Kara S Alaimo, Columnist

How to Write a Killer Commencement Speech

Be personal. Be clear-sighted. And don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself.

May 2, 2017 at 4:22 PM UTC

Kara Alaimo is an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is the author of “Over the Influence: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — and How We Can Take It Back.”

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Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

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U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres is headed to the University of South Carolina. Vice President Mike Pence is off to the University of Notre Dame. Apple chief executive Tim Cook will be at MIT, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg at Virginia Tech, the Dalai Lama at the University of California – San Diego, and Oprah Winfrey at Skidmore and Smith. Hundreds of other top business and political executives will deliver commencement speeches at colleges across the country over the next few weeks. You may be one of them.

So, what are universities looking for when they offer big bucks to speak at graduation ceremonies? “The best speakers remember the day is about the people they’re speaking to, so they manage to combine their hard-won wisdom with a message of hope and optimism to the people who are graduating,” says my colleague Melissa Connolly, vice president of university relations at Hofstra University.