Year
Class of 2024
Browse commencement speeches from 2024, including addresses by Melinda French Gates, Vivek Murthy, and Noubar Afeyan. Each record links to the available source material, transcript, video, and archive context.
3 addresses 10 themes 3 highlights
Highlights from 2024
Records with stronger source signals, summaries, transcripts, videos, or visual archive material.
Melinda French Gates Stanford University Melinda French Gates reflects on navigating life's major transitions, using a parable of waves to illustrate maintaining one's core identity through change. She shares personal experiences including her career at Microsoft, the start of her philanthropic work, and the end of her marriage, then offers graduates three lessons: approach transitions with radical openheartedness, find a 'small wave' mentor, and build a web of deserved trust. She encourages the Class of 2024 to leave room for their plans to change and to rebuild a broken world through community. InfographicSummaryTranscriptVideoOfficial source 
Vivek Murthy Yale University U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Yale School of Medicine alumnus, tells the graduating class that the most important predictor of health and happiness is strong relationships, citing his advisory on loneliness and isolation. Drawing on personal stories about his medical training, a family financial betrayal, and the end of his first term as Surgeon General, he offers three principles for building meaningful connection: be present, be real, and show up. He closes with a reflection on how children instinctively show empathy and a guided practice for difficult moments. InfographicSummaryVideoOfficial source 
Noubar Afeyan Massachusetts Institute of Technology Noubar Afeyan urges the MIT Class of 2024 to accept seemingly impossible missions, drawing on his childhood in war-torn Beirut, the 'Mission Impossible' theme, and Moderna's rapid development of a COVID-19 vaccine. He outlines three actions for tackling hard challenges—imagine, innovate, and immigrate—while emphasizing moral responsibility, paranoid optimism, and embracing uncertainty. He frames graduates as 'agents for good' uniquely equipped by their MIT education to confront global crises. InfographicSummaryOfficial source Represented themes
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