Jericho HS Grad To Give Commencement Speech At Harvard: Reports

JERICHO, NY — A medical student who graduated from Jericho High School will give a commencement speech at Harvard University this week, according to a report.

Sana Raoof, 29, of Muttontown, plans to deliver a virtual oration, as the Ivy League university calls it, Thursday, Newsday reported. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Raoof graduated from Jericho High School in 2008 as one of four valedictorians and comes from a family of doctors. Raoof is graduating from the Harvard/MIT M.D.-PhD. program at Harvard Medical School. She specialized in radiation oncology.

Raoof will deliver the Graduate English Address to 32,000 students, according to the Harvard Gazette. Being an orator is considered one of the highest honors a student can achieve, according to the news outlet. A selection process begins in early March and a final audition is held in late April.

Raoof told the Gazette she grew up in a multigenerational Indian family and said being a child of immigrants played a large role in shaping her.

"I grew up in Long Island, N.Y., in a multigenerational Indian family: My two grandparents, my parents, and then my brother and I all lived together since I was born,” Raoof told the news outlet. "My story of how being a child of immigrants has affected my career and kind of all relates back to the strong influence that my grandparents and my parents have had on my life serving as role models — coming to the U.S. with very little and using challenges that came with that as a way to catapult them forward and work, work harder, and be more focused … just be tough people who have a very strong sense of purpose and have done well as physicians and as educators."