Stanford GSB Class of 2026 Graduation Ceremony

Introduction and Celebration of the Centennial Graduation

• The 2026 graduation ceremony of the Stanford Graduate School of Business is being celebrated, marking 100 years of the institution, and the attendees are welcomed by Sarah Soule, who recognizes the faculty and staff for their rigor, care, and commitment, as well as the families and friends for their support and patience 10s.
• The graduates are acknowledged for their decision to step away from what was familiar and comfortable to invest in their growth and change the trajectory of their lives, which took courage, especially given the significant changes in the world, including accelerated technology and increased economic and political uncertainty 2m6s.
• The question is posed as to how the graduates will lead through the change, rather than whether the world will change, and it is noted that great ideas and great leaders are built over time, piece by piece, like a mosaic, through experiences such as classroom discussions, interactions with classmates, and moments of disagreement that force rethinking of assumptions 4m30s.
• The Stanford Graduate School of Business is defined by two values: excellence and community, with excellence meaning engaging seriously with difficult problems, applying rigor to testing ideas and challenging assumptions, and deriving insight and translating it into action, which allows graduates to move from analysis to decision and operate in the real world 8m0s.

The Values of Excellence and Community at GSB

• The importance of community is emphasized, as it is not just about accomplishments, but about how people show up for one another, learn from each other, challenge each other, and support each other, building something more profound than a network, and the relationships formed will continue to shape decisions, opportunities, and life for decades to come 12m0s.
• The graduating class is not just beneficiaries of the Stanford Graduate School of Business community, but also its stewards, and it is their turn to contribute to sustaining and strengthening the community by showing up for one another and supporting those who come after them 10s.
• Leadership is not only about building something new, but also about sustaining and strengthening what is worth building on, which is why excellence and community must go together to create environments where people do their best work 10s.

Challenges and Responsibilities of Leadership

• The graduating class will face decisions under uncertainty, problems without clear answers, and situations with incomplete data and high stakes, and their task will be to navigate uncertainty with judgment, humility, and courage 10s.
• The class will draw on what they have built during their time at the school, including their ability to think rigorously, consider multiple perspectives, and make decisions with incomplete information, and they will also rely on others and the communities they create 10s.
• As they move forward, they are reminded to pursue excellence as a standard for their work, build community because the quality of what they create will depend on the people around them, and remember that leadership is not defined only by what they achieve, but what others are able to achieve because of them 10s.

Legacy and the Future of the GSB

• The first century of the Graduate School of Business was built by individuals who stepped into uncertainty with purpose and created, led, and sustained something larger than themselves, and now the graduating class will add to this legacy 10s.
• The class leaves with the tools, judgment, and community to navigate what lies ahead, and they will always be part of the Stanford Graduate School of Business 10s.

Introduction of Laurene Powell Jobs and Her Background

• Laurene Powell Jobs, a Stanford MBA graduate and entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist, is introduced as the graduation speaker, and her work has focused on expanding opportunity and supporting bold ideas that shape the future 2m6s.
• Laurene Powell Jobs approaches her work with intellectual rigor, deep curiosity, and a sense of responsibility to others, and she has long understood that innovation without humanity is incomplete and that true leadership requires both imagination and judgment 2m6s.
• The graduates are being congratulated on their achievement, and it's particularly meaningful as it's the centennial year of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, with the speaker feeling honored to be celebrating with them 10s.
• The speaker shares their personal story of arriving at Stanford with big dreams and an idea for a company, drawn to the spirit of Silicon Valley and its audacious dreamers, and how they fell in love with California and someone who lived there 1m30s.
• The speaker met their husband, Steve, during their first week of classes at the "View from the Top" event, and they were married by the time the speaker graduated, with the speaker starting a company with a classmate a month after graduation 3m20s.

Entrepreneurship and the GSB Experience

• Starting a company is thrilling and terrifying, requiring conviction, vision, and a willingness to pursue an idea, with the speaker wishing the graduates a better product-market fit than they found with their company, Terravera 5m40s.
• The speaker notes that the Stanford Graduate School of Business prepares students for both their planned and unplanned lives, and that curiosity, the ability to recognize opportunity, and understanding that learnings can come in unexpected forms are essential 7m10s.

Founding College Track and Addressing Educational Inequity

• The speaker shares a story about speaking to a class of high school seniors from East Palo Alto who were college-bound but lacked the necessary guidance and resources, highlighting the issue of unequal opportunity 9m20s.
• This experience led the speaker to step away from Terravera and start a nonprofit called College Track, which provides academic support and mentorship to high school students, after realizing that the lessons learned at the Stanford Graduate School of Business were broader and more inspiring than just building a company 12m30s.
• The speaker had learned to think like an entrepreneur and combine that mindset with a bold idea and determination to create something that could help others, leading to the establishment of College Track 14m50s.
• The learning curve was steep when starting with 29 ninth graders, and it was learned that to change academic performance, teachers must have the necessary skills and resources to give extra attention to students who need it, and that educational inequity is a result of complex and interconnected systems 10s.
• The work at College Track continues to this day, serving 4500 students in 13 centers across the country, and celebrating more than 2,000 college graduations, and starting a nonprofit gave firsthand understanding of how the sector operates, which is different from for-profit 42s.

Philanthropy, For-Profit, and Social Impact

• Philanthropic donors can determine resource allocation that may be disconnected from outcomes, but the philanthropic sector is perfectly suited to derisk new ideas and to pilot innovations for social progress, and for-profit companies galvanize market economics to scale excellent ideas 2m6s.
• The ideal scenario would be to merge philanthropy and for-profit, using both investing and grant making to super charge positive change, and the discipline learned at the GSB inspired the creation of Emerson Collective, a company that functions as an LLC and has the flexibility to engage and partner with business, government, and civil society in novel ways 2m6s.
• Emerson Collective focuses on the hard, often unglamorous work of civic life, helping institutions function better, people engage more meaningfully, and leaders and communities navigate complexity with integrity and purpose, and is compelled by builders with bold ideas 2m6s.

Energy Innovation and Civic Engagement

• An example of Emerson Collective's work is in the energy sector, where they are exploring how the surge in energy demand can become a catalyst for innovation in energy generation, storage, transmission, and efficiency, and are investing in geothermal energy, nuclear fission, and fusion energy, among other areas 2m6s.
• The structure of Emerson Collective invites nimbleness, and the company holds frequent round tables in Washington, DC with entrepreneurs and elected officials, supports workforce training in communities across the country, and helps architect community benefit agreements 2m6s.

Reflections on Learning and Observation

• The world is in flux and in need of repair and reimagining, and it is necessary to challenge old assumptions and create space to step back from the repetitive drum beat of daily life, which is what made time at the GSB so valuable, as it gave the opportunity to widen the aperture, encounter new people and ideas, and reconsider familiar problems 2m6s.
• The GSB is a place that cultivates the precious act of observation, and one of the most important undergraduate classes was art history, which was taken in Paris during a semester abroad, and had an epiphany while studying Monet, who used incredible mental discipline to see and not just define what he was seeing 2m6s.
• The concept of beginner's mind, a quality in Zen, allows for creativity and imagination to penetrate what might otherwise be routine thinking, and it is a valuable approach to observe the world in new ways 10s.
• Art demands close attention and can coax kinetic culture, friction, strangeness, and truths out of the familiar, making it a vital vehicle for truth and an essential part of human flourishing 42s.

Human Values in a Technological World

• The role of individuals is to preserve and renew deeply human dimensions of life that technology cannot replace, such as beauty, contemplation, craftsmanship, silence, and transcendence 1m6s.
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a sermon entitled "Recovering Lost Values" in 1954, emphasizing that the real problem is not a lack of knowledge, but rather a failure to make the world a brotherhood despite its interconnectedness 2m6s.
• The world has grown more interconnected since Dr. King's sermon, thanks in part to inventions from Silicon Valley, making his call to spiritual well-being and responsibility to the broader human community more urgent 3m15s.

Graduates' Role in a Changing World

• Graduates are heading into a world shaken by generational forces, with no map to follow, but they have the preparation and willingness to meet new realities and invent the means to find out what lies beyond the horizon 4m30s.
• It is essential for graduates to remember their obligations to their communities and the environment, and to learn to see possibilities others have overlooked, while also remembering their responsibilities to one another 5m20s.

PhD Program and Academic Achievements

• The PhD program at the GSB is small and selective, targeting a one-to-one faculty-to-student ratio, and recruits the brightest minds from around the world to develop and test theory through rigorous research and create new knowledge 7m10s.
• The graduates have developed novel theories and insights that will shape the future of business and management, and today their achievements are being celebrated 0s.
• The advisors will place the hood of the Stanford Graduate School of Business upon the graduates and welcome them to the stage and into their profession as colleagues, with Dianne Le, Assistant Dean of the PhD program, reading their names and their dissertation advisor hooding them 10s.
• The graduates' research focuses on various topics, including how policies and institutions shape outcomes for vulnerable populations in developing economies, airport allocation of scarce landing and takeoff slots, the role of financial frictions on macroeconomic outcomes, and insider trading loopholes, with researchers such as Daliah Al-Shakhshir, Sebastián Bauer, Cindy Chung, and Stefan Elbl Droguett 42s.
• Other researchers, including Pablo Guzman Lizarado, Zane Kashner, Se Yeon Kim, Christian Kontz, and Pauline Liang, study topics such as tax compliance in developing settings, empirical microeconomics, labor market feedback, and the development of money and banking 2m6s.
• Further research topics include decision-making and resource allocation, statistical methods for understanding economic data, machine learning methods for complex systems, and the psychology of flow, with researchers such as Zhuoyang Liu, David Ritzwoller, Sadegh Shirani, Madison Singell, Xuan Su, Josephine Tan, and Oliver Xie 2m6s.

Master of Arts in Business Research and MsX Program

• The Master of Arts in Business Research degree recognizes the accomplishments of students who have completed the course work and fulfilled the research requirements, with Wesley Hartmann celebrating the accomplishments of these students 5m0s.
• The Director of the Stanford MsX program, Anne Beyer, presents this year's graduates who will receive the degree of Master of Science in Management, with Dianne Le reading the names of the graduates, including Banu Tiryaki 6m0s.
• The mission of the MsX program is to provide experienced leaders with the opportunity to prepare themselves for increasingly senior positions in the organizations they will lead through a full-time, year-long course of academic study, which allows students to deepen their understanding of management and leadership while creating space for reflection and growth in the midst of an already accomplished career 10s.
• The top 10% of the MsX class, ranked by academic performance, are designated Robert L. Joss Scholars, in honor of former GSB Dean Robert Joss, who was himself a student in this program 10s.
• One student's academic achievement places them at the top of the MsX class, and this student is awarded the George G. C. Parker Prize, named in honor of Professor George Parker, GSB faculty and former director of the MsX program, with this year's recipient being Lauro Remmler 10s.

MBA Program and Academic Distinctions

• The MBA students have taken part in a transformational experience, building a strong foundation in general management, strengthening their leadership skills, and exploring areas of interest, while also growing personally and professionally, forming relationships that will last a lifetime, and contributing to the community in many ways 10s.
• The top 10% of the class, ranked by academic performance, are also designated Arjay Miller Scholars, in honor of Dean Arjay Miller, who served in the U.S. Air Force during the Second World War and later became president of Ford, and then the GSB's fourth dean 10s.
• The Public Management and Social Innovation program, founded by the late Dean Miller, prepares leaders to understand complex societal issues and the distinctive challenges of managing public and private organizations that pursue social impact 10s.
• Graduates' names are read by Jamie Schein, Assistant Dean of the Career Management Center, Margaret Hayes, Associate Dean of the MBA and MsX programs, and Erin Nixon, Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid 10s.
• Graduates will receive their diplomas from Dean Soule, with the awarding of MBA degrees taking place in alphabetical order from A to Z 10s.

Awards and Recognition of Academic Excellence

• The Ernest C. Arbuckle Award honors the second-year MBA student selected by their peers for their outstanding contributions to the fulfillment of the goals of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and this year's recipient is Thresa Joy Skeslien Jenkins 42s.
• The Alexander A. Robichek Student Achievement Award in Finance was established to honor Professor Robichek's outstanding contributions to the teaching of finance, and this year's recipient is Arch Brooke 2m6s.
• The Arjay Miller Scholars include one student who is designated as the Henry Ford II Scholar, which is awarded to the student with the top academic achievement, and this year's recipient is Anne Ariel Rosenblatt 2m6s.

Conclusion and Celebration of the Graduates

• The ceremony concludes with a final round of applause for the Class of 2026, and graduates are invited to recess and join a reception at the Knight Management Center, while guests are asked to remain seated until the graduates depart 2m6s.