N.C. A&T Taps Emmy Award-Winning Actor Brown as Spring Commencement Speaker

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (April 6, 2021) – Two-time Emmy Award-winning actor Sterling K. Brown will be the keynote speaker for North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s commencement ceremonies Sunday, May 9.

Two ceremonies will be held at Truist Stadium on campus: 8:30 a.m. for spring 2021 graduates and 4 p.m. is for all 2020 graduates.

Brown stars in NBC’s Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated drama series “This Is Us.” For his role as Randall Pearson, he has received an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, as well as four consecutive nominations in the category. He received a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Drama Series, becoming the first African American actor to win his category in the award show’s 75-year history.

He also made history by becoming the first African American actor to receive the SAG Award for Outstanding Male Actor in a Drama and received two SAG awards with his cast for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, as well as the African American Film Critics Association Best Actor award for two consecutive years. In 2018, Brown was included in TIME magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world.

Additionally, Brown co-starred and earned a SAG Award alongside the ensemble cast of Marvel’s Academy Award-winning film “Black Panther,” which broke box office records worldwide.

A lover of theatre, he has a variety of stage credits including New York and Los Angeles productions of “Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3),” “Macbeth,” “The Brother/Sister Plays” and “The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui” opposite Al Pacino.

Brown graduated with a B.A. in drama from Stanford University before receiving his MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

N.C. A&T expects to award degrees to more than 1,000 undergraduate and nearly 250 graduate students completing their studies this spring.