Mark Zuckerberg gets back to Harvard 12 years after dropping out to start Facebook

For the first time since he dropped out Harvard 12 years ago, Mark Zuckerberg returned to school to give this year’s commencement address, and receive an honorary degree.

“Let’s face it, you accomplished something I never could,” Zuckerberg said, “If I get through this speech today, it’ll be the first time I finish something here at Harvard.”

As the former Psychology major student and now the sixth richest person in the world with a net estimated to be $62.5 billion as of May 2017, Zuckerberg said in his speech that his “best memory” at Harvard was meeting his wife, Priscilla Chan.

As the 33-year-old founder of the social networking platform, does in spacial occasions, Zuckerberg document this particular moment in his life with a Facebook Live video. Showing the dorm room, where he lived and started Facebook in 2004. He called it “Thefacebook,” and built it from a laptop. Today, Facebook has nearly 2 billion monthly users.

In his sightseeing of his old dorm room, he said during the 23-minute Facebook Live video. “This has been a place where a lot of really unusual things happened in my life. I’m grateful.”

“I had just launched this prank website Facemash, and the ad (administrative) board wanted to ‘see me.’ Everyone thought I was going to get kicked out. My parents drove up here to help me pack my stuff. My friends threw me a going-away party. Who does that? As luck would have it, Priscilla was at that party with her friends. And we met in line for the bathroom in the Pfoho Belltower (a dorm), and in what must seem like one of the all-time most romantic lines, I turned to her and said: ‘I’m getting kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly.'” he said openly.

When Zuckerberg spoke about the founding of Facebook, he told the graduates that “ideas never come fully formed … if I had to know everything about connecting people before I got started, I never would have built Facebook.”
Zuckerberg continues saying “something wrong with our system when I can leave here and make billions of dollars in 10 years while millions of students can’t even afford to pay off their loans, let alone start a business. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure that everyone has a cushion to try new ideas. We’re all going to change jobs and roles many times, so we need affordable child care to get to work and health care that’s not tied to one employer.”

In less than 24 hours Zuckerberg’s video has been watched well over 7.3 million times. It has collected more than 704,000 reactions and shared over 38,000 times.

Harvard President Drew Faust said “Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership has profoundly altered the nature of social engagement worldwide. Few inventions in modern times can rival Facebook in its far-reaching impact on how people around the globe interact with one another. And few individuals can match Mark Zuckerberg in his drive to change our world through the innovative use of technology, as well as his commitment to advance science, enhance education, and expand opportunity through the pursuit of philanthropy.”

Mark Zuckerberg

Born in White Plains, N.Y., in 1984, Zuckerberg grew up in nearby Dobbs Ferry. By the time he was in middle school he was already writing software, including a program called “ZuckNet” which he created for his father’s dental practice. Later, still a teenager, he built a platform called Synapse Media Player that used machine learning to analyze a user’s listening preferences. The program was recognized by PC Magazine and earned him job offers from Microsoft and AOL.

Zuckerberg went on to graduate from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he combined his talents for math and science with interests in classics and fencing.

He enrolled in Harvard College in 2002 as a member of the Class of 2006. While he was a sophomore in Kirkland House, he and a group of friends created a platform called thefacebook.com, initially designed as a social networking website for Harvard students and then expanded to other campuses. The website quickly gained widespread popularity, catching the attention of investors. Following his sophomore year, Zuckerberg and his cohorts moved to Palo Alto, Calif., to rebrand their fledgling company, now called Facebook, as a global service. Zuckerberg originally intended to return to Harvard, but the immediate success of the enterprise led him to devote his full energy to the company.

As the popularity of the network grew, it was expanded to universities outside the United States, and in 2006 was extended beyond educational institutions to anyone with a registered email address. Since then, Facebook has grown to become the top social media platform.

Since launching Facebook, Zuckerberg has received many honors. In 2010, Time magazine named him Person of the Year, and Vanity Fair magazine listed him among “the top 100 most influential people of the information age.” In 2016, Forbes magazine named him among its top 10 “World’s Most Powerful People.”

Zuckerberg has also emerged as a major philanthropist, having pledged to direct tens of billions of dollars to a range of causes. Over their lifetimes, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician and 2007 Harvard College graduate, have pledged to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), which is committed to advancing human potential and promoting equal opportunity. Through their work with CZI, they have pledged to spend more than $3 billion over the next decade to work with scientists, doctors, engineers, and universities to cure, prevent, or manage diseases.

They have focused on bringing the power of personalized learning to students across the country and are working with governments and other policymakers to accomplish these ambitious goals. Zuckerberg and Chan’s philanthropy has also included donations to schools and educational organizations across the Bay Area, San Francisco General Hospital, and the Centers for Disease Control. [Harvard]