iconic space telescope that looks for new signs of life on other planets around us. With this, some life-changing moments occurred for him – a notable one was the Empire State Building being lit up in gold honoring the discoveries made by this telescope, and another being that the telescope (that he worked with NASA to create) “discovering things that humankind has never seen before.”
Currently, Mr. Willoughby’s title is as Senior Vice President of Performance Excellence at Northrop Grumman’s Space Systems Sector. The company works with telescopes, but Mr. Willoughby’s responsibilities entail helping out up-and-coming Program Managers who need guidance on the job. He puts it this way: “In a sports analogy, when you’re running a program like I did, I was like the quarterback of my team. I’m on the field and I’m calling the plays and trying to make things work. Half of my career has been running programs, and now that I’ve done that and I’m a bit up there in my age, my job now is to help other Program Managers do their job well. So I’m kind of like an official coach for the company.”
Just recently, Mr. Willoughby was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, a group of a few thousand people throughout the U.S. who others will seek out for their level of skill and knowledge. “Those National Academies are literally as big as getting a Congressional or a Presidential Medal of Honor,” he puts things into perspective, “There’s only a few National Academies in the nation, one for science, one for engineering and one for medicine.”
Mr. Willoughby’s connection to where he came from is highly integral to him; in light of this, he and his wife have created the “Sarah and Scott P. Willoughby ’89 Endowed Scholarship Fund.” This scholarship has only one requirement – it goes to a student who needs it. Dozens of teenagers out of high school have ambitions and talents but many of those have no means to go for their dreams.
Mr. Willoughby and his wife Sarah have made sure that part of the cost of college is covered by that scholarship, for the purpose of giving back to the community where he came from. “It’s very important to me because I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have any of the stuff that I have today had these opportunities not been given to me. So, I’m going to give back.”
When Lehigh University had asked Mr. Willoughby to come back and present the Undergraduate Commencement Speech for their Class of 2024, his approach was similar to an autobiography with the intent to teach that it matters not where you come from, but what you make of your situation. Find your niches and run with them! “Everybody that I met when I first went to college certainly had more than I had,” Mr. Willoughby confesses, “If you were gonna write this story back in the late 1980s…who would most likely be going back to Lehigh to give a talk? It wouldn’t have been Scott Willoughby.”
After the speech, Mr. Willoughby attested that the students “all seemed engaged. I had a lot of great feedback after. It was tremendous fun being on the stage and I believe the audience was about 12,000 people.”
On behalf of Becton’s growth, Mr. Willoughby praises, “It does help every bit to level the playing field for kids like me who may have given up a little too soon. You don’t want that to happen. I think it’s phenomenal because notwithstanding everything I said, no matter where you come from, you can do it. I’m wondering how much harder it is today for folks who don’t have at least a few of those opportunities like internships or even a different variety sport to engage in. If you find the sport you like, then you find teammates that you like. You find the value of competition, friendship, and setting your sights on a goal and achieving it each time you go out there on that field, or whatever it is.”
Mr. Willoughby’s story is a shining example of how life is not defined by shortcomings or factors out of your control, but instead by the outcome you create. He believes that a few things happened simply out of chance or good fortune, such as his going to college, but his story after school is admirable.
We are certain that his speech at Lehigh University construed his success story perfectly to the lucky undergraduates…. hopefully some current Becton students reading this feel a bit inspired too.
