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Allred, Domingo, Latour to Headline American University’s 2025 Spring Commencement

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WASHINGTON, April 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — An all-star lineup of leaders from the fields of law, food security, entertainment, journalism, business and finance will address and celebrate 3,000 American University graduates during this year’s spring commencement on AU’s Washington, D.C. campus.

This year’s speakers are Gloria Allred, founding partner at Allred, Maroko & Goldberg; Orlando Bravo, co-founder and managing partner of Thoma Bravo, a private equity investment firm; Colman Domingo, Academy Award–nominated actor, producer and director; Almar Latour, SOC/MA ’96, publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow Jones; Radha Muthiah, president and CEO of Capital Area Food Bank; and Elhadj As Sy, global health, development and humanitarian leader.

The traditional bagpipe processional will kick off commencement ceremonies, which will be held in Bender Arena on Friday, May 9, and Saturday, May 10, for undergraduate and graduate students across most AU schools and colleges, and on Saturday, May 17, for the Washington College of Law. The events will be livestreamed for the families and friends of AU’s newest alumni.

American University graduates are dedicated to lives of purpose, service and leadership and our six outstanding 2025 commencement speakers all reflect this dedication to civic engagement,” AU President Jonathan Alger said. “Each of our honorees has made lasting impacts in communities around the world and they exemplify our charge to ‘dream big.’ They will further inspire our graduating Eagles as they begin their own journeys and fulfill their unique big dreams.”

Speakers on Friday, May 9:

Radha Muthiah is the president and CEO of Capital Area Food Bank, which anchors our region’s charitable food ecosystem. Under her leadership, CAFB distributes the food for more than 60 million meals annually and operates multiple innovative, cross-sector initiatives focused on addressing food insecurity in the long term. Muthiah has been recognized by Washington Business Journal as Nonprofit CEO of the Year and as a Woman Who Means Business and by Washingtonian magazine as Washingtonian of the Year and one of Washington’s Most Powerful Women. She will address graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences on Friday, May 9, at 9 a.m.

Elhadj As Sy is a global health, development and humanitarian leader who served as the secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and has held leadership positions at such international agencies as UNICEF, UNAIDS, UNDP, WHO Health Emergencies Programme and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He chairs the board of the Kofi Annan Foundation and was recently named the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s first chancellor in its 125-year history. He will address graduates of the School of International Service on Friday, May 9, at 2 p.m.

Speakers on Saturday, May 10:

Colman Domingo starred as civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in Netflix and Higher Ground’s Rustin, for which he received Academy Award, Golden Globes, BAFTA and SAG nominations. He also played Mister in the Warner Bros. production of The Color Purple, which received a SAG ensemble nomination. Domingo executive produced and starred in Greg Kwedar’s film Sing Sing, for which he received a second Academy Award nomination. He will address graduates of the School of Public Affairs on Saturday, May 10, at 9 a.m.

Almar Latour, SOC/MA ’96, is the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow Jones. Under his leadership, Dow Jones has delivered record financial results, more than doubling profitability in four years, with significant growth in subscriptions and business information services. Latour will address graduates of the School of Education and the School of Communication on Saturday, May 10, at 2 p.m.

Orlando Bravo is a founder and managing partner of Thoma Bravo, a leading software investment firm, and the founder and chair of the Bravo Family Foundation, which provides young adults in Puerto Rico with access to opportunity. In 2019, he committed $100 million to the foundation’s Rising Entrepreneurs Program with the goal of fostering entrepreneurship on the island. Bravo is one of the top software investors in the world. He will address graduates of the Kogod School of Business and Professional Studies, which recently launched the Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence (IAAI), further positioning the university and business school as global leaders in AI education, application and research. The ceremony will be held on Saturday, May 10, at 6 p.m.

Speaker on Saturday, May 17:

Gloria Allred is the founding partner at Allred, Maroko & Goldberg, a law firm that has successfully handled more women’s rights cases than any other private firm in the nation. Over the course of her nearly 50-year legal career, Allred has received numerous honors in recognition of her groundbreaking work, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from The National Trial Lawyers for her pioneering role in combating injustices and winning new rights, especially for women and minorities. President Barack Obama introduced her as “one of the best attorneys in the country,” while President Ronald Reagan presented her with the 1986 Volunteer Action Award for Outstanding Volunteerism. Allred will address graduates of the Washington College of Law on Saturday, May 17, at 10 a.m.

About American University

American University leverages the power and purpose of scholarship, learning, and community to impact our changing world. AU’s faculty, students, staff, and alumni are changemakers who shape the future from sustainability to social justice to the sciences. Building on our 130-year history of education and research in the public interest, we say ‘Challenge Accepted’ to addressing the world’s pressing issues.

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NEC Vietnam Appoints New General Director to Advance Digital Innovation

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HANOI, Vietnam, May 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — NEC Vietnam announced the appointment of Yasushi Numakura as its new General Director, effective April 1, 2026. The appointment reflects NEC’s continued commitment to expanding trusted technology partnerships and supporting Vietnam’s growing digital ambitions.

Numakura-san joined NEC Group in 1990 and brings over three decades of experience across systems engineering, mobile technology development, and global business leadership. In 2014, he was appointed Head of NEC Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh branch, where he drove business portfolio transformation and strengthened regional partnerships. He subsequently held leadership roles at NEC Solution Innovators and most recently led resource management reform initiatives as part of delivery model transformation efforts.

In his new role, he will lead NEC Vietnam’s business operations and strategic direction, with a focus on strengthening software development capabilities and accelerating digital transformation initiatives across key sectors, serving both the Japanese and APAC markets.

“I am excited to join NEC Vietnam and build on the strong momentum established by the local team over the years. Together with our customers and partners, we look forward to creating what’s ahead through trusted technologies and meaningful solutions that create lasting value for businesses, communities, and society. In line with NEC’s 2030 mid-term direction, we will also advance our capabilities as an AI-native organization with security at the core, ensuring that our innovations are both impactful and resilient,” shares Numakura-san.

Under his leadership, NEC Vietnam will continue providing technologies and solutions spanning software development, biometrics, and public safety.

***

About NEC Vietnam

NEC established its liaison office in Vietnam in the early 1990s under the global business framework of NEC Corporation. It was re-organized as NEC Vietnam Co., Ltd. in 2006, with a newfound commitment to grow the business and contribute towards the people and society of Vietnam.

In a rapidly changing business environment, NEC Vietnam has evolved into a comprehensive solutions provider, leveraging their core competence in delivering Solutions for Society, focused on building social infrastructure that benefits citizens and communities.

Visit https://vn.nec.com to learn more.

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SOURCE NEC Vietnam

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South Asia’s First-ever Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Demonstration, Led by ISGF in Collaboration with its Technology and Utility Partners

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NEW DELHI, May 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — South Asia’s first ever groundbreaking Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Technology Demonstration in India implemented by India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF) marks a major advancement in smart Electric Vehicle (EV) charging and grid stability, paving the way for a future of bidirectional energy flows between EVs and the power grid. ISGF, with its utility partners and technical support from the University of Delaware (UDEL), USA, executed this first-of-its-kind Alternating Current (AC) V2G pilot demonstration in South Asia. The demonstration project was implemented at BSES Rajdhani Power Limited, BSES Yamuna Power Limited, TATA Power Delhi Distribution Limited, as well as at the Agency for New and Renewable Energy Research and Technology (ANERT), Kerala. This pilot demonstration has tested a variety of V2G use cases and found it highly relevant for distributed renewable energy integration and grid stability.

As part of the project, four Tata Nexon EVs were retrofitted with on-board bidirectional power modules and connected to the grid through bidirectional AC chargers. The equipment cost of AC V2G is significantly lower than DC V2G. ISGF is working with local technology companies and EV OEMs to build a V2G ecosystem in the country.

For more information, please write to contactus@indiasmartgrid.org

About India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF)

ISGF is a public private partnership initiative of the Govt. of India, with the mandate of accelerating smart grid deployments across the country. With 170+ members comprising of ministries, utilities, technology providers, academia and research, ISGF has evolved as a Think-Tank of global repute on Smart Energy and Smart Cities. The mandate of ISGF is to accelerate energy transition through clean energy, electric grid modernization and electric mobility; work with national and international agencies in standards development and help utilities, regulators and the Industry in technology selection, training and capacity building.

Website: https://indiasmartgrid.org/ 

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Tencent Cloud and Stream Partner to Accelerate the Development of Real-Time Multimodal AI Agents

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HONG KONG, May 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of leading global technology company, Tencent, today announced a strategic collaboration with Stream, the company behind the open-source AI agent framework Vision Agents, to accelerate the development of real-time, multimodal AI agents.

Through this collaboration, Tencent Real-Time Communication (Tencent RTC) becomes an officially supported edge transport plugin for Vision Agents, giving developers worldwide a low-latency path to build and deploy interactive AI applications across global markets, including regions where network complexity and real-time performance are critical.

Unlocking Lower-Latency Transport for Enhanced Experiences Across China and Asia

Vision Agents is an open-source, edge-agnostic Python framework from Stream that helps developers quickly build low-latency vision AI applications. Rather than retrofitting video onto a voice-centric stack, Vision Agents was designed as a video-first solution — running models such as YOLO, Roboflow, OpenAI Realtime, and Google Gemini on every frame, with sub-500ms end-to-end latency and over 25 out-of-the-box integrations across LLM, STT, TTS, vision, RAG, telephony, and avatar providers.

Through this partnership, Tencent RTC becomes an officially supported edge transport plugin for Vision Agents. Developers can use Tencent RTC to replace the default communication layer in Vision Agents and instantly leverage Tencent Cloud’s enterprise-grade backbone — more than 3,200 global nodes, sub-300ms worldwide latency, AI-driven noise suppression, and weak-network resilience — while keeping every existing LLM, STT, TTS, vision, and avatar plugin unchanged.

The integration supports both audio and video, making it suitable for voice agents, video agents, and multimodal scenarios — powering use cases such as gaming assistants, virtual avatars, sports coaching, and robotics. AI agents can join TRTC rooms and interact with participants in real-time through high-quality audio and video streams.

Tencent RTC operates a globally distributed real-time network with particularly strong performance across some markets in Asia where many global real-time stacks face connectivity and latency challenges. By integrating Tencent RTC, Vision Agents gives developers worldwide a reliable transport option for delivering low-latency, multimodal AI experiences to users in Asia. Developers can improve real-time communication performance by simply swapping the interface.

Wison Xie, Head of Product at Tencent RTC, said: “Vision Agents represents exactly where conversational AI is heading, beyond voice-only, into agents that can truly see, hear, and act in real time. By bringing Tencent RTC’s global real-time backbone to the Vision Agents framework, we are giving developers worldwide a turnkey path to ship multimodal agents that perform reliably from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen. This collaboration reinforces our commitment to powering the next generation of real-time AI experiences for enterprises and developers across global market.”

Neevash Ramdial, Director of Marketing and Vision Agents Lead, said, “Our goal with Vision Agents is to make real-time AI development faster, more flexible, and open, giving developers the freedom to choose the models, infrastructure, and plugins that work best for their applications. Developers building global conversational AI applications also need reliable real-time performance in every market, and Tencent RTC brings high-quality, low-latency connectivity across Asia to the Vision Agents ecosystem. We’re excited to work with Tencent RTC to help developers scale multimodal AI experiences worldwide while having the freedom to use whichever plugin or model best fits their app.”

About Tencent Cloud:
Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.

About Tencent RTC: 
Tencent RTC provides real-time communication solutions, including audio/video calling, live streaming, and in-game voice. With enterprise-grade security, AI-powered enhancements, and a global network of over 3,200 nodes, Tencent RTC powers mission-critical communication for customers worldwide.

About Vision Agents: 
Vision Agents is Stream’s open-source framework that helps developers quickly build real-time video AI applications. It works out of the box with most major LLM, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, avatar, and infrastructure providers, so teams can go from idea to production in just a few lines of code, building everything from real-time sports coaches to rich, context-aware avatars.

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SOURCE Tencent Cloud

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