On 2 May 2014 Stephen was honoured to join the community of Whititreia International at their graduation ceremony. In his address to graduands Stephen urged them to take advantage of the new dimensions of a globalized world:
“You have heard it said: “think global, act local”. It is good to act local, to build strong local communities, to develop competitive local businesses. Today I want to challenge you to think global and act global! Because today, perhaps more so than at any other time in our history, local is global and global is local. This is the future we need to embrace today”