‘Build a Life That Doesn’t Fit In’: Wentworth Celebrates Summer Commencement

Two graduating students and two keynote speakers addressed the audience at MGM Music Hall at Fenway on August 13. None of them had compared notes beforehand, yet all four told the Class of 2026 the same basic idea: the polished version of your life is never the whole story.

Wentworth Institute of Technology held two Summer Commencement ceremonies at the Fenway venue, the second consecutive Wentworth commencement staged there. Board Chair Rose Conti, the first woman to chair Wentworth's Board of Trustees, called both ceremonies to order in the university's 122nd year. The Boston Fire Department Honor Guard presented the colors at both, and Executive Vice President and Provost Sophia Maggelakis oversaw the presentation of diplomas while Dean of Students Jenn Kosses served as Institute Marshal.

President Mark A. Thompson acknowledged that graduates were entering a labor market unsettled by artificial intelligence and by broader economic and geopolitical uncertainty.

"The conversation around AI is loud, and often anxious," Thompson said. "But I want you to leave here today knowing that the graduates of Wentworth are not bystanders in that story. You are builders. You are the ones who will decide how these tools get designed, applied, and governed. That is not a small thing."

Morning Ceremony

The 10:30 a.m. ceremony recognized graduates from the School of Architecture and Design, the School of Computing and Data Science, the School of Management, and the School of Sciences and Humanities. Dylan Brandano, Mechanical Engineering, sang the National Anthem. A vocalist and self-taught guitar player, Brandano graduates with a minor in Manufacturing and spent his four years playing rugby and competing in intramural sports across Wentworth and the Colleges of the Fenway.

Dr. Monica Snow served as faculty marshal and mace bearer.

Thompson presented the Beatty Award to Nicolas Cullinan, Construction Management. The award, given each year for outstanding scholarship and marked by a red tassel, honors Dr. H. Russell Beatty, Wentworth's third principal and first president, who served for 19 years and established the university's first associate and baccalaureate degree programs. Cullinan carried a 4.0 cumulative GPA across four years while competing for two NCAA Division III teams, men's ice hockey and baseball.

Student speaker Hugo Hernandez Chavez, Computer Information Systems, opened by describing the version of himself a stranger would find online.

"If you Googled me before today, you'd probably find a tidy little one on LinkedIn," he said. "Every line is polished. Every accomplishment is so easy to read. Everything arranged in a neat little column. That's the version of these four years that the internet will remember. And most of it is true. It's just not the whole truth."

The whole truth, he said, was a second profile, the late-night pizza, the Green Line breaking down in February, the rejection emails from a first, second and third co-op search, and the times he hesitated to speak in class because he was self-conscious about his accent.

"That second profile is the one Wentworth helped us write," Hernandez Chavez said. "Because here, we are taught to test, to fail, to fix, to ask for help, and to build again."

He closed with a charge to his fellow graduates. "We didn't get here despite the things that didn't fit," he said. "We got here because of them." Graduates should build lives, he continued, "so gloriously imperfect that they could never, ever fit on a single LinkedIn profile page."

Richard A. Davey, Jr., chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, delivered the keynote and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. Davey has led Massport since August 2024, overseeing Boston Logan International Airport, Worcester Regional Airport, Hanscom Field, Conley Container Terminal, and Flynn Cruiseport Boston. He previously served as president of New York City Transit, as Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation, and as general manager of the MBTA.

Davey took the podium minutes after Hernandez Chavez and landed on the same idea from the perspective of a decades-long career.

"Your résumé will tell the story of your accomplishments," Davey said. "But your character, and ultimately your career, will be shaped by everything that never makes it onto the page."

Davey walked graduates through what he called his anti-résumé, including being rejected by Georgetown; leading Boston's 2024 Olympic bid through the winter that shut down the transit system he had once run, before watching the bid collapse; and not getting an interview when the Massport job first opened years ago.

"It is remarkable how convincing disappointment can be," he said. "It has a way of making you believe that it somehow defines you."

Davey argued that Wentworth graduates are especially well prepared for that, since engineers, architects, and scientists already expect to revise designs and test hypotheses. He offered two Fenway landmarks as evidence. The Landmark Center opened in 1928 as a Sears Roebuck store and now houses cancer researchers and technology companies. The Fens themselves were a stagnant tidal marsh until Frederick Law Olmsted engineered them into parkland 150 years ago.

"The Landmark Center reminds us that great builders create things future generations can reinvent," Davey said. "The Fens remind us why, not simply to solve today's problems, but to leave a city stronger than they found it."

Afternoon Ceremony

The 2:30 p.m. ceremony recognized graduates of the Douglas D. Schumann School of Engineering, with Dean Ali Khabari presenting the candidates. Jocelyn Salzman, Biomedical Engineering, sang the National Anthem. Salzman, of Vancouver, Washington, sang with The Sirens a cappella group for three years, including five semesters as vice president, and joins the Biomedical Engineering Department at Massachusetts General Hospital after graduation.

Dr. Lauren Melfi served as faculty marshal and mace bearer.

Student speaker Amanda Zweifler, Civil Engineering, built her address around what she called the best phrase in engineering.

"It depends," Zweifler said. "As engineers, we've spent years learning equations, theories, and formulas. We learned that every problem starts with the givens, the assumptions, and the constraints. We learned that context matters. In engineering, the answer is rarely just yes or no."

When considering where she wants to be in five years, she said, "The honest answer would be that it depends. And that's okay."

"For years, we've been trained to find answers," she continued. "But one of the most important lessons engineering has taught us is that knowing the answer is not the same thing as knowing how to get there. Our professors didn't simply teach us solutions. They gave us the tools, the building blocks, and the confidence to solve problems we haven't even encountered yet. They gave us the foundation. Now it's our turn to decide what we build on top of it."

Zweifler, who was named Libero of the Year in her final season with the women's volleyball team and is the sixth player in Wentworth history to record more than 1,000 career digs, closed by borrowing a Doc Brown quote from her father's favorite movie, Back to the Future.

"Congratulations to the Class of 2026," she said. "Our future hasn't been written yet. Let's go build it."

Douglas W. Foley '88, president of Massachusetts Electric Operations at Eversource and a member of Wentworth's Board of Trustees, delivered the keynote and received an honorary Doctor of Engineering. Foley is responsible for delivering electricity to more than 1.4 million customers across 159 Massachusetts communities, and serves as Eversource's enterprise incident commander for emergency preparedness across three states. He earned a bachelor's degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Wentworth.

"It's an honor to be here today with you all, especially as a fellow leopard," Foley said.

He went on to advise graduates, as his father would say, to "experience the experience."

"Most of us go through life working through milestones like items on a checklist," Foley said. "Graduation: check. First job: check. First promotion: check. At times, especially in today's society with social media and constant connection to our devices and technology, we can become so consumed in making sure we get to the moment or documenting the moment that we forget to actually be in the moment."

Foley grew up working in his family's line-painting business, marking streets, parking lots, and garages. He credits the job, along with becoming an Eagle Scout, with forming his work ethic and his attention to detail.

He urged members of the crowd to never underestimate the power of your position.

"A painted line down the middle of the road is the only thing standing between you and a car coming the other way at 50 miles an hour," Foley said. "A utility pole line is powering more than just the devices we rely on. It's providing electricity to the schools, grocery stores, hospitals, and our neighbor going through dialysis."

He continued, "No matter what you're doing in your career, remember that your work and position matter. Even if it's not always visible to some, stay true to your core self."

The afternoon ceremony included a second honorary degree. Gary J. Miller '77, a Wentworth trustee emeritus, received an honorary Doctor of Engineering in recognition of nearly five decades at NELCO Worldwide, a global provider of radiation and radio frequency shielding for healthcare facilities. Miller joined the company as an architectural sales representative and rose to executive vice president, chief operating officer and co-owner, working with architects, medical physicists and healthcare professionals on shielding systems.

Miller has served Wentworth as president of the Alumni Association, as an ex officio trustee, as a member of the Wentworth Corporation and on the Board of Trustees from 2015 to 2023. He received the Philip J. Brooks Alumni Leadership Award in 2016 and the Wentworth Alumni Association Gold Leopard Award in 2020, and was named trustee emeritus in 2025. He remains active on the Wentworth Alumni Golf Tournament Committee and the AGC Scholarship Committee.

"Gary's career exemplifies the values of leadership, perseverance, and lifelong dedication to both his profession and his alma mater," Thompson said.