Simi Olusola-Ajayi, a strategist and master’s candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, will deliver the student keynote at the 2026 commencement ceremony alongside NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang. Photo Credit: Simi Olusola-Ajayi/LinkedIn
On 10th May 2026, a Nigerian, Simi Olusola–Ajayi, will take the podium as student speaker at Carnegie Mellon University’s main commencement ceremony for bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree candidates. She will share the stage with honorary doctorate recipients Jensen Huang, Jamie deRoy, Samuel John Hazo, and Thomas J. Sargent at the 90-minute ceremony, which begins at 10am.
Simi is currently completing her master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon’s HCI Institute, having previously earned her bachelor’s in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University. Before returning to school, she spent seven years working full-time as a strategist — a career she built before deciding to pursue further education without always having a clear plan in place. After graduation, she plans to attend law school.
That untraditional path is very much the foundation of what she intends to say on the day. Her decision to apply for the speaker role came from an equally unplanned moment, after consoling a friend going through a difficult time and offering some perspective, her friend’s response was simple: you should be the commencement speaker. She took that seriously, applied, and was selected.
“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.” It is a message she hopes will resonate with every graduate in the room, regardless of how their own journey has unfolded.
Beyond the personal, she also plans to speak to something with broader implications — responsible innovation. As someone with a background in technology-related fields now studying human-computer interaction, it is a subject she feels strongly about and one that feels particularly relevant given Carnegie Mellon’s standing in the global tech conversation.
“Innovation itself is not a bad thing, it’s a thing to welcome,” she said. “But with that level of responsibility for innovation also comes a responsibility that comes with it. It’s not innovation for the sake of innovation, it’s in service of a greater reason, innovation in service of people. So just always keeping in the back of our minds the ‘why’ behind everything.”
The ceremony takes place on 10th May 2026 at Carnegie Mellon University, with attendees required to be seated by 9:15am to view the student procession.
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