The close of a school year is also the opening to new beginnings and fresh opportunities, with a life of discovery laid out before the new graduates. It’s also a time of transition, when graduates prepare to step into an unpredictable next chapter and face unexpected new challenges. In other words, it is a moment that calls for courage. 

Courage was the word of the day at Principia College’s Commencement and Principia School’s Graduation ceremony last month. 

In mid-May, faculty, family, and friends gathered in Cox Auditorium on the Principia College campus to celebrate the Class of 2025. Presiding over the Commencement ceremony, outgoing College President Dr. Daniel Norton offered a gracious tribute. “As our 2025 graduating class,” he said, “your legacy is in the inclusive community that you have helped build, the challenges your peers watched you navigate and overcome with resilience and grace, and the kindness you’ve shown to us all.” 

All in attendance were treated to an inspiring address by Commencement speaker Janessa Gans Wilder (C’98), a former CIA officer and the founder and CEO Emerita of the Euphrates Institute.   

Speaking directly to the graduates, Gans Wilder said, “It is a time of massive upheaval and incredible change. Trying to put myself in your shoes, I realized there is a tremendous amount of courage required to take that first step. And you’re already embodying it.” 

Janessa Gans Wilder knows a thing or two about upheaval and courage. After years as an officer in the CIA, including 21 months in an active war zone in Iraq, she took the bold step to found and build a peacekeeping mission in the Euphrates Institute. “Courage is the quality that inspires me the most,” she went on. “Courage is everywhere if we look for it, and it defies logic. Courage would have us open when we want to withdraw. Courage surrenders the self for the whole. Courage includes the other. Courage moves us from me to we.” 

Just five days later, laughter filled the Ridgway auditorium as Upper School assembled for its graduation. Speaker Travis Thomas (C’95), an author, mindset coach, and improv comedy veteran also spoke to the importance of courage—the courage to overcome self-doubt. 

In speaking about his own journey to discern, and then live, his purpose—a journey that led him to coach the US Men’s National Soccer Team in the 2022 World Cup and to write two books—Thomas addressed what he called “negative radio stations” playing in our heads. “My voice says, ‘Travis you’re not special,’” Thomas recounts. “When I listen to it, I show up small.”  

His latest book, Confidence is Overrated: Why Courage is the Antidote & Feelings Make Cowards of Us All, addresses the theme of courage in everyday lives. “There will be so many moments when you ask yourself: Why am I here? God, help me,” said Thomas. “That’s when you need to just listen. And be courageous.” 

While Thomas and Gans Wilder followed very different paths after graduating from Principia College, both might sum up their purpose as, in Thomas’s words: we’re here to meet the human need. And they both concluded with a similar note of courage for their graduating classes to take forward. “What looks like courage is what we do naturally when we tap into that trust that Love has got us,” said Gans Wilder. Added Thomas, “you guys are up for the challenge.”