Graduate school speaker and university benefactor Alan McKim of Clean Harbors tells Northeastern students AI is an opportunity, not burden
Alan McKim of environmental cleanup company Clean Harbors tells graduate students to embrace AI and remember “your character will matter more than your code.”
A cool drizzle could not dampen the achievements and excitement of the graduate students receiving their degrees at Northeastern University’s 2026 commencement ceremony at Fenway Park Wednesday morning.
“I know it’s misty, but there’s plenty of energy,” said Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun as he addressed the 3,400 graduate students in attendance, many wearing clear rain ponchos over their black gowns and yellow and red graduation sashes. In total, 7,632 graduate students earned degrees at Northeastern’s Boston campus.
Aoun spoke about the resilience, collaboration, intellectual curiosity, and leadership that Northeastern fosters in its students.
“You earned experience in professional settings,” Aoun said. “You created communities of mentors and friends that helped you unleash your best self. And you exercised your humanity — for yourselves, each other and the world. That is the essence of your Northeastern education.”
He was joined in expressing these sentiments by three graduate student speakers.
Graduate student speaker Mohamed Ouattara said his professors at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, from which he received a master’s degree, “weren’t just teaching accounting, they were genuinely invested in my success,” which he tried to pass along to first-year business students as a peer leader.
“Northeastern did not ask me to become someone else,” said student speaker Daniela A. Gonzalez, who came to Northeastern having already received a Ph.D. in biological sciences and went on to earn a master’s degree in data science. “It asked me to become more of who I already was.”
“In every moment we kept going when the easier path was to stop,” said engineering management graduate and student speaker Menahi Shayan, who also goes by Shayan Menahi. “Those shared struggles give us our sense of belonging,” he said.
Alan McKim, the founder of Clean Harbors Environmental Services Inc. and co-namesake of the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, said in his commencement address that AI will present unprecedented opportunities—and it’s up to the graduates to shape the new landscape using the values and intellectual vigor they learned at Northeastern.
“For the first time in history, technology is not just replacing muscle in an assembly line. It is beginning to replicate judgment,” said McKim, who obtained his MBA from Northeastern 38 years ago and was awarded an honorary doctorate on Wednesday.
“That is new. And that is powerful,” he told the crowd, which included about 10,000 family and friends.
Technological changes came fast after he received his master’s degree in 1988, McKim said, including not just the internet but also Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. “But nothing compares to artificial intelligence,” he said.
“You are graduating into the fastest period of change in human history. The most disruptive era the world has ever seen,” McKim said. “AI will not replace leaders. But leaders who use AI will replace those who do not.”
“AI will touch everything … everyone … everywhere,” he said. “And that is not your burden. It’s your opportunity.”
The transformation will not be painless as entire industries shift and “ethical gray zones will test your judgment,” he told the graduates, adding that they are responsible for helping shape the AI era in a way that upholds values and integrity.
“Your character will matter more than your code,” McKim said. The human element is more important than ever, he said. “When I started Clean Harbors, my calling was cleaning up the environment. But over time, I realized developing people was an equally important purpose.”
McKim said he grew up in a hardworking, blue-collar family in which “college was not discussed. … It was not part of the plan.”
But his best friend’s father, whom he considered his “second dad,” was a part-time professor at Northeastern and encouraged him to apply.
McKim said he started at Northeastern in the mid-1970s but took what turned out to be a years-long hiatus to work and start a family.
He started the Clean Harbors company with a vacuum truck, cleaning up environmental contamination at Superfund and other sites. The company did well, generating $600,000 in revenue in the first year in business with three employees he recruited from his previous job at an oil cleanup company.
But something was missing.
“About six years into my personal journey, I realized something uncomfortable,” McKim said. “The company was growing. Yet, I was not. But instead of hiding from that insecurity, I leaned into it.”
“At 32 years old, I came back to Northeastern,” he said. “It was the connection with the university that changed my life.”
McKim said University Distinguished Professor Daniel J. McCarthy not only guided him through the process of applying for an MBA but taught him how to think strategically. McCarthy remains a mentor to this day, decades after joining Clean Harbors as its first director.
“Even at 94 years old, he still offers me sound advice and mentorship,” McKim said, adding in an emotional moment that he was honored to have McCarthy attend the graduate commencement ceremony Wednesday. “This is such a surprise to me.”
The decision to attend the MBA program shaped his future, McKim said. He said he embraced lifelong learning and learned to make technology a strategic priority “not because it was trendy but because it created advantage.”
Today Clean Harbors is an industry leader, generating more than $6 billion in revenue and employing more than 25,000 people, McKim said. The company continues to explore new technologies, significantly, AI.
For example, a field chemist recently preparing a complex hazardous waste cleanup used software applications built with AI to figure out how to safely handle the thousands of chemicals onsite. In the past, that task would have required flipping through manuals and government regulations and relying on memory, McKim said.
AI did not replace the chemist but served as a “co-pilot” to the human employee who was able to perform faster and safer and go home “uninjured each night,” McKim said.
He said he is proud of the fact that many employees have stayed with the company their entire careers. “Watching them grow, mentoring them, seeing them provide for their families — that has brought me so much fulfillment,” said McKim, who calls his four children and 11 grandchildren “the greatest blessing of my life.”
“Revenue measures growth,” he said. “People measure legacy.”
McKim asked the graduates who they will lift as they climb and what their success will make possible for others. He advised them to remain lifelong learners, to lead by surrounding themselves with “smarter people than you,” to step into discomfort early in order to grow, and to give back to a cause that matters to them.
Northeastern University remains a cause dear to McKim’s heart. In 2012, he and fellow entrepreneur Rich D’Amore donated a record $60 million to the university, which led to the D’Amore-McKim School of Business being named in honor of the two benefactors.
In 2022, McKim gave $25 million to his alma mater to establish eight new endowed chairs across the university in honor of President Joseph E. Aoun.
“But generosity is not just measured only in dollars,” McKim said. “You can always give your time. Mentor someone to believe in themselves, like professor McCarthy did for me,” he said. “This university is part of my story of growth and service. I would not be standing here without it.”
McKim told students to stay in touch with the university and “build something worthy of the name on your diploma. … The future is not something that happens to you,” he said. “It is something you build. And we will be watching with pride.”
