Commencement 2025 speakers prepare messages about community, gratitude and hope

UC Berkeley Journalism’s 2025 Commencement ceremonies feature a keynote talk by Detroit local media pioneer Candice Fortman as well as students and faculty selected by the graduating class on Saturday, May 17, in the North Gate Hall courtyard.

Candice Fortman

Fortman is the founding executive director of Outlier Media in Detroit, a news organization that has reshaped how local journalism can engage with its community — a key area of concern for the nation given the rise in news deserts across the country, distrust of the media and increased political polarization nationwide.

“My deep hope is that we can build a journalism that does work better for more people,” Fortman said.

Fortman serves on the board of Cityside, which operates Berkeleyside, Oaklandside, and Richmondside, and she is currently a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

Faculty speakers will include David Barstow, professor and chair of the Investigative Reporting Program, and Christine Schiavo, a lecturer and editor of the school’s local news sites. Student speakers selected by their peers include Cecil Egbele, Hussain Khan and Choekyi Lhamo.

Graduation speakers Choekyi Lhamo, Cecil Egbele and Hussain Khan

Egbele, a former TV broadcaster with Nigeria’s national television (NTA) who is in the documentary film track, said she’s excited to speak at graduation because, she says, “Berkeley has been a life dream come true for me and that the class has given me trust and confidence to do this…It’s a big deal to me.”

Khan, an audio student from Canada, said he had a tumultuous undergraduate experience and that it means a lot to be “graduating from the best public university in America and one of the best journalism schools.”

“I want to thank and acknowledge the mentors here and my family who have been through a lot to support me through that dream and especially to honor all of my friends, the students who have gone through a lot and gone through personal difficulties and still created amazing work and to let them know I see them,” Khan said.

Lhamo is a third-generation Tibetan refugee born and raised in India, who specialized in long-form and investigative reporting at Berkeley Journalism. She’s a former reporter at Phayul, a leading English news website reporting on Tibet.

“I am honored and proud to represent my fellow classmates at the graduation,” Lhamo said. “This is an incredible opportunity to share my journey with my peers and their loved ones. Every time I think about journalism as a core of storytelling, my thoughts go back to what my family sacrificed for me to be here. As a granddaughter of displaced people who made a family in exile, I would shed light on how that unique experience has given me courage and how that journey surprisingly also speaks to the noble pursuit of journalism.”