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№ 2025.003 — Yale University — Yale College Class Day address
Jacinda Ardern
Former prime minister of New Zealand
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the 2025 Class Day speaker at Yale, urged graduating seniors to embrace self-doubt, sensitivity, and humility as sources of strength rather than weakness. She argued that these traits foster curiosity, empathy, and a willingness to seek expertise, and emphasized that the world's interconnected challenges require cooperation, shared values, and a sense of duty to others.
Key moments
- 01 Sharing her own experience with imposter syndrome during the COVID-19 pandemic
- 02 Reframing self-doubt and sensitivity as secret strengths of leadership
- 03 Arguing that the world is connected and requires cooperation and shared values
- 04 Telling graduates that 'it's not just about you, it's about us'
Visual speech map
Jacinda Ardern at Yale, 2025
A Class Day address about self-doubt as strength, sensitive leadership, humility, connection, and duty in an interdependent world.
- 01 Imposter syndrome
- 02 Pandemic pressure
- 03 Self-doubt
- 04 Sensitivity
- 05 Humility
- 06 Expertise
- 07 Connection
- 08 Not just you
Confession
Doubt can sharpen leadership
Ardern uses her own experience of imposter syndrome under pandemic pressure to recast doubt as a check against arrogance.
The pandemic story grounds leadership advice in a moment when decisions carried public consequence.
Questioning oneself becomes a reason to seek evidence and listen harder.
The trait that feels like weakness can keep power open to correction.
Sensitivity
Empathy belongs in the room
The address argues that sensitivity and emotional awareness are not liabilities but tools for understanding people and consequences.
Good decisions start by noticing who will feel their effects.
Sensitivity leads to better questions because it refuses to flatten experience.
Empathy requires stamina when the easier pose is distance.
Humility
Complex problems require shared knowledge
Ardern connects humility to expertise, cooperation, and the recognition that no leader sees enough alone.
Seeking expertise is framed as competent leadership, not abdication.
Knowing what you do not know protects decisions from ego.
Shared values turn specialized knowledge into collective action.
Connection
The world asks for an us
The closing charge moves from personal achievement to interdependence, asking graduates to define success through duty to others.
Global challenges cross borders, disciplines, and private ambitions.
Graduates are asked to use influence for more than individual ascent.
The memorable turn is from self to shared responsibility: not only you, but us.
Transcript
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Category: Service/Activism