Meet The Graduation Speakers

For the Class of 2023, the graduation speakers were Yina Wang (’23) and Akshat Gupta (’23). These two spoke to the IMSA Class of 2023, as well as all parents, siblings, friends, and loved ones who choose to come to graduation. IMSA informed the two that they are free to speak about anything to the crowd in hopes of leaving their mark on the community (assuming that it is not openly bigoted or discriminatory). To better understand their experiences at IMSA and what they would talk about, The Acronym sat down with Wang and Gupta.

Yina Wang was the Student Council (StudCo) president for the 2022-2023 school year. Outside of StudCo, she was an active member of the IMSA community, leading the International Youth Neuroscience Association among many other commitments. After graduation, Wang will be attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She told The Acronym that she hopes to center her speech around time, specifically finiteness and how we utilize it. 

Akshat Gupta also participated in extracurriculars and most recently went to Sectionals for the tennis team as a varsity player. He has many topics he wants to touch upon in his speech, but he identifies Keifer, gua sha, skincare, and bone broth as some key points. Although these are very broad topics, Akshat assures there will be a connection to his time at IMSA. Akshat will be attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and will be studying computer science in the fall. 

Graduation for the class of 2023 was on Saturday, June 3rd at Northern Illinois University. As the seniors take on new challenges, discover new experiences, and reflect on their time at IMSA, students are excited to hear from their very own peers and connect over their experiences from the last three years.