Commencement Archive

2024

Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and co-founder and Board Chairman of Moderna

The inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist encourages the Class of 2024 to “accept impossible missions” and “lead with imagination” in uncertain times.

2023

Engineer, Educator, and Founder of CrunchLabs

Rober encouraged graduates to positively impact the world while practicing “optimism combined with dedication” and fostering their relationships with others.

2022

Director-General of the World Trade Organization

"The world needs your smarts, your skills, your adaptability, and the great training you have received here at MIT."

2021

Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative

"Commit to changing the world." 

View Bryan Stevenson's Commencement Address; Touchstone required to view

Poet Laureate of Hawai‘i

“We are nobody/ and yet at the same time/ we are everything”

2020

Retired US Navy four-star admiral and former chancellor of the University of Texas system

“To save the world, you will have to be men and women of great integrity.”

 

Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, MIT

"Pick your issue [to address], and go for it with all your heart, all your mind, and all your knowledge."

 

2019

Founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies

Climate crisis "is unlike any other ever faced by humankind"

 

PhD ’94, Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Molecular Biology at Penn State University.

 

2018

Chief Operating Officer of Facebook

"It's about people"

 

SM ’02 PhD ’10, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism, University of British Columbia Vancouver