[MARCHING BAND - music playing]
[music playing]
(CHEERING) U-- C--
L-- A. UCLA, fight,
fight, fight.
[music playing]
Before we start our
program tonight,
I want to take a few moments to
talk about the brutal killings
of unarmed African-Americans
that have occurred recently.
Like all of you, I'm horrified.
I'm horrified that this
keeps happening over and over
and over again.
And it really must stop.
I want to tell you that all of
us at UCLA Samueli, faculty,
staff and students condemn
these brutal killings.
And we stand in solidarity
with our black community.
But words are not enough.
Words are really not enough.
It is time to act.
And at Samueli,
we've got work to do.
We've got to look closely at
faculty and staff diversity.
We've got to look
at student success.
We've got to look at climate
issues, and so much else.
And I promise you
that we will do it.
It's not going to be easy.
It's going to take all
of us pulling together.
And it's going to take all of
us staying true to our core
Bruin values.
But if we do that, I
know that we can succeed.
Thank you.
Hello.
My name is Jared Rivera.
I am a civil engineering
and physics double major
and a proud member
of the class of 2020.
Today, as we gather virtually
from all around the world
to celebrate our graduation
from UCLA Samueli,
I have the privilege and the
honor of doing the land grant
acknowledgment on behalf of
the American Indian Science
and Engineering Society at UCLA.
The UCLA Samueli
School of Engineering
acknowledges the Gabrielino
and Tongva peoples
as the traditional
land caretakers
of the Tovaangar, which
is the Los Angeles basin
and southern Channel Islands.
As a land grant institution,
we pay our respects
to our ancestors, elders,
relatives and relations,
past, present and emerging.
As we move forward,
may all of us
continue to recognize the ways
in which UCLA and its graduates
may serve the indigenous
peoples of the Tovaangar.
Thank you.
Welcome, everyone.
Good afternoon, graduates
and honored guests.
Welcome to the 56th
Commencement of the UCLA Samueli
School of Engineering.
I'm TC Tsao, professor in
the Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering Department and
Chair of the Faculty Executive
Committee.
It's my privilege to serve as
Faculty Marshall for the 2020
Commencement.
This year, we are doing
things a little differently.
While we cannot gather
together at Pauley Pavilion,
were joined together nonetheless
virtually to celebrate
our graduates' accomplishments.
So first, a program note.
You can either watch
this entire program,
which includes degree conferral
by all of our departments
and the Masters of
Science Online Program,
with chapter
information to guide you
through different
parts of the ceremony.
Or if you prefer, you
can have the option
of clicking on one of the videos
listed on the commencement
page, which will direct you
to a shorter program that
only includes degree conferral
by an individual department.
Each video will
carry the beginning
and the end of the ceremony.
To officially kick
off today's ceremony,
I'd like to welcome our
national anthem singer, who is
an alumna, Karin Olga Sinavsky.
(SINGING) Oh, say can you see
by the dawn's early light,
what so proudly we hailed at
the twighlight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright
stars through the perilous
fight, o'er the
ramparts we watched
were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red flare,
the bombs bursting in air,
gave proof through the night
that our flag was still there.
Oh say, does that star-spangled
banner yet wave o'er
the land of the free and
the home of the brave?
Thank you, Karin.
And hello and welcome, everyone,
parents, family members
and friends.
Wherever you are, I'm so
happy you could join us.
Today is an extra special day
in the lives of our UCLA Samueli
graduates.
You passed all your exams.
You finish all your projects.
You've completed all
your course requirements.
And today, you've earned
an engineering degree
from one of the best
universities on the planet.
So congratulations.
I know how difficult these
last couple of months
have been for all of you.
COVID-19 has thrown
us all for a loop.
But it's especially affected
all of our students.
You've had to switch suddenly
to remote instruction.
You've had to take remote exams.
You've had to stay away from
campus, from the friends
that you love.
And worst of all, you've had to
leave campus without a chance
to say goodbye.
But I want you to know
I'm so proud that you
stepped up and met all
these challenges with poise,
with tenacity, with
ingenuity, with resilience.
And I know, at times,
it must have been hard.
It must have been demoralizing.
But I'll tell you what.
I think you've
shown everyone what
it means to be a
true Bruin and to be
a problem-solving engineer.
I want you all to give
yourself a round of applause
for not relenting in the face of
these extraordinary challenges,
for not giving up.
And I want you to know how
proud I am of every one of you.
And I know that your professors,
your family, your friends
all feel the same way.
And so here we are
today, joined in front
of our computers, our
phones, our tablets,
from all around
the world, to honor
our graduating class of 2020.
Please know we'll have an
on-campus celebration for you
in the future.
Because you deserve it.
You deserve a
chance to celebrate
with your friends and family
on our beautiful campus.
But for now, let's
join hands virtually
at this special moment, as
we honor you for everything
that you've accomplished
against extraordinary odds
to reach one of the most
important milestones
of your lives.
And now, I'm delighted to
introduce our 2020 commencement
speaker.
Jason Droege may be a
familiar face to many of you.
Last year, he joined us at our
Sugar Distinguished Speaker
Series program.
And we had such great
feedback from his talk,
that I wanted him to come back
and deliver our commencement
remarks to our class of 2020.
Jason has a wonderful
and inspirational story.
So he started his
career in a UCLA dorm
as a Computer Science
undergraduate.
And he co-founded
a music startup,
crawling the web
to find MP3 files.
He's had all kinds of
phenomenal successes.
And he's played leadership roles
in many global corporations.
Jason found his
entrepreneurial calling
in internet-based technologies.
And he's held executive
roles in e-commerce,
in enterprise software and
internet services companies.
He was a VP and head
of Uber Everything.
And in that role, he led the
global Uber Eats food delivery
division.
And he helped it grow into
the company's second largest
revenue source behind its
core ride hailing business.
So without further ado,
our commencement speaker,
Jason Droege.
Hello, UCLA Bruins.
I'm so excited to be
here with you today
on the day of your graduation.
I'm also excited to be
your commencement speaker.
So thank you to
Dean Murthy and UCLA
for inviting me to be your
commencement speaker today.
It's so exciting that all
of you are graduating.
What an accomplishment to get
an engineering degree from one
of the greatest schools on Earth.
So I'm here today to talk
to you about a few things.
One is knowing what
you want out of life
is probably the most important
thing that you can know.
So I'll talk a
little bit about that
and talk about how that
connects to my experiences
at UCLA as a former Bruin.
I went to UCLA in 1996,
which is 24 years ago now.
It seems like just yesterday.
It was an amazing
experience for me,
which is why I'm excited
to be with you here.
And I'm honored to
be able to do this.
The second thing that
I want to talk to you
about is this idea of no redos.
And there's a bunch
of sub-concepts
that I think are important.
And I've learned most of
what I've learned in my life
through entrepreneurship.
And I didn't always plan
on being entrepreneur.
It just sort of happened.
I initially wanted
to be a writer.
And so how did I end up
at an engineering school
if I wanted to be a writer?
Well, I went to UCLA
and not another school
because I actually thought that
the intersection of technology
and media was interesting.
I had learned about this
later in high school.
And I saw UCLA as a really
interesting place to do that.
And my first plan was to
actually go into film school,
mostly because I wanted to do
something creative, something
interesting, something
different than where I grew up,
which was the Bay Area.
And along the course
of that journey,
I discovered something amazing
about technology and amazing
about entrepreneurship,
which it could provide
that same level of
creativity, experimentation,
teamwork that I was seeking
in maybe the creative arts,
but at a different scale.
And that's the thing that's
great about engineering,
is you get to build and you get
to do things and build things
at scale.
Think about that
as you're going out
into your careers and your jobs.
The problems you get to solve
with knowledge that you have
is unprecedented.
The scale of problems
we have in the world,
the scale of challenges
that are in technology,
the scale of opportunities in
the internet and technology I
thought were big back in
the '90s, they're 10, 20,
100 times bigger now--
so an amazing time.
But in order to
capture it, in order
to capture the
opportunities, you
have to know what
you want out of life.
And so my journey from
wanting to be a writer
and going to film to being
an entrepreneur in technology
might seem different.
But the characteristics
of what they provided
me were what I wanted
out of life, which is I
wanted the ability to create.
I wanted the ability to explore
and the ability to discover.
In fact, we started a
business at UCLA, me
and five other computer
science students.
It was called Scour.
We started in the UCLA dorms.
It was an amazing time to
be starting a company back
in 1997.
It was the first
audio-video-image search engine
on the internet.
And we were able to
start it because UCLA
had invested so much in the
infrastructure for the network.
And UCLA being the first
node on the internet,
it's appropriate that this
would be a school that
had invested in all of this.
So we built this.
It got very, very popular.
And we scaled it.
And you can find anything.
We imagined a world where you
could find any movie or music
or photograph that
you could license,
except the market wasn't
ready for that yet.
So we had satisfied our need
to discover and explore.
But we were sort of
faced with realities
of the business along the way.
Now, it got very, very popular.
It was a very successful
service at the time.
But ultimately, we
were sued for all
of the things that happened
with file exchanges
back in the '90s
and early 2000s.
We were sued for $250 billion.
Now imagine that.
You're 20-21 years old.
You've built something
that's very popular.
You've innovated.
You feel creative.
You're very excited about it.
And then you
realize that there's
an entire industry against you.
And that led to the ultimate
business failure of Scour.
However, it led to a
huge amount of success
in our ability to learn about
business and our ability
to learn about ourselves, and
how each of us handled risk,
each of us made
decisions under pressure.
And those are
challenges, those are
things that you can learn once.
And then every time you relearn
it, you get better and better.
So I would encourage you, as
you look at what you want to do
and where you want to
go, don't underestimate
the power of knowing what
you want out of life.
It doesn't have to be a thing.
But it should be a set
of characteristics.
You want to be creative.
You want predictability.
Or you want to take risk.
Or you don't want risk.
For me, it was incredibly
positive to understand
what risk really meant,
what business meant,
what organizing
people really meant.
And it was because I knew I
wanted to explore and discover,
which led me to take the
risks that I took to learn.
And it actually led me on a
career of entrepreneurship
in the technology space that
I'm very, very proud of.
It's been quite successful--
not always successful.
Plenty of failures in there.
Getting sued for a
quarter trillion dollars
is not a success by any
stretch of the imagination.
But it was a huge learning
experience at a very young age.
So that's one thing.
The second is this
idea of no redos.
If you're like me, in
school, you had some redos.
And you had this concept that
if you didn't get a good grade,
you didn't do something right,
you could go and redo it.
And that's true in
the real world too.
Except there is this other
concept, which is time.
You only have so much time.
So make use of every bet
you make, everything you do.
Be mindful of the people
that you associate with.
They will inform your future.
Take your bet and go with it.
And just know that looking back
isn't going to do you any good.
All you can do is
learn from the past.
Starting five
different businesses
over the last 20 years, it's
how I got to where I am.
I helped build the
Uber Eats business.
I led the Uber Eats
business at Uber.
It's in 50 countries, 500
plus cities around the world.
It became very, very successful.
And a lot of it was
because of the lessons
that I learned very,
very early in life.
Because you can't
cram for your career.
And you can't cram
for your life.
And as the ultimate
crammer for finals
and the ultimate
crammer for tests,
I can tell you that you can't
do nothing for 10 years,
then cram for 10
years, and catch up
to the very best
people in the world.
Because they've been
working for those decades
to get better and
better and better.
Finally, I want to leave
you with a couple sayings
or phrases that I sort of tell
myself whenever I take risks
or whenever I advise
people of taking risks.
One thing about taking
risk is that it's--
well, it's risk.
Not everyone agrees that
it's going to be a good idea.
And you shouldn't ignore them.
But you should take into account
that everyone is figuring this
out, including
you, including me.
Synthesizing the
best of what people
have to say and offer
with your own viewpoint
is very important.
Because it will allow you to
have conviction and minimize
regrets.
And so I say, people say things.
If you worked with me in the
past, you would hear me say,
people say things.
And so just keep in
mind that there's
a lot of people who
want to inform and want
to act like their expert.
But no one really knows
the future, especially
in engineering, where
you can just build it.
The second piece of
advice that I have for you
is that the end
is never the end.
And I don't mean that to be
doom and gloom, even though I
know we're in a very hard time.
And I don't mean
it in that context.
What I mean is, when you
are doing hard things,
you will be faced
many, many times
with moments where your brain
is telling your body that you're
done or some form of that.
And you're not.
And all of the
successful people I
know, all of the people who
founded Scour at UCLA who
went on to start
other businesses,
they all experienced
the same thing,
which was moments where
they just weren't sure
if it was going to happen.
And the ones who succeeded are
the ones that pushed through.
So with that, I'll conclude
with a congratulations.
Hopefully, some of the
stories that I told
will be useful to
you in your career.
Hopefully, I get to meet
some of you going forward.
And again, thank you to UCLA and
Dean Murthy for the opportunity
to talk to you, however remote.
Stay safe.
Stay healthy.
And go Bruins.
Thank you, Jason, for
that uplifting speech.
I'm now proud to present our
student speaker, Imani Chantal
Elston, a bachelor's
degree candidate
from civil engineering.
If someone had told
me six months ago
that the world would be going
through a global pandemic,
that toilet paper would
become a hot commodity,
or that I would be speaking at
a virtual commencement ceremony,
I would have laughed
in disbelief.
If someone had told
me three weeks ago
that the tone of my
original commencement speech
would drastically change due
to the civil unrest we are
currently experiencing
in these United States,
I would have been in shock.
A multitude of injustices
have plagued our country
since its founding.
And the effects can be
felt now more than ever.
As an African-American
woman, the brutal killing
of unarmed black Americans
hits close to home.
And the ensuing protests
that have occurred
during an era of
COVID-19 have brought
this issue and many
others to the forefront
of all of our minds.
Right now, the world
is cracked open.
And at its core, it's crying
out for people to heal it.
Good afternoon to
the class of 2020,
esteemed faculty,
family, and friends.
Though I'm sure none of us had
envisioned anything like this,
it is our current reality.
And the past three months have
created challenges, obstacles
and learning curves that we
have all had to adjust to.
It is important
now more than ever
to come together and celebrate
the victories that are
happening amidst uncertainty.
So to all the graduates I say,
stand up and clap for yourself.
To graduate from any level of
college is an incredible feat.
But to graduate surrounded
by global turbulence
is all the more awe-inspiring.
The past few months
do not take away
from the years you have spent
at UCLA earning your degree.
And we must all be proud
to have made it to today.
My journey at UCLA
began eight years ago.
I was participating in
a pre-collegiate program
and spent five weeks of every
summer roaming through Boelter
Hall and engineering four.
Even at that age, I knew that
I wanted to make a difference
and impact the lives
of those around me.
But I wasn't quite sure how
I would get to that point.
It was during those summers
in the math, science,
and engineering design classes
that a light turned on,
illuminating engineering
as the way in which I
could make change.
In fact, I chose my major based
on one of our summer field
trips to a water
treatment plant,
when our tour guide excitedly
explained that it was engineers
who had calculated and designed
a sewer system of over 6,000
miles to service the millions
of people who live in
and visit Los Angeles.
I'm sure that some of you today
have similar stories to mine.
When I finally became
an engineering student,
I was thrilled to
be taking a step
down the path of learning how
to make change and improve
our society.
For many of us graduates, it
was while we sat in lectures
or studied with friends
that the light of interest
and engagement switched on.
The timing has been
different for us all.
And the topics or
activities that excite us
are numerous and
diverse, whether they
are related to our coursework
or extracurriculars.
Outside of class, I
spent my free time
tutoring and mentoring
underrepresented youth
from the local middle and high
schools in math and science.
I witnessed the effects
that that engagement had in
sparking a new light and
hunger for engineering
in the eyes of our
future generation.
Their enthusiasm
replenished my enthusiasm
when classes started
to get a little tough
and the quarter system made the
weeks pass by in an instant.
I think it is safe to
say that for most of us
at one point or
another, things got
difficult. That derivation
problem wasn't giving us
the answer we wanted.
Or we waited just
a little too long
to start working on a project.
But we persevered.
And in the end, we
were better for it.
We learned from our mistakes.
And it got us here today.
And now, we look
toward the future.
During our time at UCLA, we
weren't necessarily given
the answers to today's or
even tomorrow's problems.
Instead, we were given
the tools to solve them,
tools that came from both inside
and outside the classroom,
from conversations with
our peers and faculty,
from the late nights that
turned into early mornings,
and from our shared experiences
as UCLA engineering students.
The question remains.
And I pose it to you.
How will you utilize
the tools you now
have to turn these
dark times into light?
In an age when it is so easy to
focus on our individual goals
and pursuits, the
world is looking to us
and placing their
hopes in the dream
that we can come
together to make
an impact on this
global pandemic
and the many injustices we
are currently experiencing.
This is a defining moment,
not just for the world,
but for each and
every one of us.
As engineers, we
have a responsibility
to help solve problems
and effect change
in our communities.
For example, over the past few
months, the Makerspace at UCLA
has produced face shields
for healthcare workers.
Globally, we have seen
peaceful protests and actions
taken to begin to address
the disparities felt
by different communities.
Similarly, we, the
graduating class of 2020,
must be beacons of
light to help guide
our world through these
challenging times.
But just as we look
forward to resolving
the problems of
today, I urge you
to shine your light
on others, inspire
the generations of
tomorrow to be resilient,
and persevere amidst
ever-changing circumstances.
In the words of human rights
activist, Desmond Tutu,
"Do your little bit
of good where you are.
It's those little bits
of good put together
that overwhelm the world."
None of us could have imagined
that our special day would
look like this.
Despite everything,
we have made it
to today, which marks
the end of one journey
and the beginning of
the rest of our lives.
Everyone is watching us.
The pressure is on our
generation of scholars.
Now is the time for us to shine.
To the class of
2020, always remember
that we are brilliant,
resilient and an inspiration
to our communities.
Congratulations.
We did it.
Thank you, Imani,
for representing
UCLA Samueli's Class of 2020.
At this time, we are going
to recognize each of our 2020
graduates for the presentation
of the bachelor's degree,
master's degree and Ph.D.
We'll proceed alphabetically
by department,
before moving on to our
online master's program.
Again, you can follow
along here or click
on an individual
department's video
to watch the degree conferral
and the rest of the ceremony.
Congrats again.
Graduates, I know it is
disappointing to you, and same
to me, of having this
commencement virtually.
But imagine this situation
without the advancement
of science and engineering.
Graduating from
UCLA is a testament
that you acquired all the
foundations and the tools
to join all these engineers
that came before you.
It is my distinct pleasure to
present the largest graduating
group in engineering, the
Bachelor's, the Master's,
and the Ph.Ds in
Computer Science.
Class of 2020, welcome back.
I hope you've had
the opportunity
to enjoy this wonderful moment
with your department chair
and with your fellow graduates.
Now please take some
time after the ceremony
to enjoy all the
congratulatory video
clips from your fellow
Bruins, favorite professors
and Samueli alumni.
While they may not be sharing
this day with you in person,
I know how tremendously
proud they are of all
your great accomplishments.
Now, before I let you go off
and celebrate with your family
and friends, we have one
more tradition to honor.
And we're going to
do this together.
Now, I know you may not have
received your regalia yet.
But in the spirit of
celebrating this occasion,
get your favorite
Instagram or Facebook
Class of 2020 commencement
photo frame ready.
Don't forget to use
hashtags #EngineerTogether
and #UCLA2020.
Bachelor's degree
candidates, please
have your pretend
tassels ready to turn.
Master's and Ph.D.
recipients, please
have your imaginary
hoods ready to don.
May you remember this
day as a benchmark
of your great journey.
May you march forward with
fond memories of UCLA Samueli.
And may you always take
pride in your abilities
to engineer change
that will impact
many generations to come.
Now, by the power vested
in me by the regents
of the University
of California,
I am proud to announce to
the degree candidates
before us that
you have completed
all requirements for the degree
and are now UCLA graduates.
Congratulations, and Go Bruins!
Congratulations, and Go Bruins!
Hello, graduates of
the Class of 2020.
Hello, graduates of
the Class of 2020.
This is Henry Samueli,
namesake of the school
and also triple alumnus
of UCLA Engineering.
It's obviously very
unfortunate that you've
had to experience your
graduation virtually.
But hopefully, as this country's
next generation of innovators,
you can use your newly
acquired engineering skills
to truly make a
difference in the world
and develop the technology
to better enable us to deal
with such crises in the future.
Engineers are all
about problem solving,
and we sure have a big
one for you to go after.
Congratulations
again to all of you.
And welcome to the prestigious
club of being able to call
yourselves UCLA
Engineering alumni.
Go Bruins!
Go Bruins!
Congratulations, graduates.
Go Bruins!
You are a Bruin, you are ready.
Make us all proud.
Hi, this is Ron Sugar,
former Chairman and CEO
of Northrop Grumman Corporation
and a proud UCLA Engineering
alumnus from over 50 years ago.
Congratulations to you for
this momentous milestone
of personal achievement.
You are on your way
to an amazing future.
Good luck.
Congratulations.
Go Bruins!
Congratulations, UCLA
engineers of 2020.
Use what you have
learned at UCLA
and always think out of the
box, and you can defy all odds.
Stay healthy, stay positive.
Go Bruins!
Class of 2020, congratulations.
You have made it.
We are so proud of you.
All right,
congratulations, graduates.
What up, BE?
Hey, what's going on,
Bioengineering seniors?
Hey, what's going on,
Bioengineering seniors?
This pandemic has shown us
that we need bioengineers now
more than ever.
Go take on the world.
Congratulations.
I just wanted to give
a big congratulations
from our organization to the
graduating Class of 2020.
Thank you guys so much for all
you've done for our engineering
student orgs on campus.
We're going to miss
you guys so much.
We're AIChE, and we're so
proud of our graduating
Class from 2020.
Go Bruins!
Congrats to the
graduating Class of 2020.
Thank you for everything.
Go Bruins!
Go Bruins!
Go Bruins!
Woo-hoo!
Congratulations, everyone.
Thank you for taking
your time to help us--
--from our courses
and homework--
--to our Verilog and
Matlab projects--
--and making our
personal lives special.
We would like to
congratulate all
of the seniors who have
made us part of their lives
these past four years.
Congratulations to
the Class of 2020.
Woo-hoo!
Congrats.
Warmest congratulations
to the Class of 2020,
especially to those in
my CS133 in the winter
and to Dr. Choi from my lab.
Congratulations.
I'm super proud of
all of you, and I hope
I get to see you sometime soon.
Congratulations on finishing
at UCLA Engineering and I
wish you success in your careers.
A huge congratulations
to the Class of 2020.
We made it.
Life will always have prize
tickets, flaming Pop-Tarts
or toilet seats to motivate you.
But find your own inner Pop-Tart
and never stop learning.
Don't ever take a job that
you don't thoroughly enjoy.
They'll never pay you enough.
So congratulations,
you're in charge now.
Congratulations to all
the 2020 graduates.
We are so proud of you.
Please carry on
Your good work.
I wish you all the best
in your future endeavors.
Congratulations.
Congratulations, Class of 2020
from the Office of Academic
and Student Affairs.
[CHEERING]
Congratulations to
the Class of 2020.
So what's next?
So what's next?
