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Commencement is one of the most meaningful moments in the life of the Tepper School. It is a time to celebrate graduates, reflect on their journey, and look ahead to the impact they will make in the world.

Each ceremony represents a different path, yet all are grounded in the same foundation of purposeful thinking and meaningful impact. This year’s speakers reflect those values, bringing perspectives shaped by leadership, innovation, and a commitment to making a difference.

Explore the individuals who will join in celebrating the Class of 2026 and the perspectives they will share during this important milestone.

Ph.D. Diploma Ceremony Speaker:Ìý

Thomas J. Sargent
William Berkley Professor of Economics, New York University and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences | Honorary Doctor of Science and Technology

Thomas J. Sargent is the William Berkley Professor of Economics at New York University. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1968. His first academic appointment, in 1967, was as a Research Associate at Carnegie Institute of Technology—the institution now honoring him.

After two years of military service as an officer in the United States Army, he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and then the University of Minnesota, where he remained for 16 years. He subsequently held positions at the University of Chicago and Stanford University before arriving at NYU in 2002.

His research has focused on macroeconomics, monetary and fiscal policy, and the application of dynamic programming and statistical methods to economic problems. He has written on inflation, government debt, unemployment and uncertainty in economic models. Much of his work has been collaborative—long-running partnerships with Lars Peter Hansen, Lars Ljungqvist and George Hall, among others, have shaped his research over several decades. He is a co-founder of QuantEcon, an open-source project that provides computational tools and teaching materials in economics.

He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2011, he received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, shared with Christopher Sims.

He has supervised many doctoral students and has taught at universities for nearly sixty years. He returns to Carnegie Mellon with pleasure, having started his career there when the institution was still known as Carnegie Institute of Technology, and will receive an Honorary Doctorate when he is here for Commencement.

MBA Diploma Ceremony Speaker:

Lyenda Simpson Delp (MSIA 1997)
Head of the Global Insurance and Institutional Asset Solutions team at Franklin Templeton

Prior to joining Franklin Templeton, Lyenda was the head of the Global Institutional Client Group at Northern Trust, a group of 150 employees responsible for approximately $1.5 Trillion in client assets. Before that she spent 15 years at BlackRock, where she was instrumental in building the world’s largest third-party general account insurance team in the Financial Institutions Group (FIG) until September 2024. She was also a member of BlackRock’s Human Capital Committee and the Firm-wide Operating Risk and Controls Committee. Prior to BlackRock she spent almost nine years at Goldman Sachs in key roles, including the manager-of-managers (OCIO) team, and two years at Deloitte Consulting as a Management Consultant right after Business School.

Lyenda graduated ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ with a Master of Science (now MBA) degree. She previously earned a BS degree in Biochemistry and Chemistry, with honors from the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica.

She is involved with multiple non-profits and currently serves as the Chair of the Business Board of Advisors of the Tepper School of Business at ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿, the Secretary of the Board for the American Foundation for the University of the West Indies (AFUWI) which raises funds for scholarships, and on the Board of the Eshan Ullah Foundation which promotes safe swimming practices in open water.

Lyenda is married to her ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ classmate, W. Phil Delp, and they have three wonderful daughters, Willow, Wren and Whitney, and reside in New Jersey.

Masters Diploma Ceremony Speaker:

David Betts (MBA 2002)
Founder of Talk to Me, Goose!

Prior to his diagnosis with ALS, the neurodegenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, David had an almost 22-year career at Deloitte Consulting as a Principal where he served as a leader in both the commercial and public sector health care practices. His research and client work focused on how to create a more human-centric health care ecosystem. Throughout his career, his work was motivated by a desire to make access to care easier and the experience of care better for the people who needed it, and he worked with his clients to transform their organizations accordingly. Immediately prior to his retirement he was responsible for building a new practice in Public Health Transformation serving the state, local and higher education market, growing that business to a team of 400 people before having to step away from the business in early 2025.

He is a noted author and speaker having been published by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, in the Wall Street Journal, in Modern Health Care, Health Services Research and many other outlets on the topics of health care consumerism, health care experience, and the Future of Health.

After his diagnosis, David developed Talk to Me, Goose!, an innovative AI-enabled text-to-speech solution for people with speech-limiting conditions that reconnects people who have lost the ability to speak with a clone of their own voice, it reconnects them with their loved ones and reconnects with them with an ability to tell their own stories.

Talk to Me, Goose! is available for free to people living with ALS in the United States and Canada through a unique partnership with the Live Like Lou Foundation. David and his wife have founded a new company called Storyflight Labs, a public benefit corporation and have also launched the story-telling ecosystem known as Fable’s Adventures as a story-telling platform to fuel the company’s ability to make Talk to Me, Goose! available to people around the world who need it for low or no cost.

David is a 2002 graduate of the Tepper School of Business, holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from the University of California at Riverside.

Undergraduate Diploma Ceremony Speaker:

Zining Chen (BA 2026)

Zining Chen will graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Mathematics, with an additional major in Statistics. Originally from Chengdu, China, she has distinguished herself as both a scholar and a leader within the Tepper School community.

Zining served as President of Smart Women Securities and held leadership roles with the Tartan Student Fund and Students Using Data Science for Social Good, where she helped foster collaboration, mentorship, and data-driven impact among her peers.

Her professional experience includes internships with Hartford Funds Management and Barclays. Following graduation, she will return to Barclays as a full-time Markets Analyst.