History-Making Class of 2025 Encouraged to Lean In to Humanity, Create Opportunity

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business celebrated its newest graduates on May 17, with 525 students being honored on Flagler Court.

The Class of 2025 is a historic one, as the group includes the first-ever cohort of Part-Time MBA students to graduate. Darden launched the flexible, part-time format of its MBA in 2021, with the first students joining in the 2022-23 academic year.

The graduating class includes 352 students in the Full-Time MBA program, 122 in the Executive MBA program and 51 Part-Time MBA students.

Welcoming graduates and gathered well-wishers on-Grounds and those watching virtually around the world, Darden Dean Scott Beardsley said the day had contradictory attributes, representing the conclusion of an intense academic journey, and the beginning of a new chapter in the lives of graduates.

The world the graduates enter is rife with contradictions — humans are more technologically connected than ever before, yet loneliness is an epidemic, for instance — and graduates’ ability to embrace the world’s many contradictory forces can help create “clarity and meaning” in a confusing world.

The Darden dean said students were graduating into a landscape upended by artificial intelligence, which he called the “the most profound contradiction shaping our time.”

While many look ahead to a world in which AI will remove the “burden” of work from humans, Beardsley said he believed such a goal was misguided.

“Work gives us purpose, growth and the chance to learn and help solve humanity’s greatest challenges,” Beardsley said. “AI won’t eliminate work — it will change it, faster than we expect, and in many instances for the good. The real challenge won’t be for AI, it will be for us, as humans, to adapt, and for you as leaders to help other people adapt to it, as well, and to help lead the change.”

Photo/Andrew Shurtleff Photography, LLC.

AI is inherently inhuman, Beardsley said, and Darden graduates retain the ability to lean into the attributes which algorithms and interconnected data centers have not yet mastered.

“As much as AI may try to put you in its box, you can always step outside,” he said.

Darden recently launched the LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business, an entity that seeks to ensure that the good of all stakeholders is factored into AI’s potential.

Beardsley further suggested graduates “hack” their way through the contradictory landscape by grounding themselves in the acronym REAL, which he explained as:

Relationships: Which relationships will I cultivate, and how?

Emotion: How can I leverage the gift of emotion to build meaning and connection?

Attention: Where and how will I direct my attention?

Liberty: How will I use my free will to build a meaningful life?

As students progress in their lives and careers, they may learn that authentic human relationships are the currency of real leadership in the age of AI, he said, and human attributes such as empathy, creativity and resilience will pave the way toward meaning and purpose.

“Hack life by leading with relationships, emotion, attention and liberty,” said Beardsley. “Class of 2025, Be REAL, and please accept my sincere congratulations.”

Student Speakers Discuss Strength in Community

Offering the first student address, inaugural Part-Time MBA elected class speaker Aman Dar (PTMBA ‘25) said the Part-Time MBA journey had been one of resilience, transformation and community, composed of a group that entered as strangers and became “family” by the second residency.

Photo/Andrew Shurtleff Photography, LLC.

“We built a community where support groups evolved from study groups, and late-night Zoom sessions became the foundation for lifelong friendships,” Dar said. “We owe deep gratitude to the Executive and Full-Time MBA students who welcomed us, mentored us, and reminded us that at Darden, we’re all one family.”

Dar said he looked out on a “community of leaders who recognize that business can be a force for good when driven by principle and purpose” and who had opted into a program that demanded much of them, yet made it through with a great deal of support.

“I see friends who will remain with each other as sounding boards and support systems for life,” Dar said, surveying the crowd. “We carry forward not only what we learned, but who we learned it with.”

Executive MBA elected speaker Jimmy Anthony (EMBA ‘25), who commuted to the program from Arkansas, spoke of the transformational nature of the program, saying he came to Darden never having traveled abroad, and two years later had studied in Germany, Finland, Estonia and Vietnam.

Photo/Andrew Shurtleff Photography, LLC.

“The transformative nature of my personal journey is a common theme across my classmates,” said Anthony.

The Executive MBA Class of 2025 is composed of people from different geographies, generations, backgrounds and languages, and represented a “world of perspectives,” Anthony said, yet still managed to form a strong classroom environment and a community of mutual support.

“In those classrooms I sat beside some of the most talented, brilliant people I’ve ever met. And yet still, we all had moments of doubt,” Anthony said. “But here’s the thing: we didn’t just belong in the room; we defined the room. We carried each other through those moments.”

Anthony encouraged his fellow graduates to carry gratitude and “the fabric of the community” as they go forth, creating opportunities for themselves and others.

Said Anthony, “Wherever your path leads you, always be the one who pulls up a chair for someone else.”

Full-Time MBA elected class speaker Betsy Brandon (MBA ’25) recounted her unique path to Darden, which included playing professional soccer after earning her undergraduate degree at UVA. The nontraditional career path sometimes made her feel like an imposter in the Darden classroom, but “the Darden community continually showed up for me,” she said.

Photo/Andrew Shurtleff Photography, LLC.

Brandon attributed Darden’s uniquely supportive environment to a cultivated combination of “grit and warmth,” where the high standards and demanding coursework were balanced and complemented by people — faculty, staff and fellow students — who were “friendly, caring and effortlessly kind.”

“The grit and the warmth of the people here at Darden highlighted something very powerful to me: How you show up to the environments you are in matters,” Brandon said. “Without good people, Darden would not be Darden, and life would be much less meaningful.”

Brandon encouraged peers to be someone who cares about people, invests in people, and shows up for people.

Class Looks Ahead to Career Opportunity

 Although the Class of 2025 is graduating against the backdrop of an unsettled economy, members of the Class will be starting their post-graduation careers at companies including Amazon, Bank of America, Bain & Co., Barclays, Boston Consulting Group, Corning, DaVita, Dell Technologies, Emerson, J.P. Morgan Chase, McKinsey, Microsoft, Santander CIB, UPS, Visa and more.

Organizations can connect with students still seeking positions through the Darden Career Link or by contacting the Armstrong Center for Alumni Career Services.