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The address will take place during the Graduate Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 11.

Jillian Mele, ’05, MBA ’24, a two-time Emmy Award winning journalist with nearly 20 years’ experience, will deliver the student address during ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ’s Graduate Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 11.

Mele’s experience in TV media ranged from the highest level of national news anchor and reporter to sports anchor and reporter. She had been at the helm, anchoring and reporting on historic moments like the COVID-19 pandemic, elections, and the war in Ukraine.

Mele was on the ground in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting and during various hurricanes. She covered the 2019 and 2022 World Series, and the ups and downs of the post-pandemic economy. Mele has interviewed professional athletes, politicians, war heroes, economists, and business owners. She even went skydiving with the Army Golden Knights for an assignment. All these moments are vastly different, but one thing is the same: the ability to tell the story.

Her own story changed though in 2021 when she felt a passion to go back to school for an MBA. To date, this is what she considers her greatest accomplishment, as it is something she did for herself. She took the brave step to walk away from the career she always knew to bet on herself and try something new. In 2023, she started her own business consulting in the public speaking world, Jillian Mele Communications, and she is about to launch the next phase of her business which includes a series of online courses. In these, she combines her time in the studio with the skills needed in the real world.

A 2005 graduate of ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ’s undergraduate program, Mele credits the online MBA program for not only giving her the knowledge necessary to take these steps, but the confidence to believe that she could step out on her own and dream higher, and more creatively, than she ever has.