convocation 2025

‘You Have Made the Right Choice’

At the 2025 SPH Convocation, Ayanna Pressley, US Representative for Massachusetts’ 7th district, told graduates to stand for truth and justice as they navigate this challenging, but important, moment for the field.

Public health faces enormous challenges ahead, and as of May 17, the field officially gained 461 additional practitioners who will dedicate their professional lives to eliminating health inequities, fighting for justice, and advancing health for all. 

On Saturday afternoon, the School of Public Health community, families, and friends gathered at the Boston University Track & Tennis Center to celebrate the achievements of the newest generation of public health leaders at the 2025 SPH Convocation. 

Dean Ad Interim Michael Stein opened the event by acknowledging that the class of 2025 is “entering a very different world than the one that existed when they began this program of studies.

“They are graduating at a time of unprecedented challenge and opportunity, but I personally witnessed the strength, resilience, and purpose that defines this class.”

Convocation keynote speaker Ayanna Pressley, US Representative for Massachusetts’ 7th district, was not able to attend the ceremony in person due to last-minute weather conditions, but she addressed the graduates virtually by live video from Washington, DC.

“Nothing ultimately was going to stop me from congratulating the BU School of Public Health on this incredible milestone in your life and this incredible occasion,” said Pressley, a former BU student herself who attended the College of General Studies from 1992 to 1994.  

As a legislator, activist, survivor, and the first woman of color to represent the commonwealth in Congress, Pressley has championed justice and healing for immigrants, workers, seniors, incarcerated individuals, sexual violence survivors, and more, throughout her career. She has been a steadfast advocate for progressive policies that address reproductive and LGBTQIA+ rights, climate change, gun violence, affordable housing, and health inequities and disparities. 

Convocation is one of several SPH events she has participated in. Two of Pressley’s past staff members, Jessica Ridge (SPH’23) and Lynese Wallace (CAS’11, SPH’17), are alums of the school. 

“A decision to pursue a career in public health is a noble and worthwhile decision—and to do so right now, to do so especially right now, is in and of itself an act of radical courage, an act of faith in a belief in something greater, a belief that another world is possible,” Pressley told the graduates. 

From the Black maternal health crisis to the opioid epidemic, to the long-term impacts of COVID and those living with long COVID, there is no shortage of work to be done, Pressley said. The health inequities and disparities that graduates will work to mitigate are issues that are close to her heart—and constituency, as reflected by the #1 bus route from Cambridge to Roxbury, during which life expectancy drops by decades. 

“To be clear, these outcomes are human-made. They are the consequence of moral failings, budgetary neglect, and policy violence,” she said. “…These are the challenges that the class of 2025 will face head on, against the backdrop of an anti-science, anti-research, anti-equity, anti-health, and anti-people agenda.”

As universities, businesses, and workplaces scale back diversity efforts under pressure from the federal administration, Pressley praised the school community’s continuing commitment to equity.

“As a former BU student, I’m especially proud that the School of Public Health has not in any way run away or retreated from your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, even as assaults on these programs and initiatives rage on across the country. I hope that your courage is contagious.”

Most recently, Pressley was a vocal advocate for the release of Tufts University international student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was unlawfully detained by ICE in March for six weeks as part of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Pressley has also spoken out against the potential increase in prices on essential baby products as a result of the government’s increased tariffs against multiple countries.

“Please hear me when I say, you have made the right choice,” Pressley said to graduates. “It is the brilliance and impatience of your generation who did not come to play, who will see us through these turbulent times. And when we get to the other side of this—and we will—you will be able to tell your children and your grandchildren about where you stood and the choices you made.”

For student Convocation speaker Diksha Venugopal, SPH is where she found “the confidence to speak, the tools to lead, and the data to back it up.” The international student arrived to campus from India nearly two years ago as a trained clinician in integrative medicine. She had little public health experience, but was alarmed at the number of patients she saw with preventable diseases, such as cervical cancer, and knew that she wanted to shift into a role that embraced upstream interventions and prevented people from developing these diagnoses altogether.

“Once, as a physician, I healed bodies,” said Venugopal, who studied epidemiology and biostatistics at SPH. “Now, I don’t just treat illness, I challenge the systems that cause it. I have learned that the deepest medicine is prevention, and the deepest change comes when we have the courage to reimagine what’s possible. BUSPH gave me that courage. It gave me a voice, a purpose, a community. And I know I’m not alone in that.”

Venugopal was heavily involved during her time at SPH, serving as president of the Student Senate and student ambassador for the Graduate Admissions Office, working for BU Student Wellbeing, and completing her practicum with Fenway Health. 

On Saturday, she encouraged her classmates to acknowledge the people in their lives that supported their educational endeavors along the way. For Venugopal, much of this support came from her mother, a single parent who worked long hours and broke cultural norms to raise her daughters to be assertive and ambitious. 

“In a society that often told her what a woman shouldn’t do, she showed us everything a woman could do,” said Venugopal, who plans to pursue a career in cancer research. “Every sacrifice she made over the last 25 years was so that, one day, through her daughter, someone’s life might get just a little better. Her gift wasn’t just an education, it was a ripple effect—an invisible but unstoppable force that empowers me to advocate, intervene, and lead change far beyond myself.

“Because of her, I stand here today, not just with knowledge of what matters, but the strength to define what matters.”

She said the quiet progress and selfless service that embodies effective public health work are among the many things that make this field meaningful.

“When we do our jobs right, do you know what happens? Nothing happens. And that silence—that absence of crisis? That’s the sound of lives saved. So let’s go be the quiet heroes.”

In his address to graduates, alumni speaker and Distinguished Alumni Award recipient Gilbert L’Italien (SPH’97) urged graduates to listen to people’s lived experiences, invoking the famed quote by Elie Wiesel, “When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.” 

L’Italien, senior vice president for clinical outcomes assessments and health economics at the New Haven, Connecticut-based biopharmaceutical company Biohaven, completed the DSc in Epidemiology program (now the PhD in Epidemiology program) while also raising a family, caring for his aging parents, and working full-time as a junior Harvard University faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

His public health education led to a faculty appointment at Harvard and the role of vascular research director at MGH, before transitioning into the pharmaceutical industry, where he supported drug development at multiple pharmaceutical companies.

But his time as a hospice volunteer at a Connecticut nursing home has been one of the “most transformative experiences” of his life, where he bore witness to many patients-turned-friends and their stories—including one friend named Jean, who served in the Navy during WWII and later conducted naval research in the Mojave Desert, navigating gender barriers along the way. 

“She was my dear friend and I will never forget her,” L’Italien said. “She died at age 103, about two years ago. But I will serve as witness to her experiences for the rest of my life.”

He urged graduates to “love your science” and, to quote Dorothy Day, ‘add to the balance of love in the world.’” 

Craig Andrade, associate dean for practice, concluded the event with a nod to sentiments in the book A Path with Heart, in which author Jack Kornfield writes, “In the end these questions matter most, “Did I love well?” “Did I live fully?” “Did I learn to let go?”

“I return to Kornfield’s words as I work to stay grounded as people aim to control our bodies, diminish the impact of war, distort and outlaw the lessons of our culture and history, hide and harm the beauty of our colors and cultures, dismiss the abilities within our disabled, and fuel the fear in the brilliance of our queer, trans, and nonbinary nature,” Andrade said, before reminding graduates: “In a hard world, you are surrounded by greatness. When you need help, ask for it. And know we—your School of Public Health family—will always be here for you.”