Bravery Over Brilliance

My Commencement Speech for the Class of 2026

As you all know, commencement season is my favorite time of year. I love the feeling of being surrounded by people who are about to go build the future, and I especially love it when I have the opportunity to share some wisdom with them.

For those graduating in 2026, though, the future may not feel as hopeful as I would like for them. DEI is being dismantled. Rights are being rolled back. AI is quickly rewriting how we work and live. And the people calling the shots about, well, almost everything are five billionaires who have a track record of choosing profits over people. I wish I could say we are rising to meet the moment, but I’m not sure that we are. Not yet. I think graduates would agree with me on that. And I have a theory about why.

So when Olin College of Engineering asked me to be their speaker, I knew I had to say yes. I also knew that I had to tell the graduates the hard truth: right now, we need their bravery more than we need their brilliance.

I may have been speaking to engineers, but my words are for everyone at this moment.

I hope you’ll take a minute to read my speech or watch it below. Then go build something wonderful, something that makes us more free, not less.

Bravery Over Brillance
Reshma Saujani

Thank you, President Lee, deans, faculty, distinguished guests, family and friends, and most importantly, the graduating Class of 2026.

Let’s start with the most important part: Congratulations! I know there were many late nights and early mornings where you thought you actually weren’t going to make it to today. But you did, in spite of it all, you’re here!

Commencement ceremonies can be an endurance sport, so, I’m going to cut to the chase. And instead of a safe speech that leaves you feeling good, I’m going to give you real-talk that will make you want to be brave. Because you didn’t come to Olin to play things safe.

So let me tell you a little about who I am and how I got here, because it matters for what I’m about to say.

I’m the daughter of immigrants. My parents were political refugees, forced out of Uganda in the 1970s when dictator Idi Amin came on television and announced that all Asians had to leave. Immediately.

They applied for refugee status everywhere they could. Denied, denied, denied. Except for one country: the United States.

They arrived with almost nothing. My mother had hidden her wedding jewelry in toothpaste tubes to get it past the checkpoints. They landed in Chicago in shorts and t-shirts, in the middle of winter. But they found their way. My father, an engineer back in Uganda, was told to lose the accent, lose the name. Mukund became Mike. Mrudula became Meena.

And then, for some reason, they named me Reshma.

Growing up, all I wanted was to fit in. To not wince during roll call. To find my name on a keychain at the Kmart kiosk. Rebecca, Regina, Rachel, Rachel spelled another way. No Reshma. Not anywhere.

I spent years chasing that feeling of belonging through perfection instead. Perfect grades. Perfect credentials. I got into Yale Law. I took a job at a white shoe law firm on Wall Street. I had the resume…the fancy suit…the briefcase.

And I also had the student loans...the 3am anxiety…the Sunday Scaries.

I was miserable.

I realized that all those years of chasing the perfect credential, that wasn’t aiming high. That was aiming low. I had never once been brave.

So I quit. I walked away from the salary, the firm, the business cards that made my parents proud, and I ran for Congress in a district where nobody knew my name and most couldn’t pronounce it.

I lost. Spectacularly.

But losing put me in rooms I never would have entered if I’d played it safe. I walked into a computer science classroom during my campaign: wall to wall boys. Not a single girl. I know this feeling, I thought. I know what it is to not exist in a room.

So I started Girls Who Code, without permission and without a perfect plan. Just a borrowed office and twenty girls from New York City. My friends thought I had lost my mind. Fourteen years later, we’ve taught over 860,000 girls to code.

And then I did it again. I started Moms First to fight for childcare, paid leave and for America’s moms the country was leaving behind. And immediately people who thought they were being helpful told me “stay in your lane, Reshma.” But I had learned something: “stay in your lane” is just what people say when your bravery makes them uncomfortable.

Every decision that actually changed my life — quitting the firm, running for office, starting Girls Who Code, starting Moms First — every single one was a choice to be brave instead of perfect. A choice that is now more important than ever.

We are living through a moment that is actively, deliberately trying to make people smaller. More compliant. Insignificant. DEI is being dismantled. We’re being divided into digital echo chambers where we can’t see or hear one another. And, institutions that took decades to build are kneeling, one by one, because it’s easier than standing up.

The world is not short on intelligence right now. It is short on courage.

And that shortage has consequences. Real ones. The tools being built right now — the AI systems, the algorithms, the predictive models, the platforms — will shape the next fifty years.

The decisions being made in those rooms are not just technical decisions. They are moral ones. And moral decisions demand courage , not credentials and not cleverness. Courage.

Bravery is not a soft skill. For engineers, it is the skill. The one the rest of us are depending on. It’s also the skill that we are never trained on.

So what does it actually take? What does courage actually feel like when it’s required of you? My graduation gift to you all is telling you the dirty little secret about what bravery feels like, because I think we get it wrong.

We picture a rallying cry. A rousing speech. A slow-motion walk away from the fiery explosion… you’re wearing sunglasses and carrying a puppy or a baby. We talk about courage like it should feel powerful. Cinematic.

That is a life fed to us by Hollywood. You are not Tom Cruise.

Real courage feels like rejection. Like isolation. Like, what did I just do? And who do I think I am?

You say the hard thing. You take the risky leap. You make the decision no one else wants to make, and then you wait. Alone. Wondering if you just blew up your life.

There’s a rush of adrenaline, and then a crash. Your chest tightens. Your jaw locks. You feel sick. And then there’s the silence. Usually there’s no one applauding you. Sometimes there’s side-eye. Or worse: backlash.

No one tells you that when you act from your values, when you choose what’s right instead of what’s easy, you might feel like you’re being punished for it.

You’ll doubt yourself. You’ll want to retreat, to explain, to soften the blow.

But that’s what makes you brave: doing it anyway.

Now I want to make that concrete. Because for you — engineers, builders, the people who will be in the rooms where things get made — bravery is going to look very specific.

Picture the meeting. Six months from now, a year from now. You’re new and junior. You’re still reading the room, figuring out the culture, learning who the players are. And someone asks you to build something. Maybe it’s an algorithm. Maybe it’s a system that sounds neutral on its face. But you look at the training data and you see the problem. You look at the use case and you see who gets flagged, who gets excluded, who gets hurt. A tool that denies loans in certain zip codes. A content recommendation engine optimized for engagement, and you know what maximizing engagement actually does to people.

You feel the chest tightening. The jaw locking. The voice that says: it’s not my call. I’m too new. I’ll say something later.

I want you to recognize that feeling, and I want you to listen carefully to what I say next: That is not a sign that you’re wrong. That is bravery asking something of you.

Now, I want you to think about the engineers who didn’t answer.

The engineers who learned that outrage drives clicks, and clicks drive revenue, and kept optimizing the algorithms anyway. The data scientists who knew the models were biased and shipped them anyway. The teams who built the surveillance tools, the engagement traps, the systems that sorted and excluded… and stayed quiet because the meeting had already moved on.

Now, those folks aren’t inherently bad people. Maybe they were scared. Maybe they were junior, too. They told themselves the same thing: it’s not my call. I’ll fix it from the inside. I’ll say something when the time is right.

But, the code ran. The product shipped. And we all pay the price.

I’m not telling you that story to scare you. I’m telling you because you are about to walk into those same rooms. But now you have something those engineers needed but didn’t have: you’ve just learned how uncomfortable bravery feels like.

So use that knowledge.

You didn’t come to Olin to be a cog. Olin doesn’t train cogs.

You were trained to question the frame. To redesign systems and find better solutions, for the good of the world. You have spent four years learning that the most interesting problem is never the problem you were handed, it’s the problem underneath it.

Use that same instinct on the systems you’re asked to build.

Ask: who does this hurt?
Ask: What happens to real people if I stay quiet in this meeting?

And build your bravery muscle. Because that’s exactly what it is: a muscle. Muscles need repetition to grow. A muscle has to tear in order to grow bigger, I’m not making this up. The first time you push back in a meeting, it will feel terrible. The second time, slightly less so. The tenth time, it will start to feel like you.

Small braveries compound. The engineer who flags the bias in the training data; the team lead who says we need more time to get this right; the junior developer who escalates a concern and refuses to let it disappear into the next sprint… Those are the small acts of bravery that change what gets built. Those are the acts that change what the world runs on.

I spent years chasing the perfect credential instead of doing the brave thing. Waiting until I was ready. Waiting until the conditions were right. I don’t want that for you. You don’t have years to waste… and frankly, neither do we.

The world will give you every reason to stay quiet. Job security. Team harmony. It’s above my pay grade. Someone else will flag it. It’s not that bad.

But you will know. And knowing and staying silent is its own kind of decision and its own punishment.

You are brilliant engineers. But here’s the hard truth: right now, we need your bravery more than we need your brilliance.

So here is what I am asking of you, Class of 2026.

Build things that make people more free, not less.

Be the engineer who asks “who does this hurt”, not just “who stands to gain?”

The only thing standing between a better world and a broken one is whether you choose courage over comfort.

Be brave. It’s the only thing that matters right now.

Congratulations. Go build something wonderful.

---

While you’re here…

You’re Invited: National Watch Party for No Country for Mothers
June 17 | 7-8:30 PM ET

Join us for a special virtual national watch party of No Country for Mothers, our powerful new documentary exploring the culture wars surrounding American motherhood and the growing movement fighting for the support families deserve.

More than a film screening, this party is a chance for mothers, caregivers, and allies across the country to gather together for an evening of connection, conversation, and community as we officially kick off the American Motherhood Tour.

So grab your friends, wear your comfy clothes, settle in for the evening, and join us for a national moms night in.

Together, we’re building something bigger and we can’t wait to watch with you.

---

In case you missed it…

Thank you so much to Julia Boorstin for having me on the CNBC Changemakers and Power Players to talk about our upcoming documentary, motherhood in America, women helping women, AI, and more.

You can listen to our conversation wherever you get your podcasts, or watch online.