The Class of 2026 and their loved ones gathered at the Mountain Winery on May 21 for the 2026 graduation exercises, where the seniors reflected on their journeys at Harker before formally becoming graduates.
After the graduates-to-be had completed the procession to their seats, 2026 Graduation Chorus performed their rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and upper division head welcomed the audience before introducing the 2026 Senior Mission Award winner, Elie Ahluwalia.
Ahluwalia’s speech focused on the love and appreciation of the things that made her and each of her classmates unique and interesting, which she termed the “sparkle.” In anecdote about being shushed after laughing too loudly in a summer class, “My friend looked at me and said, ‘Why would you stop laughing? Don’t let anyone dull your sparkle,’” she recalled. She first round the idea “cheesy,” she admitted, but later in life saw its value. “Sometimes, others see our light long before we learn to see it in ourselves,” she said, recounting some of the moments throughout her time at Harker that she and her classmates demonstrated that sparkle.
“We sparkled the first time we played volleyball outdoors, and when our robotics team won both off-season competitions for the first time in teen history. We Sparkled when four of us stayed up late doing physics and ended up third in the country,” she said.
She asked her fellow graduates never to lose sight of that sparkle, particularly when faced with the many challenges they will encounter beyond high school. “When we were younger before everything got competitive and busy, caring about each other came naturally,” she said. “That is something worth protecting. Take care of the messy challenges of our world. Speak up when something feels wrong and build things that help the people who made you sparkle.”
After the applause subsided, the Graduation Chorus performed Zachary Moore’s “Always Keep this Close,” with accompaniment from Ishan Mysore ’26. Assistant head of school Jennifer Gargano then introduced 2026 keynote speaker Humsa Venkatesh ’04, assistant professor of neurology at Harvard University, whose work is leading to the development of technology to better understand the growth of brain tumors.
Venkatesh fondly recalled Harker as the place where she discovered her love of the sciences, and “started asking the questions that would shape my entire life.” It was also the place where she met her future husband. Despite these milestones, however, she later found that they were not indicators of an easily followed path. “My path was anything but a straight line,” she said. “More Like a few failed experiments, but I like to think of life as a continuous experiment applying a scientific method, but in addition to controls, rigor, reproducibility, I’ve added a few principles of my own.”
One such principle, she said, is learning how to adapt to changing conditions and unforeseen circumstances. She recounted her own story of following the path of becoming a physician until she was 25, when she found that she was not as passionate about her chosen field as she first thought, and moved back to her parents’ house, where she learned that “I was doing something essential, giving myself the space to make my own mistakes and forge my own path.”
The lesson from this experience, she said, was that “it is OK to disappoint expectations in order to protect your own authenticity. Changing direction is not a detour from your story. Sometimes it is the story.”
Before head of school Brian Yager took the podium for this farewell address, the Graduation Chorus stood once again to perform “The Harker School Song,” conducted by junior Ava Cruz.
Yager’s farewell address made special mention of the influence his father, David Yager, a longtime lawyer who served 12 years as the first district supervisor for Santa Barbara County. David passed away just days after last year’s graduation address at the age of 94.
One of the main recollections of his father from the speech was the journey made by the blue beads that Yager had earned as a youth in the YMCA Indian Guides program (now called the Adventure Guides). After his father’s death, Mr. Yager found an envelope containing the beads while sifting through his remaining possessions. He did a headcount of his father’s surviving family members and counted “the same number of family members as there were beads in the envelope.”
Continuing the anecdote, Yager said, “Like many of you, I used to think that my dad was pretty magical, but this was by far the best trick he ever pulled off.” Reflecting on his father’s life of service and the values he imparted to his family, Yager addressed the seniors: “[My father] always aimed to leave the world a bit better, and he did so in many ways. Graduates of the class of 2026, may you too find and embrace similar purpose, direction and ideally, selflessness in your own lives ahead. On behalf of the entire staff and faculty and alumni body of the school, I wish you a beautiful, successful future.”
The Class of 2026 then proceeded to take the stage one at a time to receive their diplomas. The final diploma received, the graduates then flung their caps into the air and watched as flocks of doves were released into the evening air.
