Penn Arts & Sciences Announces 2022 College Graduation Speakers
Amna Nawaz, C’01, Chief Correspondent and Primary Substitute Anchor for PBS NewsHour, and Oliver Kaplan, C’22, will speak at this year’s graduation ceremony for the University of Pennsylvania College of Arts & Sciences. The event will take place on Sunday, May 15, at 6:30 p.m. on Franklin Field.
As a journalist, Amna Nawaz has reported on politics, foreign affairs, immigration, education, climate change, culture, and sports, and interviewed international newsmakers and influential voices. During her career, she has covered the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. As NBC’s Islamabad Bureau Chief and Correspondent, she reported on the Taliban attack on Malala Yousafzai and the U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. In 2019, her reporting as part of a NewsHour series on the global plastic problem was the recipient of a Peabody Award. She has also been honored with an Emmy Award and a Society for Features Journalism Award. While at Penn, Nawaz captained the varsity field hockey team, and later earned her master's degree from the London School of Economics.
Oliver Kaplan is a philosophy major from Los Angeles. He transferred to Penn from Bates College after his freshman year and is graduating in three years. On-campus, he led the Queer Student Alliance; served on the boards of the United Minorities Council, the Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Fraternity, and Penn for Biden; and was a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board in the College. Outside of school, Kaplan’s work primarily concerns educational policy and the detrimental effects of outings in school settings. Next year, Oliver will be working on Capitol Hill as a legislative correspondent in the U.S. Senate.
