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№ 2015.006 — Massachusetts Institute of Technology — Commencement address
Megan Smith
U.S. Chief Technology Officer
In her 2015 MIT Commencement address, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith argued that beyond the school's motto of 'mind and hand' lies a crucial third element: heart. She defined heart as encompassing teamwork, kindness, openness and inclusivity, and service, urging graduates to bring their technical skills to causes they care about and to global challenges. She encouraged them to focus on strengths, team with others, value diverse ideas, and serve where problems are greatest.
Key moments
- 01 Adding 'heart' to MIT's 'mind and hand' motto
- 02 Focusing on strengths and teaming with others to cover weaknesses
- 03 Kindness and openness as practical, not just moral, values
- 04 Diversity and inclusivity producing better outcomes
- 05 Service and applying technical skills to global challenges
Visual speech map
Megan Smith at MIT, 2015
A commencement address about adding heart to mind and hand: teamwork, kindness, openness, inclusion, service, and technology aimed at global challenges.
- 01 Mind and hand
- 02 Add heart
- 03 Strengths
- 04 Teamwork
- 05 Kindness
- 06 Openness
- 07 Inclusion
- 08 Service
Frame
Heart joins mind and hand
Smith extends MIT's motto into a human operating system: technical mastery matters most when paired with care, courage, and responsibility.
Mind and hand become stronger when heart guides where skill is aimed.
Heart includes teamwork, kindness, openness, inclusion, and service.
Graduates are asked to bring technical power to causes they care about.
Team
Build from strengths together
The speech treats collaboration as a practical design choice: know your strengths, pair with others, and let teams cover what no individual can.
Focus on what you can uniquely contribute instead of hiding every gap.
Good teams turn different abilities into shared capacity.
Technology advances faster when people trust one another enough to combine work.
Culture
Kindness and openness are tools
Smith frames generosity, listening, and curiosity as operating principles that improve both the work and the people doing it.
Care is not ornamental; it changes how people can think and contribute.
Useful ideas often arrive from unexpected places and unfamiliar people.
Humility keeps expert communities from becoming closed systems.
Service
Aim technology at shared problems
The closing charge points MIT talent toward public need, diverse participation, and global challenges where engineering can serve people directly.
Diverse teams see more of the problem and design better outcomes.
The hardest problems demand technical skill joined with social imagination.
Impact is measured by whether capability reaches those who need it.
Transcript
The full transcript is hosted by the original publisher. Commencement Archive links to the source rather than republishing copyrighted text.
Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
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