Northeastern undergraduate student speakers encourage bravery, open-mindedness
Four students share their experiences at Northeastern’s undergraduate commencement.
Quiet by nature, Armaan Sarao prefers to be behind a camera or immersed in writing. And that’s how he spent much of his time at Northeastern.
A media and screen studies and English major, Sarao presided over the university’s student production club, NUTV, and produced an original documentary on a Dialogue of Civilizations course in the United Kingdom. For his senior thesis, he handwrote a novella on the atrocities of the India-Pakistan conflict in Kashmir. These achievements led him to be nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship and to be inducted into the Huntington 100, which honors outstanding undergraduates.
Less comfortable for him? Serving as a representative in student government. And yet, that’s exactly where Sarao found himself early in his career at Northeastern, inspired to try something new by his mother, who was student body president when she was in college.
Becoming a student senator (and later director of campus services) pushed Sarao out of his comfort zone, he told a crowd of thousands at the undergraduate student commencement at Fenway Park.
“I was genuinely intimidated by the prospect of representing my home college in a room of over a hundred passionate and amazing advocates,” Sarao said. “Yet being part of Northeastern’s Student Government gave me the confidence to not only stand my ground, but to engage with the perspectives of others with an open mind and to put the priority of others over my own.”
He encouraged others to embrace a similar outlook when speaking alongside his fellow graduates at Northeastern’s 2026 undergraduate commencement held at Fenway Park on Wednesday.
Under partly cloudy skies, Sarao told 5,000 graduates that it’s important to keep saying “yes” to new opportunities.
“My wish for all of us is that we leave Northeastern with our heads held high and our eyes wide open…(and) choose open-mindedness over an obsession with outcomes,” he said.
Kayla Parlato encouraged the same curiosity in her address. The mechanical engineering major has loved creating things since she was a child making hats and slippers out of duct tape for her family. This led to them giving her a sewing machine so she could make less sticky apparel and eventually, a welding machine to turn old railroad spikes into sculptures.
“I was hooked on the idea of just building,” she told the audience.
When she got to Northeastern, she turned that passion toward rocket engines. After completing her first semester in Greece through N.U.in, she came to Boston and joined AerospaceNU’s propulsion team where she built and tested rocket engines. One sunny Saturday, the team drove to a private airport to test their work in a field. It immediately exploded.
The experience, though disappointing, taught Parlato not to be afraid to fail. This laid the groundwork for co-ops at Hughes Research Labs, Blue Origin and SpaceX, designing and testing propulsion fluid systems, welding components for liquid rocket engineers and prototypes for on-orbit manufacturing.
“We have proven by being here today, that we know how to push past uncertainty and use it to drive the boundary further, dreaming of what can be,” she told the crowd. “If there’s one conclusion I’ve come to while learning from you all, it’s that we are not passive.
We are people who take an idea and turn it into something real. Life does not happen to Northeastern students … we happen to it.”
Evan Kenny, who graduated with a bachelor’s in behavioral neuroscience, echoed similar sentiments, encouraging his fellow graduates to chase their desires.
“The dreams that belong to you do not exist on accident,” he said. “They were given to you because you and you alone, are capable of bringing in that pure potential into the kinetic and alive…to deprive humanity of those unique gifts, is an unspeakable loss.”
It was at Northeastern that Kenny, a Navy veteran, rediscovered an old dream of his – to become a clinical psychiatrist focused on science-backed wellness. He reconnected with this idea after summiting Mount Everest on May 24, 2024.
“I chose to climb to discover a version of myself that could only exist if I took one step further than I ever had before,” he said. “I realized a lot during that climb, but more than anything, I realized that no one is ever truly climbing alone…sometimes the bravest way forward requires changing directions.”
Upon returning to campus after his summit, Kenny switched majors from engineering to behavioral neuroscience with a pre-med track. He completed research on mindfulness at the Exercise Psychology Lab and led yoga and meditation classes on campus through a meditation fellowship through the Center for Spirituality, Dialogue and Service. He also founded a nonprofit, Infinity Initiatives, to bring these mindfulness practices to the homeless, elderly and disabled.
He urged his fellow graduates to find the same bravery in forging their paths.
“You do not need to know the entire mountain,” he concluded. “You only need to know the ground beneath your feet. You only need to trust in the very next step.”
Amelia Brooks, a business administration graduate, did not have that confidence when she first came to Northeastern. She admitted to the commencement crowd in her address that she initially worried her acceptance to the university was a clerical error.
Her uncertainty began to dissolve once she arrived on campus and joined the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship (WISE), a student-led group focused on helping women and underrepresented genders develop an innovative mindset through workshops, incubators, mentorship pairings and venture catalyst.
Brooks eventually became the co-president of WISE, leading 40+ members across eight programs on the Boston, London and Oakland campuses and running venture incubation programs, an annual summit and immersive learning treks abroad.
It was on one of these treks that Brooks experienced what she told the audience was a “defining moment” in her time at Northeastern. She went to Paris on her first international trip where she and nine other WISE members met with founders and investors.
“Through that trip I saw that the world was connected. It was curious. It was waiting,” she said. “WISE didn’t just teach me how to run an organization. It taught me that the world was something that I was allowed to be a part of.”
Brooks went on to moderate a keynote at WISE’s annual summit and receive the Wendy Breen Kline Award for an undergraduate who embodies leadership and volunteer spirit.
Through this leadership, Brooks told the audience she discovered herself and realized she wanted to dedicate her life and career to helping others see their own potential.
“Northeastern took a chance on me, WISE handed me a microphone and my community showed up for me. I didn’t earn any of that alone,” she said. “Everything I had here was because someone was kind enough to see me before I saw myself.”
Before introducing undergraduate commencement speaker Hilary Duff, Brooks left the audience with simple advice: be kind and take the time to see others and uplift them in the same way others have done to you.
“My most precious achievement isn’t an award, or a grade, or a position, or even having the privilege to speak to you here today,” she concluded. “It’s the ability to see others before they can see themselves and to tell them. That’s the responsibility we leave Fenway with today. It’s our turn to be the mentors, the role models, the people that show up—not only in student organizations, but in every room, every city, every role and every stage of life ahead.”
