On May 19, 2026, the School of Information welcomed 349 of 616 total graduating students from the Master of Information Management and Systems (MIMS), the Master of Information and Data Science (MIDS), the Master of Information and Cybersecurity (MICS), and the Ph.D. in Information Science to the UC Berkeley campus. The event was held at the historic Hearst Greek Theatre. Dean Eric Meyer presided over the ceremony.
“You are graduating from one of the world’s greatest universities with degrees that sit at the intersection of technical rigor and human consequence,” remarked Meyer. “You are not leaving the I School. You are becoming the I School — out in the world, in your organizations and communities, in the work you do, and in the questions you keep asking.”
Zakem calls for resilience and perseverance in trying times
Commencement speaker Vera Zakem has served as the U.S. Agency for International Development’s first-ever chief digital democracy and rights officer, shaping a rights-respecting technology agenda for more than 100 lower- and middle-income countries. She has worked at the intersection of AI, democracy, national security, and tech policy across government, industry, and civil society. She served on the Bipartisan Task Force to Support Democracy. And earlier this year, she was appointed by Governor Newsom as California's first woman chief technology innovation officer — leading the state’s digital services and emerging technologies work with a focus on ensuring technology serves all Californians. She also joined a distinguished group as a UC Berkeley Executive Fellow in Applied Technology Policy through the School of Information and the Goldman School of Public Policy.
Zakem began her speech by referencing her time at UC Berkeley and the I School in particular. “What makes the I School so special, is that you have been studying, researching, and building technology that serves people, that shapes our collective security, rooted not only in Berkeley values, but in California values: the values of innovation, of inclusion, of freedom, civil rights, and opportunity,” she said. “It is up to you to decide and make your mark.”
She then went on to talk about both the promises and pitfalls surrounding technology like AI, and her journey from being a “third culture kid” learning English as a second language, to serving in chief technology roles for the federal and state government. Zakem also provided graduates with words of wisdom for pushing through the doubt, creating support systems, and developing technology that serves.
“As you go build the next great companies, serve in public office, or maybe invent the next breakthrough at UC Berkeley, stay true to your values,” she declared. “Let your perseverance, truth, your moral compass, your lived experience, your contextualized knowledge shape the digital world for our children and grandchildren. We need your honesty and truth now more than ever. No technology can take that away from you.”
Student speakers discuss AI and the importance of building ethical technology
Student speakers from each program, nominated by their peers, also took the stage to address their fellow graduates.
First to take the stage was Ph.D. graduate Tonya Nguyen, who attempted to define a Ph.D. at the I School and how the interdisciplinary nature of her degree helped her ask the right questions.
“ “Let your perseverance, truth, your moral compass, your lived experience, your contextualized knowledge shape the digital world for our children and grandchildren.”
“At the I School, we acknowledge that culture, institutions, and existing power structures shape how technology is designed and deployed — and how technology in turn shapes our lives and society,” she said. “The fact that the I School has cultivated a place that makes room for this kind of questioning — from people with such different origins and intellectual paths — is so deeply special.”
MICS speaker Larry Arpia Jr. also spoke about community and the importance of leadership in a world where artificial intelligence is getting more sophisticated.
“Cybersecurity is no longer just a technical role. It's leadership; it's strategy,” he said. “AI will amplify everything we do — our capabilities, our speed, our decisions. But it will also amplify our risks, our blind spots, and our mistakes. So, the question isn’t just what we can build with AI; it’s also about how we build it, why we build it, and who it impacts.”
Trisha Ahmed, the MIMS speaker, shared about her background as a journalist who came to the degree to create technology that makes people happy. “After years of reporting on many sad events,” she said, “I came to MIMS with the goal of learning more about how to build and improve products that can help spark joy in people's daily lives.”
She highlighted her cohort's final projects, which take various approaches towards creating technology for social good: “Now that I've completed this degree, I realize there are so many more ways to work at the intersection of technology and user delight — with special attention to ethics and social impact — than I'd initially imagined.” She then shared quotes she had collected from MIMS classmates to ensure her speech reflected the sentiments most important to her cohort.
MIDS speaker Siddharth Manu wrapped up the speeches with a message on building an ethical future together.
“We belong to a global community of data scientists across time zones and continents, people who learned, across every difference, to actually listen to each other. In a world being pulled apart by division, that is a radical act…The future is not an eventuality; it is something we build, together, intentionally, humanely,” he declared.
Alumni speaker Josh Blumenstock tells graduates to appreciate the pause
For the first time, an alum was invited to address the graduates. At the end of the ceremony, Professor Joshua Blumenstock (Ph.D. 2012) congratulated the graduates and welcomed them to the alumni community.
He reflected on the common struggle I School graduates experience to define what an I School degree means, and offered wisdom for when the graduates find themselves trying to explain it. “At some point in the next month, you’ll be on a plane, or at a dinner, or at a wedding, and the person next to you will ask what you studied. And you will open your mouth… and you will hesitate. Because there is no clean answer to that question,” he said.
“I want to argue that this pause — this small, awkward beat at the dinner table — is one of the most valuable things you are taking with you. That pause in the conversation happens because what we do is messy, and engages a much richer set of ideas and methods than ‘sociology’ or ‘computing’ or whatever those lucky one-word department alumni get to use. And that is okay, because the most important problems are all messy, and cannot be solved with a single set of tools, or viewed through the lens of a single discipline.”
“Most importantly,” he concluded, “you leave here with a degree that, more than most, was designed for problems that don’t fit in a box – problems that matter. Go tackle those problems.”
