Wake Forest sent the Class of 2026 into its next chapter with a unified challenge: To cultivate the same sense of belonging they felt here as they become leaders in the world.
Joseph Vargas (’26) grew up in Winston-Salem and had 14 family members attending Commencement on May 18 in Hearn Plaza. He spent his time during the line-up before the ceremony reflecting on “all the people that I’ve met — my friends,” he said. “And my family — all the people it took for me to get here. I didn’t do it alone.”
President Susan R. Wente encouraged the graduates to take care of “the most enduring part of your time at Wake Forest, … the relationships you have formed here. The friendships, the mentors, the people who have challenged and supported you most. These connections become foundational for the rest of your life, and these relationships will shape your life in ways that you may not yet see, sustaining you as you step into what’s next.
“You are leaving with the capacity and the responsibility to make a difference, to be catalysts for good, to confront injustice when you encounter it, to embrace the full breadth of our shared humanity and to use what you have learned not only to advance your own success, but in service to others as a commitment to Pro Humanitate.”
In difficult moments, she continued, “go back to those relationships, and let your confidence shine from within and from what has been learned and formed here.”
Commencement speaker Misty Copeland, a ballet dancer, author and philanthropist who made history as the first Black woman to become principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre in New York, observed that “leadership is often talked about through achievements and milestones. But I think its deepest impact is measured in the spaces we create for other people to grow, to question, to become and to belong.”
Although her accomplishments are often heralded as groundbreaking firsts, “it rarely feels historic in the moment,” Copeland said. “Mostly it feels uncertain. It feels like showing up every day, wondering if you are enough, wondering if you belong, wondering whether there is room for you in a space that was not built with you in mind.”
She described her childhood as one of six children living in a motel room while her mother “was doing her best and everything she could to just hold our family together.” Copeland credits one teacher, Cynthia Bradley, who looked for children in communities lacking exposure to ballet — and found Copeland.
“I often think about how easily that moment could have not happened,” she said. “What if someone hadn’t believed kids like me deserved access to the arts? There are so many talented people in this world who never get the chance to discover who they are because the door never opens, and that’s why access matters so deeply to me, not as an abstract idea, but as a human one. That is part of what Pro Humanitate means to me: Using your gifts not only to advance yourself, but to widen the path for others.”
Copeland also noted that when she entered the ballet world at age 13, “my body was different, my background was different, my skin color was different. … But eventually I realized that my difference was not the obstacle. Pretending not to be different was,” she said. “You will enter rooms where you feel underestimated or pressured to conform. You may feel tempted to edit yourself in order to make other people comfortable, but the world does not need more people performing perfection. It needs people willing to live truthfully, and living truthfully does not mean you never evolve or grow. It means you stop abandoning yourself in order to belong.”
“When people are grounded in who they are, they become more capable of empathy, more capable of courage, more capable of creating space where other people can breathe. And that is what the world desperately needs. Not perfect people or fearless people who always know exactly what they’re doing. It needs people willing to stay human, people willing to care, people willing to imagine more for one another.”
Wente received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree, Copeland received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree and the Baccalaureate speaker, the Rev. Eugene Cho, received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. Recipients of honorary degrees at earlier ceremonies were Marybeth Torbet Hays (’90, MBA ’94), University Trustee, corporate board director and former Walmart EVP, a Doctor of Business Administration; and Dr. Julie Freischlag, who retired last year as CEO and chief academic officer of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist, chief academic officer and executive vice president of Advocate Health, and executive vice president of health affairs at Wake Forest, a Doctor of Science.
Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World, a nationwide Christian advocacy organization working to end hunger, challenged graduates at the May 17 Baccalaureate service to focus not merely on what they will do, but also on who they are becoming, even as they enter adulthood “at a moment marked by profound challenges and exhaustion in our world,” including wars, polarization, economic anxiety, institutional distrust and artificial intelligence.
Cho issued three exhortations to the graduates: First, “to remember that you did not arrive here alone,” and that someone “absorbed burdens so that you could move more freely through this world. Someone believed your future was worth investing in.” He also called on them to “refuse the dehumanization of others,” and to “choose presence over performance” in a world saturated by the latter.
Nine graduating ROTC cadets marched onstage and were sworn in as second lieutenants in the Army, receiving a standing ovation.
Student Government President Amaya Williams (’26) said she’s emerging from Wake Forest understanding how the last four years changed her path from law to medicine.
“Maybe that’s what these four years were truly about, not arriving as the people we thought we were supposed to be when we were 18 years old,” she continued, “but leaving here more open, more aware, more compassionate, more empathetic and more willing to keep becoming.”
