Graduates: Let your values always be your north star

Good morning! My name is Danielle Holley, and I am honored to welcome you to the College’s one hundred eighty-eighth Commencement ceremony! Class of 2025, Frances Perkins Scholars, certificate recipients and master’s degree students — congratulations!

I will begin by thanking Rhynette for those inspiring words for our graduates. I am grateful that you reminded us of Convocation 2021. Graduates, could you have imagined back then that your friends, families, professors, mentors and enthusiastic supporters would all be here together in person, right next to each other — not social distancing — to celebrate you on this day? And it is wonderful to see all of the family, friends and supporters here in the audience with us.

So let’s spend a few moments reflecting on those supporters, our families, friends and friends who are like family — those who are here and those who could not be — and all who helped to make it to this day. Will you, class of 2025, please join me in thanking your families and friends and all of your supporters for helping to bring you to this day.

And, of course, we have to thank the faculty and staff who taught, mentored, supported and guided you throughout your time here. The dedication of our community members to student success and the excellence of our faculty is a point of pride for Mount Holyoke. Let’s give your faculty and all of the staff who made this possible a huge round of applause.

Graduates, Commencement ceremonies hold the complexity of the past, gratitude for the present, and joy and excitement for the future. Today is the culmination of years of hard work and focused study. It marks four years of growth and change. And it’s special. Rarely do we have the opportunity to acknowledge the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next in such a meaningful, collective way. We often don’t know when the end will be. It slips by unceremoniously. Our lives change without warning. The world can change without warning, and we have to adapt quickly. Your liberal arts education has prepared you not only to face whatever changes are in store but to thrive within them. You are ready to navigate the ambiguities, challenges and opportunities of a world that can turn on a dime.

So, class of 2025, I want to celebrate right now all of your achievements and I want to hear you! Cheer if your major coursework, thesis or Nexus prepared you to think critically. Cheer if your friendships or your study away experience helped you appreciate different perspectives. Cheer if your student org or living learning community or team taught you how to work together toward a common goal. Cheer if your campus employment or hands-on learning through Lynk experiences gave you skills to chase your dreams. Cheer if you had a professor or a mentor get you ready, ready to take on the world. And cheer if you believe that Mount Holyoke prepared you for your next step in life.

I am so proud of the work that we do here at Mount Holyoke, and I know that it has prepared you for a life of purposeful leadership in a very diverse world. At Senior Symposium last month, I saw you synthesize complex ideas across every discipline. I heard you articulate assertions, conclusions and solutions that add meaningfully to the body of human knowledge. Approaching problems with curiosity, building your body of knowledge and understanding how to tackle complex questions are essential to purposeful leadership, and so is leading with your values. Let your values always be your north star. And I have seen you exemplify that principle during your time here, from advocating for others, to finding ways to make Mount Holyoke more sustainable, to working together to win championships, to building understanding across differences. I have seen you lead with your values, and I know that you will take that with you.

As you know, Mount Holyoke is a values-driven institution. We were forged in dissent in 1837 and were founded on the core value that a student’s gender must not be an impediment to an excellent education. And we still believe that today.

In other words, Mount Holyoke was founded so that tomorrow won’t look like yesterday. For 188 years, we’ve known we are stronger when we include people rather than exclude them. And we will continue to make decisions based on our mission and our values for as long as we exist — which, as you know, Mount Holyoke forever shall be!

And graduates, you are joining a network of over 40,000 alums who take Mount Holyoke with them. They have become activist changemakers, problem solvers, scientists, storytellers and trailblazers. From the depths of the ocean to the heights of space, from Wall Street to Capitol Hill, Broadway to Silicon Valley, Mount Holyoke alums are everywhere, leading with purpose, creating positive change and making good trouble. You’ve earned your place in these ranks and you have worked hard. And I am so proud of each and every one of you.

Thank you for the time that you have spent here at Mount Holyoke, for the ways that you have changed us. And I am so excited; we are all so excited to see what tomorrow brings for all of you. And now, speaking of leading with purpose, please welcome our student speaker, Tehani Chandrasena Perera, class of ’25.