Dee Bradley Baker ‘86, a self-proclaimed “time traveling” alumnus from Colorado College’s Class of 1986, gave this year’s 569 graduates a funny, somewhat prophetic look at life beyond the hallowed halls of CC.
A renowned voice actor, Baker infused his Commencement speech with character, voicing quips and wisdom as Daffy Duck in Space Jam, Captain Rex the clone trooper in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Perry the Platypus in Phineas and Ferb, among others—much to the delight of the Generation Z graduates who grew up watching these shows.
“You may have a well-considered plan, but 40 years of time travel has shown me that your plan is going to be wrong,” said Baker. “It’s going to be completely and utterly, gloriously, maddeningly wrong—because life is indifferent to such plans...It is going to be different—wonderfully, sometimes harrowingly, different—from anything you’re currently picturing.”
Baker told the graduates he had “precisely zero idea” of what he was going to do with a BA in Philosophy when he graduated in 1986—so he just kept doing the things he’d done at CC.
“I followed my curiosity. I followed my weird and my fun,” he said. “And my weird and my fun led me somewhere extraordinarily well-tailored to who I am.”
It led to a 30-year career as a versatile, sought-after Hollywood voice actor in television, film, and video games. Baker has worked on hundreds of animated shows for Nickelodeon (SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly Odd Parents, Avatar: The Last Airbender), Disney (Lilo & Stitch, Higgly Town Heroes, Project WITCH), Cartoon Network (Codename: Kids Next Door, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy), Warner Bros. (Teen Titans, ¡Mucha Lucha!), Fox network (Klaus the German goldfish in American Dad!), as well as characters in the video games Halo, Destiny, and Overwatch.
“I realized that Hollywood needed creatures and monsters,” Baker said. “Cartoons and video games and films were full of animals and aliens and beasts that needed voices. And I—with my lifelong fascination with animals, my memory of sitting in Invertebrate Biology at Colorado College delighted by things with too many legs, my years of live theater and improv, my deep love of monster movies and my apparently inexhaustible willingness to make strange sounds and appear idiotic—was precisely the person for this kind of job.”
His golden advice? Do what you love and what you’re good at. “When those two things overlap,” he said, “you’ve found something worth building your life around.”
Toward the end of his address, Baker shared his “invisible toolkit” with the graduates:
- Have a flexible, energized mind
- Know who you are
- Know what you care about
- Know what you love to do
- Know who you love to work with
- See yourself as a charged battery (“Walk into every room ready to power whatever the room needs.”)
- Make a habit of doing what you love
"I learned at CC that creativity is not a gift. It is a habit. Keep making things. Keep feeding your mind. Keep collaborating. Finish the job, take your bow, strike the set, and show up ready and curious for whatever comes next,” Baker concluded.
CC President Manya Whitaker conveyed a more serious message, linking the milestone of graduation with America’s 250th birthday, telling graduates: “The choices your generation makes in the next decade, even in the next year, will determine what history records about this era, what we valued, what we defended, where we stumbled, and what we let go.”
She told graduates they each have “a distinct and necessary voice” to use for change.
“In our lifetimes, every one of us will be asked to use our voice and find our power to change the world—to speak out with conviction,” she said.
“Claim your space. Your diploma is not a period. It’s the first word of a very long sentence, of a remarkable chapter,” she said. “I have faith in you. This is your time. Raise your voice. Our democracy is listening.”
Board of Trustees Chair Kyle Samuel ’92 told the 552 BA candidates and 17 MAT candidates to lean into responsibility, service, and purpose.
“Don’t run from the ideas that make you uncomfortable. Run toward them,” Samuel said. “You have to risk failure to accomplish something. You have to risk being wrong, in order to keep learning.”
Alumnus Chris Benoit ’03 received an honorary degree for his work as an attorney defending communities facing human rights challenges.
Faculty retirees were also acknowledged for their years of service and dedication to the college: Lynne Fitzhugh (Senior Lecturer, Education), Rick Furtak (Associate Professor, Philosophy), Claire Oberon Garcia (Professor, English), Eve Grace (Associate Professor, Political Science), Hong Jiang (Professor, Chinese), Jonathan Lee (Professor, Philosophy), Carol Neel (Professor, History), Shawn Womack (Professor, Theatre & Dance), and Tricia Waters (Professor, Psychology). Dwanna McKay, Associate Professor Emerita of Race, Ethnicity, & Migration Studies was remembered for her service to the college in memoriam.
Watch the full Commencement Ceremony.
