Keynote Speaker
Dontae Payne
Mayor, City of Olympia
Mayor Dontae Payne was elected mayor in November 2023 and was elected to the Olympia City Council in November 2021. Professionally, he has served as a Regional Representative and Senior Policy Advisor for Civil Rights & Racial Justice in the Washington State Office of the Governor, as Deputy District Director in the U.S. House of Representatives, and he currently serves as the Equity & Community Partnership Manager for the Washington State Department of Revenue. He’s also a former board member on the Olympia Hands On Children's Museum's Board of Directors. Payne is the first Black American and openly gay person elected or appointed to the office of mayor in Olympia’s 164-year history at the time of the election.
Payne was born and raised in Philadelphia, and his family later relocated to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he attended high school and joined the U.S. Army. He moved to Olympia in 2014 after being stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. He and his husband Jason are raising their 8-year-old daughter, Priscilla, along with their cat “Minnie” in Olympia’s westside.
Payne earned a Master of Public Administration degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree from The Evergreen State College in Olympia following his service in the U.S. Army. He served on active duty in the United States Army for six years, with two tours to Logar Province, Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. He re-enlisted to serve for two additional years in the U.S. Army following his initial enlistment and separated from the Army in 2016.
Graduate Speaker
Ingrid Zaragoza
Ingrid Zaragoza is planning to use her Master of Environmental Science to effect meaningful change within immigrant communities by addressing and resolving the environmental injustices that exist within them. As a descendant of field workers, she has a keen awareness of the struggles and sacrifices immigrants must make to create a better life for their families. Her graduate studies have provided her with a deeper understanding of the intense and systemic inequities that exist throughout the environmental field, and most pointedly, within the agricultural industry. For her Master’s Thesis, she researched the disparity in confidence levels between English and Spanish speakers with respect to pesticide application. She determined that the knowledge gaps that naturally occur from the language barrier could be improved by providing additional training and making labels in Spanish available for all pesticides.
In her Commencement Speech, Ingrid will reflect on her life’s journey, why she developed a passion to improve conditions for those within the agricultural community, and how she hopes to use her education to effect change on a large scale. She will also use this opportunity to reflect on her time at Evergreen, and to share a message of hope and purpose as she and her cohort step into the next chapter of their lives.
Undergraduate Speaker
Allyssa Wiseman
Alyssa Wiseman has spent her life finding her way back to the same dream; becoming a teacher. That dream first took shape at age fourteen, when she volunteered in a Montessori preschool and watched young children lead their own learning with remarkable independence. She never forgot it.
Alyssa comes to graduation as a 35-year-old mother, a Big Sister, and someone who took the long road and learned something valuable on every stretch of it. She earned her Associate's degree in Early Childhood Education before finding her home at The Evergreen State College, a school she had set her sights on since 2009. At Evergreen, she discovered a community that challenged her thinking, shaped her values, and gave her friendships she will carry for life.
Along the way, she was recognized with a Lifelong Learner Award from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Center at South Puget Sound Community College and has served as a Big Sister through Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Her son Maverick, born in 2024, continues to be her greatest inspiration.
This summer, Alyssa will begin the Master in Teaching program at Evergreen, taking the final step toward the classroom she has always been working toward.
Faculty Speaker
Nathalie Yuen
Dr. Nathalie Yuen joined The Evergreen State College faculty in 2020. She helps people find examples of psychology in real life. Her background is in developmental psychology, or how people change and stay the same over time, and quantitative methods. She is interested in our development across the entire lifespan, and more specifically, in our development during adolescence and emerging adulthood (i.e., teens and twenties). Are you curious about why we still love songs from our teenage years as adults? Ask Nathalie.
Nathalie is a part of the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences undergraduate program. You might recognize her from such coordinated studies programs as, So You Want to be a Psychologist, Psychology and Popular Music, Bodies Changing: Psychology and Reproductive Health, and Psychology and Biology of Aging. She regularly attends the Western Psychological Association conference, an annual regional psychology conference, with students, and has co-presented research at the conference with multiple Evergreen students. Nathalie is in her third year as Chair of the Faculty.
Nathalie earned her PhD at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, MA at St. Bonaventure University, and BA at Whittier College. She is originally from Honolulu, Hawai’i.