Commencement is a time of great joy and celebration; bringing together graduating seniors, their families, school administrators and faculty, and of course alumni. On May 2, 2024 it was announced by the university that alumnus Marques Brownlee would be the Commencement Speaker for the Undergraduate Class of 2024. This announcement was greeted with excitement and enthusiasm by members of the graduating class with the general consensus being that it makes this year’s graduation ceremony extra special given that many of the current seniors did not have a graduation ceremony in high school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Brownlee has matched the school’s excitement in looking forward to the ceremony stating how much he is looking forward to addressing the Class of 2024 and seeing the many great things they will go on and do.
Brownlee is a Stevens alumnus graduating from the university in 2015 with a degree in Business and Technology from the Stevens’ School of Business which, at the time, was known as the Howe School of Technology Management. Since then he has had a career as both a YouTuber and a professional Ultimate Frisbee player. Brownlee, better known as MKBHD, first started his YouTube channel back in high school during 2008. Since then his brand has grown significantly, amassing over 20 million subscribers across all channels and a near total of 4 billion video views. In addition to his YouTube channel in which he conducts in-depth product reviews of different tech products, Brownlee is also the founder and co-host of the podcast Waveform (WVFRM). This platform shares with its listeners the latest trends of the technology sector and conducts interviews with industry leaders such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. Additionally, Brownlee has also gone pro as an Ultimate Frisbee player for the New York Empire in the Ultimate Frisbee Association.
During the Duck2Duck student-alumni panel discussion held in 2022, Brownlee shared his experiences at Stevens and how he managed being a college student while continuing to grow his online platform. He shared how once he found something he truly enjoyed, he just ran with it, stating, “being able to turn it [MKBHD] into a job when I graduated was perfect.” When it came to looking for colleges, he had several options but chose Stevens because of the unique combination of a technology-centric business education. Reminiscing on his time at Stevens, he shared how he lived in both Jonas and Humphreys Resident Halls, got pizza regularly from Grimaldi’s, and spent a lot of time on Palmer Lawn playing Ultimate Frisbee while also working hard in all of his classes to graduate.
Brownlee’s commitment to being involved in the Stevens community hasn’t stopped since his graduation. He was awarded the Stevens Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2018 and has been a member of the President’s Leadership Council. He will also be presented with an honorary Doctor of Business Administration degree at this year’s Commencement. When asked to share his thoughts on the Class of 2024, he shared, “One of my favorite hard-to-believe-but-true facts is that many of the students graduating from Stevens in 2024 will go on to have long and successful careers in fields that haven’t even been created yet and no matter what they go on to do, they’re now armed with the technical background and the problem solving skills required to pursue it at the highest level.”
