UC Berkeley Haas names 2026 commencement speakers

UC Berkeley Haas this week named three accomplished alumni—the CEO of Hubspot, the CEO of AppLovin, and a former Airbnb and Microsoft product leader now focused on AI in education—as 2026 commencement speakers. 

The undergraduate ceremony will be held Wednesday, May 20, at 9 a.m. at the Greek Theatre. The combined full-time and evening & weekend ceremony will be held Saturday, May 23, at 2  p.m. at the Greek Theatre. The executive MBA ceremony will be held Saturday, June 5, at 3 p.m. in Hertz Hall.

More information about the speakers: 

Undergraduate
Adam Foroughi, BS 01, CEO & co-founder, AppLovin 

As co-founder and CEO of AppLovin, Adam Foroughi, BS 01, uses his unique blend of product acumen and creative thinking to keep the AppLovin team in motion. 

Under his leadership, AppLovin has grown to become a global, publicly traded company. Founded in 2012, AppLovin enables businesses to advertise profitably with marketing technologies that attract customers, increase revenue, and track ad performance.

Foroughi began his career as a derivatives trader, building scalable, data-driven trading models that created profitable results. He then founded two companies, LifeStreet Media and Social Hour, applying and expanding his knowledge of mobile technology. 

In 2018, he received an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Northern California Award.

Full-time MBA/Evening & Weekend MBA
Yamini Rangan, MBA 03, CEO, HubSpot

Yamini Rangan, MBA 03, is CEO of HubSpot, the agentic customer platform for scaling companies. Prior to becoming CEO, Rangan served as HubSpot’s first-ever chief customer officer, overseeing the marketing, sales, and service teams.

A tech industry veteran, Rangan has more than 25 years of experience in product marketing, sales, and strategy. She previously served as chief customer officer at Dropbox, where she was responsible for embedding customer focus across the organization. Before Dropbox, she was vice president of sales strategy and operations at Workday, where she helped quadruple revenue and scaled the sales organization. At SAP, Rangan held several customer-facing leadership roles in strategy, presales, and value-based selling and helped close landmark deals.

Rangan holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering, a master’s degree in computer engineering, and an MBA from Haas. She was recognized among the Most Influential Women in Business by the San Francisco Business Times in 2019 and as a Best CEO for Women by Comparably in 2022. She is a Haas School Board member and a former Splunk board member.

Executive MBA
Shaan Parasnis, EMBA 14 
Head of product, GreenPen AI Labs

Shaan Parasnis, EMBA 14, is head of product at GreenPen AI Labs, an education tech startup focused on AI services for educators. Embracing the UC Berkeley Haas Defining Leadership Principle Students Always, Parasnis uses AI at GreenPen to help reduce special education teacher burnout, with a goal of giving educators their weekends back. 

An experienced product leader, his career experience includes leading worldwide product teams at Microsoft, founding a dynamic pricing platform at Airbnb, and building products at an early healthcare generative AI startup. Parasnis is also a partner in the historic Hotel Shattuck Plaza in downtown Berkeley.