A Message from 2025 CDS Convocation Speaker Marjorie Hsu (ENG'86, Questrom'93)
What an exciting day! I am so pleased to be here with friends and families celebrating the Center for Computing and Data Science graduates, class of 2025! What a proud moment for the graduates and maybe even more emotional for the parents, grandparents, siblings, partners, and loved ones. For those who might not have everyone you wanted present today, know that I’m 110% here for you and available for a hug instead of the customary handshake.
I am Marjorie Hsu, Associate Provost Bestavros’ first advisory board member. I said yes immediately, that’s how enthralled I was by the CDS vision Azer articulated. No matter what luminaries and geniuses join CDS in the future, I’ll always proudly be the first. And it is an even greater honor to be here speaking with you all today! A couple of years ago, I was attending an AI conference at the Tsai Performance Center and chatting with a distinguished faculty member, reflecting on how dramatically the campus has been transformed since I first started at the College of Engineering in the brick building on Cummington Ave 40 years ago. He politely corrected me, saying, No, it was 20 years, so I can now claim to be the ENG class of 2006 instead of 1986. That’s fake news, but who am I to question the wisdom of the Department of Math and Sciences chair on what must be string theory?
"For those who might not have everyone you wanted present today, know that I’m 110% here for you and available for a hug instead of the customary handshake."
I graduated a semester early to save my parents some money, started my career at New England Telephone in the Initial Corporate Development management trainee program, held mostly technical product development and operational roles, and closed out my career as Vice President at Verizon Wireless. I was lucky not to have to change companies in 27 years, the corporation just grew around me, and I was able to have 16 different job experiences as I rose up the career ladder. During my first assignment, I came to realize no one looked like me above the director level, so I co-founded the Asian Focus Group when I was 23 to help AAPI employees form a network and advocate for career advancement. I also earned my MBA at the Graduate School of Management, now Questrom, while working full-time. After Verizon, I served as Chief Technology Officer at SingTel, a multinational telecom company in Singapore, and then returned to the US to be Chief Revenue Officer at a startup that had a successful exit. I now consult with and advise tech founders and CEO’s. I also chair and serve on a variety of boards, in addition to CDS. My Boston University education laid a foundation for me to enjoy a variety of career and life experiences, impact organizations I’m passionate about, and now I can appreciate the flexibility and fun of my portfolio life. Yes, I put in the work, but I was also incredibly fortunate.
I was recently at a women’s networking dinner, and we were asked to introduce ourselves by telling a story that Google doesn’t know about us. I shared that I am a preschool dropout. It was extremely boring compared with the spicy reveals other women had. My parents and I came to the US when I was 6 months old. We only spoke Mandarin at home, even though my college-educated parents both spoke English. I was miserable, and I guess convinced my parents in Mandarin to let me drop out of preschool. The advantage now is I’m bilingual, and I’ve passed that gift onto my sons. As parents, we want our children to have every advantage, but then we have the hard task of letting them go to seek their path.
The class of 2025 has lived through more tumult than most people in the US have experienced in decades: pandemic, remote learning, social unrest, geopolitical tensions, economic and job market uncertainty. As someone who has been graced to live through the best of times, I was at first sad for my sons to learn adulting during this time but then I realized their opportunity. Out of disorder and chaos, you all have the chance to create new models for how society collaborates, organizes, creates, produces, and lives. Most engineering students’ hardest class is thermodynamics, and it feels like we’re living the 2nd law of thermo, which is entropy, the Greek word for transformation. A consequence of entropy is that certain processes are irreversible, so sorry, folks, there’s no going back. Along those lines, I’m a big believer in the phrase that has been attributed to the Stoic philosopher Seneca: “Fortune favors the prepared.” Especially during this massively disruptive time, you must make your own luck by putting in the work and being ready for the moment when the opportunity arises. That’s what I love about CDS, you have been able to seek your passion while equipping yourselves with critical analysis, domain knowledge, along with data science and modeling tools necessary to succeed in the fields that need you to make a difference. You can thoughtfully consider how humans collaborate to direct technology; the ways we can bring the entire workforce along during the agentic transformation; and how Generative AI, robots, and people together solve societal challenges, help the underserved, and shape a better tomorrow for everyone.
Education will change entirely, as will almost all other fields. I’m very happy that my son, who is here today along with my husband, is enrolled in the CDS online master’s in data science program this fall because I believe this CDS toolkit will be essential for this generation’s success and also for the eternally young and curious. Shifting from the philosophical and aspirational, let’s touch upon the topic every conversation and conference seems to revert to these days: Generative Artificial Intelligence. We’re not all going to be building Large Language Models like our amazing CDS grads, but we can each start using GenAI. So many platforms can be used for free, find your preferred interface or, like me, use several. There are so many to choose from: Microsoft Co-Pilot, Claude, Proximity, ChatGPT, etc.
Your shiny new graduates can advise you best on the many more that are function and task-specific. Professionals are certainly using secure instances of these platforms for work applications such as basic culling through and prioritizing emails, organizing data to gain actionable insights, using a personal assistant agent, reducing customer care costs, or, most exciting, accelerating basic research across a growing number of industries. Try using Gen AI tools instead of googling. The different platforms also exhibit different values. Claude, developed by Anthropic, emphasizes universalism and humility. Some, like Perplexity and CoPilot, cite the source data from which they compile the response. Some won’t respond to political questions, which demonstrates that GenAI is pretty savvy. Pick one whose human-computer interface you feel comfortable with. It is always incumbent on the human to verify the information provided to make sure it’s not hallucinating, making stuff up. I bounce between the different platforms depending on the task I’m doing. I’ve used Gen AI to create presentations on how do to prepare and provision for an offshore sailing trip, and it has displaced Google for most of my searches.
I was really impressed after spending hours trying to find an après theater restaurant reservation for eight people within walking distance of Broadway over the holidays, and Gen AI found a great restaurant for me. I’ve heard it’s brilliant for learning a foreign language, it’ll correct your pronunciation while having a conversation with you. I created a personalized agent that aligns with my experience, expertise, and values. How many of you have tried using GenAI? How many of you have developed a personalized agent? I have even heard of people who use ChatGPT to give them feedback on how they could have chosen better language after an argument with their wife. Happy wife, happy life, unfortunately, nothing rhymes with husband! Gen AI can help you prepare for an interview, develop leadership skills, and maybe help you be more emotionally perceptive. Algorithms, AI, and now Gen AI have long promised to do the grunt work so you can save your talents and human judgment for what matters, and now it’s here. No, we even have agents, so everyone should give it a try. All that said, I promise I wrote this convocation address and not Chat GPT.
"AI augments human expertise; it may level up your skills and productivity. At the core, though, it is still your knowledge and your values that drive technology for good."
AI augments human expertise; it may level up your skills and productivity. At the core, though, is still your knowledge and your values that drive technology for good. People talk about seeking your passion, but your passion changes: Is anyone still playing Pokémon Go? Or still pining for the boy in middle school with the alpaca hair? It is the family values that your parents are so proudly basking in the glow of your achievement today, imparted to you since birth, and ultimately, your core values and beliefs that will guide you. Hiring is down 16% from last year and 44% from 2022 for new college grads.
Congratulations to those who have a job offer in hand; that is tremendous and so exciting! For everyone else, please don’t be discouraged. I didn’t have a job offer until after graduation, however, I was ready to say yes, just as I was ready to say yes to Azer! In the mid-80s, I was interviewing with defense contractors, but when New England Telephone offered me a job that connected people, it was easy to say yes because it aligned with my values. Today’s young people will have lots of jobs and even many different careers. Take every interview, learn from every experience and assignment about how you can best contribute, how to be a good teammate, how to manage up, down and around, how to emulate a good supervisor or how not be that bad boss, and define what a good, meaningful life looks like for you. My motto is BE OPEN to the UNIVERSE! Try not to worry so much about what other people are doing, and don’t spend any time imagining what they think about what you’re doing, because most likely, they’re not paying that much attention to you. Speaking of staying the course, I recently read about how the Amish adopt technology.
It is very much guided by their shared core values and decided purposefully and selectively as a community. Every community is different and my family drove to Boston for this occasion so I’m not a member but I do appreciate their framework for technology assessment: does it enhance the craftsmanship and quality of their work, does it provide meaningful work for the community, does it prioritize their family and community values, does it enhance or diminish human relationships, does it promote or diminish self-sufficiency, is it environmentally sustainable with minimal impact on our planet? Some Amish communities have adopted refrigeration, solar, and battery technology but stay off the grid, some use cell phones and computers for business but not personally. Consider whether our actions, even beyond work, are purposeful and necessary. And our work should certainly bring us and others satisfaction and joy.
“You deserve to cast yourself as the central character in your own life story.”
I leave you with one last joyful thought. Even more important, perhaps than which school, degree, or first job you get, is finding a life partner who supports you and your ambition. You deserve to cast yourself as the central character in your own life story. That doesn’t preclude being an equal partner in a relationship, a devoted parent, and a filial child. You will still have to make sacrifices and compromises. There will be bumps along the way, but it will be easier and wonderful to have someone by your side cheering you on and helping you BE YOU!
Go get it all, graduates, congratulations!