President and other members of the Board of Regents
Founders members
Vice-Rectors, Deans and other members of the Academic Council
Mr. Frank Rainieri, founder of Grupo Puntacana and President of Grupo Punta Cana Foundation.
Directors, coordinators, teachers and collaborators all
Special guests
Representatives of universities and other HEIs
Members of the media
Dear graduates, dear graduates and families
All friends, good morning:

We celebrate today, here, with joy, the second graduation within the framework of the commemoration of the first fiftieth anniversary of our INTEC. What an appropriate way to rejoice in giving away to society 854 graduates, 535 ladies and 319 gentlemen!

Thus, we reached a total of 36 graduates, always attached to the commitment to academic excellence and the formation of socially responsible and professionally competent citizens, as evidenced by the high value given to them by the productive sectors.

Today we graduate the first graduates of the degree in Financial Engineering, Astrid Aurora Cabral Jobt y Alvaro Fabian Almanzar Dihmes, both Summa Cum Laude. In the graduation ceremony last April we had the first graduates of the new career in Logistics and Transportation Engineering, the first and only in the country, today we celebrate the graduation of the first female graduate of this program, natalie ibert (Magna Cum Laude).

Let me also highlight the graduation of 73 new graduates from the specialty in Clinical Nutrition, which this year celebrates 20 years teaching at INTEC.

 And finally I would like to underline that today we have someone who graduates for the 5th time from INTEC: the professor of the Engineering Area, Miguel Aybar, who is now our first graduate of the doctorate in Energy Management for Sustainable Development.

Available statistics from the Pan American Health Organization indicate that, as of 2019, we had 15,510 doctors in the country. Based on this estimate and counting the 100 new graduates who are invested today, we reach a total of 2,783 doctors trained at INTEC, for 18% of all doctors in the country, that is, almost a fifth of the total. But the most important thing is that many Masters of Medicine in the country, recognized as such by the Dominican Medical College, trust us that the best doctors in the nation are trained at INTEC. We don't say it, but we like to repeat it!

Of the total enrollment of 44,758 members of the Dominican College of Engineers, Architects and Surveyors (CODIA), 31 are engineers. With the new 321 Engineering graduates, we reached a total of 163 graduates from this emblematic INTEC Area. This represents 12,592 percent of the country's engineers. But there are not only many, they are so excellent that, as Rafael Piantini, human resources manager of the entire Itabo Industrial Park, PIISA, tells us, which our engineering students call campus 40, most likely the free zone park With the greatest technological sophistication in the country, INTEC graduates, the vast majority of them engineers, represent 2 percent of all the professionals who work at PIISA. Again, we don't say it, but we like to repeat it!

Of the total number of graduates in this beautiful act today, 48 percent, that is, 411 new graduates, are at the postgraduate level. When INTEC was born, in 1972, it did so at the postgraduate and continuing education level, levels and areas that were non-existent in the country. As we can see, we did it yesterday, we continue to do it today and we will also do it in the future with the same attachment and commitment to academic excellence as always.

Five decades have passed since that moment in which our founders, very young at the time, the first generation to return to the country after completing their advanced studies in very important foreign universities after the opening achieved with the overthrow of the Trujillo dictatorship, in an act of daring and civic heroism of a group of demiurges, gave birth to what is today this vibrant reality.

We celebrate with pride and joy the first fiftieth anniversary of INTEC in this, our country, still young. 50 years is equivalent to a little less than a third of our republican life and almost precisely a third of our history from the feat of the Restoration. But more than insisting on the length, we know that the history of INTEC has been intense.

After the founders, some 7 academic and administrative experts have participated in writing our pages in this history full of achievements and milestones. Together with our 36, 640 graduates, our numbers are already to be taken into account. But more than the numbers, at INTEC we celebrate, above all, quality and excellence. As our founder and rector, Eduardo Latorre, said:

“INTEC has given up all pretense of rapid and massive growth, settling for being the dessert of the meal; not the largest, but the sweetest.”

Dear graduates, I do not want or should extend much more, my speech today is just the appetizer before the main course of our guest speaker. But if I want to invite you, with the enthusiasm of celebrating our fiftieth anniversary, to never stray from the sweetness of honey from your hive, with pride for your Alma Mater, who is, modesty does not hold me back, the jewel in the crown of higher education in the Dominican Republic. You are part of this beautiful story. And, as our founder and first rector, Ramón Flores García, says: “There's a message in this whole story. And he goes on to tell us:

"A message of some value for the young students of INTEC and other institutions. It doesn't take many to start a work... The important thing is to start with firm foundations, with the conviction of the value of the work to be undertaken, with faith in the people, with love and generosity for what is done and the beneficiaries of the work, with perseverance, with daring and, above all, with a serene spirit and willing to make the greatest sacrifices. "

Thanks to the support of your parents and relatives, to whom I now bow in recognition, and thanks to your efforts and overcoming many weeks 5 and weeks 9, you can begin your professional life or, in the case of postgraduate graduates, resume itself, with firm foundations. Do it with the conviction of the value of the work to be undertaken, that of forging a worthy and promising future for you and yours. But include building a better country for everyone as part of your work. Accompany their professional performance with a responsible and high-minded citizen exercise, that bets on institutionality, that rejects "vivismo", that prioritizes ethics and integrity and not "advantagism" and dishonesty, that promotes order based on in civility and mutual respect and reject intolerance and violence in any of its forms, that preserves the environment and condemns depredation. Those are the values ​​that we have privileged in INTEC.

In a few minutes I will give this podium with great pleasure to Mr. Frank Rainieri Marranzini, who honors us and gives us prestige as our guest speaker. Don Frank does not require much of an introduction, but for formal reasons let me partially comply with the protocol.

As founder of the Puntacana Group, the Puntacana Group Foundation and the Puntacana International Airport, the world's first commercial and private international airport, he has been a pioneer in the development of tourism in the eastern region and, in general, in the country. 

He began his Bachelor of Business Administration studies at Saint Joseph College in Philadelphia, and completed them at APEC University, Santo Domingo.

He has been President of the Eastern Hotel Association; member of the Monetary Board of the Dominican Republic; member of the Foreign Investment Promotion Commission; member of the Board of Directors of APEC University; He was the first Vice President of the National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP), president of the American Chamber of Commerce of the DR, (AMCHAMDR) of which he is currently a member of its Council; he was also President of the Association of Hotels and Tourism of the Dominican Republic (ASONAHORES), and is currently a member of its Council.

In 2014 he was appointed as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Sovereign Order of Malta in the Dominican Republic. And by Presidential Decree he was appointed in 2015 as a member by the private sector of the National Competitiveness Council. Also in 2015 he was distinguished as an Honorable Citizen of the World by the Parliament of Italy, for his important contribution to the Tourism Industry in the Dominican Republic. In 2018 he received an Honoris Causa degree from the prestigious Roger Williams University in Providence, Rhode Island. In that same year he was recognized with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Caribbean Hotel & Resort Investment Summit (CHRIS) in Miami Florida.

His career has earned him international distinctions; among them, Outstanding Young Jaycee's Chapter in 1978; Presidential Citation Award given in 1985 by President Reagan; Selected as UN representative at the Young Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries seminar in Geneva; “Hotelier of the Year” award by the Caribbean Hotel Association; and the 5 Diamond Award by the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences (AAHS) as a pioneer in the development of sustainable tourism in the Dominican Republic.

He is a member of the Council of important international entities, such as the World Travel and Tourism, (WPO) and the Clinton Foundation, and in 2021 he was appointed Ambassador of Sustainable Tourism by the World Tourism Organization, (UNWTO).

He honored us as a member of the INTEC Board of Regents for a maximum period of 9 years, from 2011 to 2020.

Married to Mrs. Haydée Kuret de Rainieri, co-founder of Grupo Puntacana and current member of its board, with whom he has fathered three children, Paola, Francesca and Frank Elías Rainieri Kuret.

Personally, after visiting Puntacana, one can testify not only to Don Frank's business quality, but also to his enthusiasm for the country, his social and environmental commitment, his dedication to service and his solidarity.

And the whole country recognizes him as a visionary who in 1969 conceived in what was then known as Yauya or Punta Borrachón, what today is radiant Puntacana. An entrepreneur who, where there was nothing but bushes and beaches with no access roads or other facilities, saw and developed a tourist destination that today is world class.

I would like to take the license to draw a parallel between the foundation of INTEC from scratch by the founders whom I have called demiurges, and the demiurge of Puntacana, Frank Rainieri.

In congratulating you, dear graduates, you and your families, on this very important day in your lives, I am pleased to leave you with someone who we can say should be an example for all of us to follow and who, I dare to say, shares this perspective of another visionary entrepreneur such as Steve Jobs, who proposed to us: When you are in front of the river, do not look at the current, look at its horizon.

!Thank you very much and congratulations!