View videos and photos and read speeches from past Commencements.
2024
Former chief justice of California Tani Cantil-Sakauye; economist and nonprofit leader Cecilia Conrad; Occidental College President Harry Elam; medical geneticist Emil Kakkis ’82; Zaid Al Zoubi ’24, senior class president; Mohamad Alkhatib ’24, senior class speaker; John Paul Ferrantino ’24, class day speaker; and Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr.
2023
Civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill; Hall of Fame swimmer Penny Lee Dean ’77; Rohan Ahammed ’23, Senior Class President; Nasira Watts ’23, Senior Class Speaker; and Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr.
2022
Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna ’85 and long-time supporter of the College Stewart Smith ’68; Senior Class President Andreah Lyte Pierre ’22; Senior Class Speaker Nirali Devgan ’22; and Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr.
2021
Health care advocate and lawyer Ady Barkan, Los Angeles Philharmonic music and artistic director Gustavo Dudamel and former executive editor of The New York Times Bill Keller ’70; Senior Class President Malak Afaneh ’21; Senior Class Speaker Brandon Anh-Dung Trần ’21; and Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr.
2020
Historian and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. and human rights advocate Martina Vandenberg ’90; Senior Class President Khadija Thibodeaux ’20; Senior Class Speaker Kyle Tyrell Knight Lee ’20; and Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr.
2019
Foreign Policy Expert Esther Brimmer; Senior Class President Laura Zhang ’19; Senior Class Speaker Ivan Solomon, Jr. ’19; and Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr.
2018
Political Theorist Danielle Susan Allen; Legal Scholar Kenji Yoshino; Senior Class President Sophia S. Sun '18; Senior Class Speaker María José Vides Orellana '18; and Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr.
2017
U.S. Senator Brian Schatz ’94 (D-Hawaii); Sarah C. R. Elgin ’67, P ’05 science educator and researcher; Gay McDougall, civil rights activist; Frederick “Rick” P ’95 and Susan Sontag ’64, P ’95, philanthropists; Kimberly Rojas ’17, senior class president; Dominique Curtis ’17, senior class speaker and David Oxtoby, Pomona College president.
2016
Deborah Bial, founder of Posse Foundation; Vikram Chandra '84, author; Helen Pashgian '56, artist; Jamila Espinosa '16, ASPC president; Ashley Land '16, senior class speaker; David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College.
2015
France A. Córdova, director of the National Science Foundation; Michael Dickerson '01, administrator of the U.S. Digital Service; Andrew Hoyem '57, founder of Arion Press, fine printer, publisher, and poet; and Stephen Reinhardt '51, judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
2014
Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Barack Obama; Father Gregory Boyle, executive director of Homeboy Industries; tenor, conductor and Los Angeles Opera General Director Plácido Domingo; and Michael Starbird ’70, author and professor of mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin.
2013
Steve Jobs author and Aspen Institute CEO and President Walter Isaacson; philanthropist Ranney Draper '60; Guttmacher Institute CEO and President Sharon L. Camp '65.
2012
U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter; educator Marigold Linton; jazz musician David Murray '77; and Occidental College President Jonathan Veitch.
2011
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu; school reform advocate and President and CEO of the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools Judy Ivie Burton; astronomer and Griffith Observatory Director Edwin Krupp ’66; and journalist and best-selling author Douglas Preston ’78.
2010
Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; Price Club co-founder, CEO and president of PriceSmart and philanthropist Robert Price '64; and Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Towne '56 (Chinatown).
2009
New York Times columnist and author Bob Herbert; Chicago Tribune columnist, "Brenda Star" writer and "Wear Sunglasses" column author Mary Schmich '75; and Chicano/a theatre legend Luis Valdez, playwright/director of "Zoot Suit" and director/writer of "La Bamba."
2008
Oscar-award winning documentarian Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; former Pomona College President Peter Stanley; award-winning composer and conductor and former musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Esa-Pekka Salonen; and Ingrid D. Rowland ’74, professor at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture in Rome, and author.
2007
Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Florida); Mary Patterson McPherson, president emeritus of Bryn Mawr College and executive officer of the American Philosophical Society.; Dr. Robert E. Tranquada, M.D., '51, former chairman of the Board of Overseers of the Claremont University Consortium (2000-2006), chairman emeritus of the Board of Trustees of Pomona College and emeritus trustee of the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences.
2006
Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran '69, president of Kalamazoo College in Michigan; Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr. (honored posthumously,) a renowned peace activist and former civil rights leader; Thomas Crow '69, internationally recognized art historian and director of the Getty Research Institute; and Robert Mezey, recipient of the Trustee Medal of Merit, award-winning poet, and professor of English and poet-in-residence at Pomona College (1976-1999).
2005
Huntington Library President Steven Koblik; leading civil rights attorney John Payton '73; and Thomas Dean Pollard, M.D., '64, the chair of Yale’s University's Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.