Simi Olusola-Ajayi, a Nigerian strategist completing her master's in Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, has been selected as the student speaker for the university's 2026 commencement ceremony. She'll share the stage with Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, plus other honorary doctorate recipients on May 10th, 2026.
Her path to the podium wasn't the typical "plan everything out" route. Simi worked full-time as a strategist for seven years before deciding to go back to school, and she didn't even have a clear five-year plan when she started her master's degree. The idea to apply as a commencement speaker came from a friend she was consoling through a tough time. After she offered some perspective, her friend said point-blank: "you should be the commencement speaker." She took it seriously, applied, and got selected.
Her whole message to the graduating class is built on this unpredictable nature of life. "That is the beauty of life, it's that we don't always look like our experiences," she said. "This thing that feels so huge and insurmountable has a way of working itself out." She wants graduates to hear that, no matter how messy their own journeys have been.
Beyond personal resilience, Simi plans to talk about responsible innovation. With her background in technology and now studying human-computer interaction, she feels strongly that innovation shouldn't exist for its own sake. "Innovation in service of people" is how she frames it, and she wants tech leaders and graduates to always remember the "why" behind what they're building.
The ceremony kicks off at 10am on May 10th, 2026, and attendees need to be seated by 9:15am to see the student procession. After graduation, Simi plans to attend law school. Only in 2026 will we see how her story continues to unfold.
