Speakers announced for 2026 undergraduate and graduate Commencement ceremonies

McDaniel College announces Commencement speakers for both the undergraduate and graduate ceremonies to be held Saturday, May 23.

Undergraduate Commencement speaker is Robert Pick ’92, P’25, current member of the McDaniel College Board of Trustees and executive vice president and chief information officer for Tokio Marine North America. 

Pick graduated summa cum laude from the college in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree in History and Political Science. He then went on to earn a master’s degree in Historic Preservation Planning from Cornell University and completed an additional two years of doctoral coursework and reading.

Before joining Tokio Marine in 2014, Pick worked for 16 years in major media and telecommunications, including more than a decade at publisher Conde Nast and five years at PricewaterhouseCoopers. In addition to leading the team providing full-suite digital and technology services for Tokio Marine North America, he is the global deputy chief information officer for Tokio Marine Group, one of the largest insurance companies globally with businesses in 57 countries and $50 billion in annual revenue. For Tokio Marine North America, he also oversees a global team of more than 1,100 technologists for Philadelphia Insurance, Tokio Marine America, First Insurance Company of Hawai’i, and Tokio Marine Global Services, and also supports Tokio Marine Mexico. He is an author and regularly speaks at conferences and on podcasts about topics ranging from insurtech and insurance trends to legacy modernization, cybersecurity, and generative artificial intelligence. His daughter, Reagan, is a 2025 graduate of McDaniel, and Pick and his wife, Heather, recently donated to establish the new STEM Center in the Learning Commons @ Hoover Library. 

Ochieng’ K’Olewe, the L. Stanley Bowlsbey Endowed Chair at McDaniel College, provides remarks during the graduate ceremony. K’Olewe has served as coordinator for elementary and secondary certification for the M.S. in Teaching program, formerly Better Educators for Teachers of Tomorrow (BEST), and has supervised teaching candidate interns. He currently advises undergraduate secondary education minors in addition to teaching in both the undergraduate department and graduate program.

K’Olewe taught social studies in public schools in Illinois, Maryland, and West Virginia before coming to McDaniel in 1997 to teach in the Education department. He grew up in Kenya and took an alternative path to higher education by traveling to the United States to study at Iowa State University, where he earned undergraduate degrees in Economics and Business Administration. He then went on to obtain a master’s degree in Secondary Education-Social Studies from Northern Illinois University and Doctor of Education in Curriculum and Instruction from West Virginia University. His experiences have shaped his passion for giving back to his hometown village of Kopudo in Kisumu County, Kenya, by renovating a primary school building, helping to establish an all-girls high school, and supporting scholarships for students.

The college’s 156th undergraduate and graduate Commencement ceremonies take place in Gill Center. The graduate ceremony is set for 10 a.m., while the undergraduate ceremony is at 2 p.m.

Live video streams of both ceremonies will be available on Commencement day by visiting the Commencement webpage.