A man who has combined a commitment to generosity and business acumen to change the world will speak to this year’s seniors.
Nipun Mehta, founder of ServiceSpace — a volunteer organization that offers technological services to nonprofits — will deliver this year’s baccalaureate address.
Mehta was chosen in hopes that his experience will impart to students “different forms of spirituality, different expressions of the moral life,” Chaplain Chaz Howard said.
For Mehta, the opportunity that brought him from his home in Berkeley, Calif., to the baccalaureate podium at Penn was a “no-brainer,” Mehta said.
What brought him to campus stemmed from one student’s passion for service projects. Wharton junior Ankit Shah met Mehta at a conference in 2007 and took an eager interest in his work, and soon they began email correspondence.
Shah had also met with Howard on a number of occasions since his freshman year to talk about the Greater Love Movement — a non-profit anti-poverty organization Howard co-founded — and other service projects. When Shah learned Mehta was planning to visit the east coast last summer, he arranged for Mehta and Howard to meet. The two admired each other’s work, and a friendship quickly followed.
At the beginning of the school year, the Chaplain’s office and the Office of the Secretary drafted a list of nominations for the baccalaureate speaker, including Mehta. These names were then discussed with President Amy Gutmann, who made the final decision.
Mehta “is an amazing figure in the country right now,” Howard said. “His voice would be a strong and timely one for graduates to hear.”
Mehta said his career in service centers on the “inner transformation” people feel when they show generosity or do good deeds.
After working briefly for the software company Sun Microsystems, Mehta and a group of friends and “Silicon experts” started Service Space, initially building websites for non-profit organizations.
As the Internet evolved, so did Mehta’s work. In the years following ServiceSpace’s opening in 1999, Mehta launched two more online projects: DailyGood and KarmaTube — a collection of inspiring videos and suggestions for simple acts of kindness.
Since then, Mehta’s company has opened several non-profit “Karma Kitchen” restaurants across the country and run a pay-it-forward rickshaw in India.
ServiceSpace, Mehta said, is “basically an incubator for gift economy projects.”
He added, “We use generosity as a lever to solve the problems in our world.”
Though his message is not aligned with any one religious group, Mehta’s message will provide a new perspective at the ceremony.
“[Mehta] takes a more zoomed-out view of changing yourself that’s not tied to any deity or way of life,” Shah said.
He added that he thinks Mehta’s message will be “very individualistic — it’s focused on you not in the context of a group, but in the context of you.”
College senior Maria Bellantoni, president of the Penn Newman Executive Council Board, said because Mehta is unlike other speakers in the recent past such as pastors, priests or rabbis, students “will have exposure to someone who is a little off the radar.”
She believes that “seniors going into the world will want to see a creative, innovative way to better the future.”
