Meet Laleh Panahi: Student Speaker at the 2025 Celebration of Excellence

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Photo by Eva Trainer

On Tuesday, April 29, the Commonwealth Honors College hosted the 2025 Celebration of Excellence at the Tillis Performance Hall, located within the Bromery Center for the Arts. The event commemorated CHC’s graduating seniors and honored the outstanding research and achievements they accomplished during their time at CHC.

Laleh Panahi, a senior with dual degrees in journalism and operations and information management (OIM), served as the student speaker at the 2025 Celebration of Excellence. Hailing from Marlborough, MA, Panahi is committed to improving outcomes for youth in foster care through research and direct services. She also served as a teaching artist for foster families and currently works as an offer management and cybersecurity analyst at Schneider Electric. Her address inspired and energized the graduating class.

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Photo by Theo Nims

“I was really excited for Tuesday, and I am so appreciative of my professors and friends in these last few weeks,” Panahi said. “I was excited to share this moment with everyone in the Honors College and commemorate our hard work over the past four years.”

Panahi’s senior thesis is a qualitative analysis of the foster care–to–prison pipeline. Earlier in her undergraduate career, she worked with nonprofit organizations, including developing a financial literacy curriculum for foster children in Northampton. Drawing on these experiences, Panahi is now researching the social barriers faced by foster youth, conducting direct research with nonprofits from New York to Texas.

“There are so many obstacles in terms of educational mobility, housing, violence, and substance abuse," she said. 

"A lot of the work these nonprofits do revolves around educational support and financial literacy—which I have been involved with for the past four years—and these are the two areas we are hoping to address in terms of developmental progress."

Panahi credits her time at Commonwealth Honors College (CHC) with helping her synthesize the multidisciplinary approach she has taken throughout her undergraduate studies.

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Laleh Panahi

“The Honors College has been an outlet for bringing these experiences together and using them to make an impact in my community,” she said.

In addition to providing research and experiential opportunities, Panahi noted that CHC fostered her intellectual curiosity and helped bridge the gap between her journalism work and her studies in OIM.

Panahi's speech encouraged students to embrace their curiosity and celebrate the risks and innovations that shaped their academic journeys.