Alumni reflect on graduation and where they are now
Come December and May student's journeys came to an end but new beginnings were on the rise.
Brian Weaver, one of the graduation commencement speakers, had a variety of accomplishments since graduating from Northwest. He was a founder and CEO of Torch.AI, had 20 years of experience leading mission driven, high growth technology enabled companies,was a Kansas City small business of the year, received a defence innovation award in 2017, and was recently featured in forbes magazine for Torch.AI’s concepts. He was a Bearcat.Northwest gave Weaver many things throughout his life, including his wife.
“We met in Wells Hall but fell in love at the Palms,” Weaver said. “It has been really fun to take my kids around the campus these last couple of days and show them all the places we lived and where we met and all the classes we had. It reminds me how incredible this campus is.”
Weaver reminisced on his first tour of the campus as a high school senior in St. Louis, Missouri. While on the tour he was, “Instantly smitten with the campus, the people were friendly and engaging, they were smart, even the professors, the ones that I met.”
“The experience reminds you of an Ivy league school,” Weaver said. “For me that was a great feeling. It was what I thought a great university should feel like where it instantly hits home with me about Northwest. And the four year career that I had here at Northwest reinforced all of those thoughts.”
Weaver left Northwest and started his next chapter 20 years ago as Payton Ternus just started her chapter as a graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science and an emphasis in global affairs.
“Getting ready for graduation felt surreal.” Ternus said. “On one hand, it felt amazing to be done and know that I had accomplished something pretty amazing, but on the other hand, I couldn’t believe it was over. Those four years flew by, but freshman year feels like it was a lifetime ago. I was so excited to move on to my next chapter, but I’ll never forget everything Northwest taught me.”