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05/14/2026 | News release | Distributed by Public on 05/15/2026 03:00

Meet This Year’s BU Commencement Student Speaker

Meet This Year's BU Commencement Student Speaker

"We're leaving here having earned our degrees, but we're also 'messier' in a beautiful, really positive way," says Blake Hanrahan (Questrom'26)

Blake Hanrahan (Questrom'26) stood and waved to the crowd at Senior Breakfast when the news was announced that he would be the Class of 2026 Commencement student speaker.

Commencement 2026

Meet This Year's BU Commencement Student Speaker

"We're leaving here having earned our degrees, but we're also 'messier' in a beautiful, really positive way," says Blake Hanrahan (Questrom'26)

May 14, 2026
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By the time Boston University seniors gather for Commencement on May 17, student speaker Blake Hanrahan will already have spent months reflecting on the college experience he is about to help define for his classmates. Hanrahan (Questrom'26)-who graduated in January with a degree in business administration and management, but will walk during Sunday's ceremony-says his time at BU was shaped by the freedom to chart his own path.

"I'm leaving knowing that I exhausted all opportunities," says Hanrahan, who complemented his Questrom education with roles at BUTV, a fraternity, clubs, and a job as a resident assistant.

The spirit of exploration, he says, will shape his Commencement address: "We're leaving here having earned our degrees, but we're also 'messier' in a beautiful, really positive way."

Hanrahan grew up in Mount Laurel, N.J., and attended an all-boys Jesuit high school. He describes that school environment as formative because he often felt out of step with the mold around him. "It taught me so much about endurance and being in a space where you probably don't agree with everything," he says.

The experience helped him realize what he did want in a college: an environment that was expansive, eclectic, and flexible enough to let students define themselves.

BU first caught his attention for its academic reputation. But a personalized tour he and his family took with Daryl DeLuca, assistant dean of students, sold him on the University. "He spoke about the school with such excitement and almost like there was no other option," Hanrahan says. "I really credit him as kind of being the foundation and that centerpiece of why I ended up choosing BU."

A self-described theater kid, Hanrahan grew up performing in local productions and was drawn to BU's performance groups and the College of Communication's Boston University Los Angeles program, which he later participated in. Though he enrolled in Questrom due to some gentle nudging from his parents, he never abandoned his creative ambitions. Instead, he found that business and performance complemented each other. (In fact, he gave a TEDxBU talk on the subject at BU last month.)

He discovered that he didn't need to choose between creativity and pragmatism. During his junior year, Hanrahan applied for a summer internship with Universal Music Group. Although he was rejected, he was later told they only turned him down because they wanted him to apply for a part-time role at 1824, Universal Music Group's culture marketing team, which employs college-age reps to publicize artists.

As part of the interview process, Hanrahan was given 48 hours to design a marketing campaign for a newly signed country artist. Thanks to his experience with BU's Guerrilla Marketing Society, where he had already built partnerships and worked on similar campaigns, he was ready-and got the job.

Over the next two years, Hanrahan helped lead marketing efforts for everything from the 2024 Wicked release to a Saxbys promotion tied to singer-songwriter Tanerélle to securing an interview with artist Ayoni for BUTV's Good Morning BU. On top of that, he has worked on online activations and campaigns for artists such as The Weeknd, Nicki Minaj, and Ariana Grande. The benefit of his role at 1824 is that he is in the first applicant pool considered for full-time openings at the company. He's also eyeing other full-time roles in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles and New York.

Outside the entertainment industry, Hanrahan immersed himself in campus life. He completed Questrom's intensive Core business competition, helping his team place first; joined the professional business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi; and served as an RA in HoJo for three years.

Hanrahan also produced BUTV's news show, The Wire, which required waking up each school day at 7 am for two years. That commitment actually helped him graduate early: He had heard classmates say they had earned AP credits in high school that allowed them to graduate early, so he checked his own transcript to see if he could do the same. He found that between his own AP credits and the credits he'd gained working on The Wire (two per semester), he had enough.

"So I was doing The Wire while I was taking Core and, during the hecticness of everything, just kept going," he says. "Normally, a Questrom major wouldn't do something like that."

He says that graduating early has not only helped him jump-start his career plans, but has also given him time to explore some of his passions before "life gets too real." This has included signing with a commercial agent in Philadelphia.

Even after graduating early, Hanrahan knew he wanted to return to campus one last time to serve as class speaker at Commencement. "I was so inspired by my class and my experience at BU," he says. "It also felt like a really cool way to honor my peers and celebrate my family."

Hanrahan submitted a draft of his proposed speech and was selected from a group of finalists. When Dean of Students Jason Campbell-Foster called to give him the news, he says he couldn't stop smiling.

As for advice for incoming students, his message is simple: forge your own path to meet your goals.

"Choose a concentration you love. There's a club for every type of interest that you could possibly want to pursue," he says. "There are so many resources here, so many people from all over the world, amazing academic advisors and professors. Don't just subscribe to a mold or a formula that you see and you feel is the expectation of what you should meet."

Oh, and one other thing: "Always double-check your AP credits."

Find more information about Commencement here.

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Boston University published this content on May 14, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on May 15, 2026 at 09:00 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]