Katie Couric is the 2023 Commencement speaker

Katie Couric, award-winning journalist and trailblazing advocate and fundraiser for cancer research and care, will deliver the Commencement address on June 4, as UMass Chan celebrates its 50th Commencement.

Couric, who anchored NBC’s “Today” show, was also the first woman to solo anchor the CBS Evening News and more recently founded Katie Couric Media. Her 2021 memoir, Going There, was a New York Times No. 1 best-seller. In 2008, Couric co-founded Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), which has since raised more than $746 million to advance innovative, promising and collaborative cancer research.

SU2C-supported research has contributed to nine new FDA-approved treatments. Her influential public advocacy for cancer screening, care and research began in the late 1990s after her husband Jay Monahan died of colon cancer at the age of 42, followed three years later by her sister’s death due to pancreatic cancer. In 2000, Couric famously underwent a colonoscopy on live TV, which inspired so many Americans to schedule screenings that doctors dubbed it “the Couric effect.” In September, she revealed that she was in treatment after being diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer.

Katie Couric