Arianna Huffington, co-founder of HuffPost and founder and CEO of Thrive Global, was announced as the speaker for USC’s 142nd baccalaureate ceremony on Tuesday.
Baccalaureate is a nondenominational, interfaith celebration open to all students, even those not graduating. The event will be held at Bovard Auditorium at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 14.
Varun Soni, the dean of religious and spiritual life at USC, told Annenberg Media that Huffington was initially supposed to speak in 2020 but was unable to because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I am very excited to welcome her to the baccalaureate stage,” said Soni.
Huffington founded the Huffington Post, known as HuffPost, in 2005 and later launched Thrive Global, a behavior change technology company dedicated to enhancing health outcomes and productivity. Huffington has also written 15 books, including bestsellers “Thrive” and “The Sleep Revolution.”
In the fall of 2020, Soni featured Huffington in THRIVE, a series of dialogues hosted by USC Visions and Voices, a university-wide arts and humanities initiative with interdisciplinary events. According to Soni, during her appearance in THRIVE, she helped “navigate the USC community through a very uncertain time, and the focus was really on thriving.”
While Huffington is widely recognized for her entrepreneurial success, her spiritual interests are less well-known.
“Arianna is not a traditional religious leader but a spiritual leader. My hope is that everyone can celebrate, even though we will have prayers from specific traditions,” said Soni.
Huffington wrote a book called “The Fourth Instinct: The Call of the Soul,” where she argued that the fourth instinct is a natural human drive for meaning, purpose, and connection to something greater than ourselves.
“Baccalaureate is an interfaith and spiritual celebration of commencement,” said Soni. “Ariana, I believe, is one of the great spiritual leaders in the world today.”