Renowned ballerina Misty Copeland will be the 2025 Senior Convocation Keynote Address Speaker, as announced by Cornell Student Activities, Cornell Convocation and Cornell Student & Campus Life in an Instagram post on Monday.
Each year, the student-led Senior Convocation Committee invites a guest speaker to impart advice to graduation seniors in a keynote address during the Senior Convocation event held during the Senior Days that lead into Commencement Weekend.
In addition to the guest speaker, the event includes performances from student organizations, a student speaker and comments from University leadership.
Past keynote speakers at Senior Convocation have included former President Bill Clinton in 2004 and science communicator Bill Nye ’77 in 2019. Copeland’s designation as 2025 Keynote Speaker succeeds 2024 Senior Convocation guest speaker oscar-nominated screenwriter Kumail Nanjiani, who spoke on the importance of showing kindness and humility.
In a comment to the Cornell Chronicle, chair of the Senior Convocation Committee Reagan Patterson ’25 detailed the rationale for choosing Copeland to deliver the keynote address.
“A lot of our classmates, when they told us what they wanted in a speaker, they wanted ‘values,’ they wanted ‘empathy.’ They wanted someone who was a trailblazer and someone who showed resilience, which I feel [Copeland] perfectly embodies.”
In 2015, Copeland became the first Black woman to reach the distinguished position of Principal Dancer with the American Ballet Theatre in the company’s 75-year history. Additionally, she rose to prominence as a dance prodigy after starting her ballet education at the age of 13 to winning first place at the Music Center Spotlight Awards at 15.
A year prior to her Principal Dancer designation, Copeland was appointed to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition under the Obama administration.
In 2022, Copeland founded the Misty Copeland Foundation to “bring greater diversity, equity, and inclusion to dance, especially ballet,” through an after-school dance education program BE BOLD.
Seniors, such as Joaquin Rivera ’25, expressed enthusiasm for Copeland’s awaited address regardless of their familiarity with her background.
“As someone who does theater on campus, and who attends many different artistic performances, I do think college should be a space where a student's interest in various kinds of visual arts is cultivated,” Rivera wrote to The Sun. “While it was cool to have a comedian/actor in each of those [last] 2 years, I think that having a female speaker with a new perspective would certainly be welcome!"
Copeland will be delivering her keynote speech during Senior Convocation from 1 to 2:30 p.m. on May 22 in Barton Hall.
