Middlebury alumnus Dan Schulman ’80, CEO of the financial technology company PayPal, will give the commencement address to the class of 2022 on May 29.
Schulman’s address will be followed two days later by a speech from Jason Collins, the first openly gay NBA player, at the class of 2020’s two-year-delayed commencement ceremony. Collins was first tapped for the 2020 ceremony before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and will finally deliver his address this year.
After graduating from Middlebury, Schulman received an MBA from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Before taking up leadership at PayPal in 2014, he served in a senior leadership role at American Express, was President and CEO of Priceline and worked at AT&T for 18 years.
According to his biography, Schulman is, “focused on democratizing and transforming financial services and e-commerce to improve the financial health of billions of people, families and businesses around the world.” He is also involved in the World Economic Forum, and is “an avid mixed martial arts practitioner.”
In 2021, Schulman was ranked #3 on Fortune’s list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders. Fortune’s description of Schulman commend’s PayPal’s pandemic economic relief efforts and hundreds of millions in grants to Black-owned businesses, nonprofits and minority-owned banks. The profile also says that Schulman’s support for PayPal employees has been notable, calling his efforts to invest in employees “groundbreaking.”
“In 2019, PayPal’s leadership realized that many employees were barely getting by, even though they were being paid what the company believed were fair market rates,” the Fortune profile reads. “Schulman set a new goal: Every employee should have “net disposable income” — money left over after taxes, insurance premiums, and essential living expenses — of at least 20% of total pay.”
In addition to Schulman’s address, the college will also confer two honorary degrees: to Nan Jenks-Jay, dean of environmental affairs emeritus at Middlebury, and Joseph Bruchac, a Nulhegan Abenaki Nation elder and author.
The commencement ceremony will occur on May 29 beginning at 10 a.m. on the college’s central lawn. Tickets are not required, and the event will also be livestreamed.
Riley Board '22 is the Editor in Chief of The Campus. She previously served as a Managing Editor, News Editor, Arts & Academics Editor and writer.
She is majoring in Linguistics as an Independent Scholar and is an English minor on the Creative Writing Track.
Board has worked as a writer at Smithsonian Folklife Magazine and as a reporter for The Burlington Free Press. Currently, she is a 2021-2022 Kellogg Fellow working on her linguistics thesis. In her free time, you can find her roller skating in E-Lot or watching the same sitcoms over and over again.
