2021 Harvard Business School MBA Section H Diploma Ceremony
oh but good afternoon uh for those of you like who i don't know my name is debra sparr and i am a professor and senior associate dean here at the harvard business school uh most importantly for present purposes i have had the great pleasure of serving as section chair for section h of the harvard business school mba class of 2021. i was the person who welcomed this section to campus in the fall of 2019 who watched them bond and come together as a section during those early months who taught them strategy in the spring of 2020 and was with them as we all made the strange and unprecedented leap to the world of virtual education so it is a particular joy to be here today as this amazing group of people gathers together for their last time as students and very shortly their first time as alumni like all of you i'm sure i wish we were able to celebrate this milestone in person but thankfully our zoom room is considerably larger than our physical campus and so it gives us an opportunity to share this very special day with a wider group of participants with the family and friends and partners and others who've not only supported this incredible group of young people during their time at harvard but have been with them over the entire stretch of their lives so on behalf of the school i'd like to thank you for being here wherever you may be right now and for celebrating with us today um i would like to invite you to have a cup of coffee or a glass of champagne make yourselves comfortable and enjoy what will be a brief program this afternoon so we begin with a short welcome and presentation by my colleague jan rivkin chair of the mba program congratulations again to the class of 2021 you are now officially hps graduates you know graduation day is my favorite day of the year i love seeing our students so happy i love seeing their families and friends so rightly proud of their graduates and so excited about their bright futures and we now come to my favorite part of my favorite day of the year the diploma ceremony where we recognize each and every member of your section as members of the class of 2021 are recognized you'll hear mention of three kinds of honors the first is distinction this is for students who earned academic honors in both the first year and the second year of our program the second is high distinction these individuals not only earned honors in the first year and the second year they also had combined academic performance that placed them in the top five percent of their class as a whole these students were also known as george f baker scholars commemorating the individual whose generosity in the 1920s allowed us to build the campus i invite you to look at the baker scholars page on the graduation website to learn more about the legacy of george baker and this particular distinction third and last but by no means least the dean's award the dean's award celebrates the extraordinary achievements of graduating students who during their time at hbs made distinctive contributions to harvard to harvard business school or the broader community these students have contributed to the well-being of others through amazing acts of leadership students and all members of the community nominate these individuals and then dean tatar makes the final selection so please enjoy the diploma ceremony celebrate each and every member of your session i hope that your session will remain close through the years as mine has and i hope that these two years hbs will be just the beginning of an ongoing conversation among you as you enjoy long happy years of making differences that are meaningful to you and meaningful for the world be well and stay close so we will turn in just a few moments to the formal reading of names and the conferral of degrees uh but first i wanted to take this opportunity to offer just a few moments of reflection before we move to the uh formal part of the ceremony there has never been and never will be another class at harvard business school like the class of 2021. maybe the class of 1944 comes close but not really since it turns out that the mba program was essentially cancelled during the last years of world war ii and transformed into a military training program so you are truly a unique class in the history of the school last year i felt very sorry for all of you and very sad because i worried that your time here which as you now realize is such a precious and brief moment of time had been shortchanged by the pandemic but i don't feel that way anymore because while your education was undoubtedly different and harder than what any hvs class before you has experienced the very particular experience that you had being an mba student at harvard business school between the months of august 2019 and may of 2021 also gave you an incredible window into a world at the pivot point of inflection and an equally incredible opportunity to be graduating into one of the most exciting and seismic moments in time history is moving faster now than it ever has before as humans as human beings we have witnessed only two prior periods that were as revolutionary as our own the agricultural revolution sorry and the industrial revolution uh which launched around 1750. we are now living through the world's third great technological transition what is frequently referred to as the information or the digital revolution and you are graduating directly into its vanguard it is an exciting place to be at a critical point in time moreover because this is a digital revolution like its agricultural and industrial predecessors it will also catalyze and intersect with massive social and political shifts and you are the people who are inheriting not only the effects of these changes but crucially the chance to shape them as well the chance to really make a difference when it matters now today is not the time and zoom is not the medium to describe these shifts in any level of detail but let me at least very briefly note three of the trends that will mark your future and be ready for your imprint the first is the most obvious technology itself smart digital computer-based technologies that brought us zoom and doordash and uber and bumble and everything else that's rapidly moving from the physical world to the virtual these technologies have been around for at least two generations but it's your generation that is going to own them it is your generation that will figure out not only how to make money from the digital economy but how to build markets and rules that truly work you will build you must build markets that pay attention to the downside risk as well as the upside gain of things like social media and genetic engineering and artificial intelligence you will write the new rules of the technological road it's an exhilarating opportunity and a crucial responsibility that falls upon you all the second shift that you will inherit arises directly from the first and it is the coming reckoning with capitalism capitalism as we know it emerged out of the industrial revolution it is a brilliant albeit flawed system for managing a global industrial economy it's not clear how well capitalism is going to fare in a world gone digital especially if that world experiences as it probably will rising levels of inequality widening disparities in wealth and a shrinking pool of well-paying jobs you will need to deal with these tensions and grapple with the very real issue of how to configure a capitalism that is fairer and cleaner healthier and more just you will have the opportunity to reimagine markets in your image and in accordance with your vision of what it means to make a better world finally the third shift is demographic and it comes from a growing array of technologically driven changes in how we are born and die and shape our families along the way yours will be the first generation on the planet to live collectively into your 80s and 90s and beyond you will be the first to deal with the threat of a shrinking population rather than a growing one you will be the first to ponder the metaphysical problem of finding meaning in a world without work and the first perhaps to seriously contemplate forging emotional relationships with non-human beings these are massive and mind-warping issues but my gosh they're completely exciting and important and profound and you all get to figure them out not by next tuesday necessarily or even within the next decade but at a pace that seems right to you in whatever ways you dream about or stumble upon i know that each and every one of you has the power and the skill to work for the kind of change that you want to see i know you have the insight and the compassion to nudge this crucial arc of history so that it turns towards the good and i look forward to watching what each of you will do and who you will become now if this were a typical graduation this is the moment where i or whoever is presiding gets up on the stage and each one of you clad in an indistinguishable robe and probably very uncomfortable shoes parades quickly and very nervously across the stage we don't have to do that today instead you get to sit sit comfortably at your on your couch or at your kitchen table or in the courtyard of spangler and watch for a few moments as each of our amazing graduates appears before you once again i wish we were live but i hope you'll agree that this is not a bad way to celebrate the class of 2021 so we will now turn to the official reading of our diploma names gibran ahmed [Music] aquino tiffany banfield high distinction tom brash distinction hayley brown timothy buen james bowie abby burcham high distinction and dean's award recipient shakila caldwell sandor shani carter anthony chen daniel sterenfeld cromwell bryce de figuerito distinction corey dunton amanda durham [Music] lily fang michael fuch distinction mark garagosian high distinction mauricio gonzalez chelsea goodwin dhruv goyal distinction daniel griefman colin greening trevor greeb [Music] charlie hacker mia hopper [Music] harshini jaerum brian lee jean lee dan limpress lou sam mcallister tyler mcclintock brianna mcnamee distinction alicia malwani distinction sris nayer dennis o'leary eddie parisi [Music] sean penso omar rauchi [Music] leah rolnick de almeida shay roseman oscar rubio [Music] kaz sakai miriam serbin claire saprell distinction vivian sung [Music] rashmita vasa [Music] carly yang high distinction lisa yao nicola yurkovsky mark zaki zhao [Music] [Music] congratulations to the entire section h of harvard business school class of 2021 by whatever temporary power has been vested in me by the president and fellows of harvard university it is my distinct pleasure to declare that each and every one of you is officially now a graduate of the harvard business school class of 2021. so give yourselves a little bit of a round of applause i wish you luck i wish you love and i will miss you all there is one final segment of today's celebration and one that in many ways takes advantage of the fact that we are here together virtually we always take time at the end of commencement festivities to thank the many people who have not only helped our graduates cross the stage today but also raised them and loved them and gotten them to the brink of that stage in their first place their parents their partners their siblings their teachers their children and their friends typically we only have the ability to thank all of these supporters in the abstract today thanks to zoom we actually have an opportunity to show you some glimpses of of all the many folks behind the scenes and i will say it's been a great pleasure just these past 10 minutes watching some of you celebrate with your families in your zoo rooms so thank you for those small glimpses but we will now have a more formal celebration of all of you who've helped all of our graduates get to this moment today [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] on behalf of the harvard business school i would like to thank you all for supporting our students who are who are officially now our graduates thank you for sharing your special people with our community and for helping them to cap to carve their paths and their futures congratulations to everyone here with us today good luck and godspeed i will ask you all now please to unmute your microphones stand up celebrate and join me in a final round of applause for the amazing section h harvard business school school class of 2021
2021-06-05 20:08
