Student speaker Sujata Chandrashekhar Gaimar said Northeastern “empowered, motivated and sometimes pushed me to go beyond my fears.”
Sujata Chandrashekhar Gaimar took on multiple leadership roles while working on her second master’s degree, co-founding the Analytics for Good volunteer group and working as a global learner support ambassador on Northeastern’s Toronto campus.
But she considers herself an introvert.
“Northeastern changed that though,” Gaimar told graduates and gathered loved ones at the university’s 2025 Toronto convocation on Tuesday. “Not just through academics but through its people, who empowered, motivated and sometimes pushed me to go beyond my fears.”
Gaimar spoke on behalf of 919 recipients of master’s degrees. Northeastern, she said, offered the perfect graduate curriculum to add the skills she needed to develop equitable, evidence-based outcomes from clinical trials through data. She received a master’s degree in analytics, adding to her previous master’s in biotechnology.
“My journey indeed has been transformative,” she said, “and I’m certain that each of you has experienced growth that prepares you for your careers.”
Family members, friends and jubilant graduates filled Toronto’s Meridian Hall to celebrate the graduates. The Toronto campus conferred degrees from the colleges of engineering, science and professional studies. Eleven graduates were named to the Laurel and Scroll 100.
College of Professional Studies Dean Jared Auclair stepped to the podium and, with cheering students behind him, turned around and took a selfie.
“These moments only happen rarely in life and we’re usually too nervous to remember them,” he said. “Close your eyes and burn this into your memory.”
The Toronto convocation, an international celebration of lifelong learning, was one of several being held across the university’s global network of 13 campuses.
Vik Pant, chief data scientist and emerging technology leader at the Toronto-based business services firm PwC Canada, began his convocation speech with a provocative piece of advice: It’s better to be lucky than good — which he immediately qualified.
“This is not a dismissal of the value of effort or expertise,” he said, noting that his own path has been defined by rigorous learning and constant attention to detail.
But he has observed that the most transformative breakthroughs rarely unfold according to meticulous plans. “They emerge,” Pant said, “more often from serendipity.”
Pivotal moments in his career, he said, have often been the result of fortuitous meetings or spontaneous collaborations. While conducting doctoral research on the phenomenon of complementarity in multi-agent systems, he studied the dynamic interplay between different agents to collaborate on mutually beneficial outcomes.
His research demonstrated that agents with symbiotic strengths could collectively accomplish results that would be infeasible for any of them to achieve alone, he said.
“Time and again, my experience has shown that the most powerful innovations arise at these intersections where different perspectives and points of view converge,” he said.
He has seen the same pattern in industry and public service, he said, where the “most lasting solutions, the most valuable advances, are born not from siloed intelligence or solitary excellence but from proactive cooperation and dynamic collaboration often sparked by chance encounters and unlikely connections.”
His advice to the Class of 2025 was to prepare to recognize opportunities for serendipity when they arise.
“Your years at Northeastern have been an extended exercise in this very kind of preparation,” he said. “You have acquired not just technical expertise, but the ability to learn continuously, to navigate ambiguity and to collaborate across domains.”
Before concluding the ceremony, regional CEO and Toronto campus Dean Aliza Lakhani shared a final word of congratulations for the Class of 2025.
“You’ve made it,” she said. “Your brilliance, grit and courage have brought you to this defining moment. Today, you enter a world revolutionized by AI and emerging technologies. Your opportunity is unprecedented.”