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At CIIS' 58th Commencement, 267 graduates from a class of 639 crossed the Herbst Theater stage in celebration, ceremony and community.
CIIS' 58th Commencement was a moment of blessing for a community still doing the deep work of learning, building kinship, and integrating new ways of knowing. Together with their loved ones, the Class of 2026 gathered in community with CIIS faculty, trustees, and staff to pause and honor its profound achievements before setting off on the next part of their journeys.
Check back in June for the Full Collection of the 2026 Commencement Photos
The ceremony was opened by Suma Shetty, Ph.D. '26, a graduating Transformative Studies doctoral candidate whose dissertation traces resilience through fairy tales and myths. Standing before her class, she said she was struck by "the profound geometry of this moment," the recognition that the road to the stage had been not a straight line for any of them but "a series of expanding circles," much like the Sri Yantra that has long served as CIIS' own seal.
Shetty had come to CIIS in search of a place where "the 'how' of the West could finally dance with the 'why' of the East." In the Sri Yantra's nine interlocking triangles blooming outward from a single point, she saw "the perfect map of integral education," the symbol of a University and a curriculum that united and transcended the the East and the West, as well as the intellect, the body, the spirit, and the soul.
In an age of artificial intelligence, she said, the symbol carries a new urgency. Where AI seeks to know through the horizontal accumulation of data, the Yantra teaches a vertical deepening: "human knowing is not merely the calculation of patterns, but the realization of the patternmaker." She closed by calling the graduates to lead "guided by the Sri Yantra's protection" to help heal "a world that is fast, fractured, and automated, into a consciously evolved future, fueled by intuition and presence."
President S. Brock Blomberg opened by naming that the Class of 2026 had learned to lead, to change, and to heal. Now they faced their biggest challenge: learning to let go. “Integral is not about doing everything. It’s about bringing your whole self to what matters most,” he told the crowd, exhorting them to each find what matters most to them and to give themselves over to it without trying to control the outcome. That, he reminded them, was where the real transformation is possible. And transformation, after all, is what CIIS graduates do best.
Delivering the commencement address was Meihong Xu, a CIIS alum, former Silicon Valley executive, and current member of the Board of Trustees who brought the long view to the podium. Having lived, as she described it, several seemingly disconnected lives, she offered the graduates a framework for making sense of a winding path.
"Growth is a spiral," Xu said. "We often return to the same questions, but each time, we have a bigger heart to hold the answers."
At the heart of her address was a classical Chinese parable about an old farmer whose fortunes kept reversing in ways no one could predict: a runaway horse that returns with a wild stallion, a son's broken leg that ends up sparing him from war. At every turn, while neighbors rushed to call each event a blessing or a tragedy, the farmer asked only: Is that so?
"Fortune and misfortune are intertwined," Xu said. "What matters isn't the event itself, but our ability to meet change with radical acceptance."
Student speaker Hadyatou Diallo — Ph.D. in Human Sexuality candidate, first-generation American from Guinea, combat veteran, military spouse, and mother — spoke about the cost of carrying so many roles at once, and the question she returned to in the quiet moments.
"There were moments in this journey where I did not recognize my own life," Diallo said. "Moments where I had to ask myself: Who am I when I am not performing? And who am I allowed to become if I stop shrinking?"
Her invitation to her classmates: "You do not have to become someone else to do meaningful work in this world. Let your presence change the rooms you enter."
Before the degrees were conferred, the ceremony paused to honor three retiring faculty members elevated to professor emeriti. Renée Emunah, founder of CIIS' Drama Therapy Program — which has graduated more than 600 students — was celebrated for teaching so committed to embodied learning that, during the pandemic, she held class in Golden Gate Park rather than go fully online. Don Hanlon Johnson founded the nation's first graduate program in Somatic Psychology at CIIS in 1983, built on the proposition that the body is not a problem to solve but a way of knowing. And Meg Jordan, founder of the Integrative Health Studies Program, leaves behind decades of mentorship and a field she helped define.
The afternoon also conferred honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees on Betsy Gordon, philanthropist and CIIS Trustee whose support has advanced psychedelic research, contemplative practice, and global women's empowerment; and Shirley Strong, educator and former chief diversity officer whose 50-year career has been devoted to building what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called Beloved Community.
Between the keynote and the conferral of degrees, the hall fell quiet for "Chalice," an original composition by Willow Pearson Trimbach, performed alongside Associate Professor Sangeeta Swamy and Vicki Lee Trimbach.
The ceremony closed with Shaun Roberts, CIIS Director of Annual Giving, inviting graduates to move their tassels from right to left and offering them something to carry out the door: "The world does not need more noise. It needs more people who can remain fully human in a time that constantly asks them to become something less."
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