Find your why.
Keep pushing through obstacles.
Turn pressure into purpose.
These were some of the messages delivered to the Class of 2026 at The University of Baltimore’s graduate and undergraduate ceremonies on May 20.
Here, you can watch some of the day’s speeches. You can also view the full ceremony livestreams on YouTube:
Fagan Harris, president and CEO of The Abell Foundation, gave the keynote address. Harris, who served as Gov. Wes Moore’s chief of staff from 2023-25, shared some of the lasting lessons he’s learned about leadership.
“Leadership isn’t about titles and position. All that climbing and aspiring, trying to get prestige and affirmation wasn’t about all of that. It’s not even really about power or authority. It’s about choices, decisions, the example you set and the belief that grows in others when you make choices to achieve a common goal,” he said.
Erick Leonard Masaua, a M.S. in Counseling Psychology student, and Gamar Hayles, a B.S. in Information Systems and Technology Management student, represented their peers as class speakers.
Masaua recounted what sets many UBalt graduates apart from those from other institutions—that they’re often balancing full-time jobs, raising families, starting businesses, and facing obstacles obvious and hidden, while still showing up for classes. “Don’t measure your journey by perfection. Measure it by persistence. So go forward with confidence. Go forward with purpose. Go forward knowing this: If we could make it through everything it took to get here, there is absolutely nothing ahead of us that we cannot overcome.”
Hayles echoed Masaua during his own speech, also sharing his sense of pride, in himself and his peers, for pushing through the work because of the reward they now earned. He urged them to "rewrite the world one story at a time."
“Let me say this clearly, we did not work multiple jobs to pay our tuition, just to second-guess our greatness. We did not struggle this much to wonder if we belong. We invested in our future — now we’re going to live like it.”
