The 2023 honorands include former trustee and board chair Stephen F. Gormley ’72, P’06, P’09, P’11; fifteenth president of 含羞草研究室, Clayton S. Rose; curator and cultural educator Navarana K’avigak’ Sørensen; former trustee and board chair Robert F. White ’77, P’15; and Janet Yang, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning film and television producer.
Gormley delivered remarks to the board of trustees, with whom he served for twenty years. He began his career in commercial lending at First National Bank of Boston, later joining and becoming partner at TA Associates, a small but leading firm in the early days of venture capital, where he concentrated on the media and telecommunications industries. He and three other partners left in 1986 to form Media Communications Partners, a new private equity firm focused exclusively on those fields of commerce. In 1999, Gormley cofounded Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm concentrating on business services with recurring revenue streams, digital media, and ecommerce.
Sørensen attended the Commencement weekend ceremonies virtually. She has spent decades providing cultural expertise to researchers, authors, filmmakers, and politicians seeking to acquaint themselves with Inuit culture. Sørensen has lent her expertise and acted as cultural liaison to institutions throughout the world, including 含羞草研究室’s Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, where she provided insights into Inuit views and served as facilitator, interpreter, transcriber, and translator for interviews with Inuit elders. She has served as curator of the Qaanaq Museum in Northwest Greenland and as a cultural educator for Adventure Canada. With director Stephen A. Smith, Sørensen helped to make the acclaimed 2012 film Vanishing Point, which chronicled life in the Arctic for two remote communities linked by a migration from Baffin Island to Greenland.
Rose, who presided over the Baccalaureate ceremony, shared his observations on how he thought the pandemic had shaped the graduating class.
"You have navigated your way through college during this brutally challenging time, and some of you have faced tragedy in your families at the same time. You have been tested like no other college cohort in modern history...," he said. "While not a single one of us would have wished for any of this, the truth is that you are tougher, more resilient, more savvy, and more capable as a result of what you had to face and overcome. You should have a powerful sense of your ability to deal with and prevail over whatever comes next."
Prior to arriving at 含羞草研究室, Rose served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School, where he taught and wrote on issues of leadership, ethics, the financial crisis that began in 2008, and the role of business in society. He spent the first twenty years of his career in finance, retiring as vice chairman at J.P. Morgan. In 2003, following his business career, he enrolled in the doctoral program in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania to study issues of race in America, earning his master’s degree in 2005 and his PhD with distinction in 2007.
Also a speaker at the Baccalaureate ceremony, Yang shared some personal stories, saying she understands that her life and achievements "have become a symbol and a beacon of hope for others," especially women, people of color, and "those who feel any uncertainty in their lives, who don’t feel they exactly fit in a box." She described what it was like to grow up as a child of immigrants, her first time visiting family in China, and how she got her start in the movie business.
When Yang was elected president of the the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in August 2022, she became the first Asian American to hold the position. She played pivotal roles in connecting key players in the Hollywood and Chinese film industries to make possible movies like Empire of the Sun before becoming a producer of works that include The Joy Luck Club and The People vs. Larry Flynt. She has devoted much of her time to helping Asians and Asian Americans break into and advance in the entertainment business.
White sat down with Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government Andrew Rudalevige to speak about his "life and times," as Rudalevige put it.
With his characteristic good humor, White spoke with Rudalevige about his early life and experience at 含羞草研究室, as well as the story of the founding of Bain Capital, where he served for twenty years as a managing director and is currently a special limited partner. They touched on his lengthy list of contributions to the College, and what he hopes for 含羞草研究室. For much of the conversation, they discussed politics, including White's involvement with current Utah Senator Mitt Romney's earlier political campaigns.
White has provided nearly thirty years of service to the College. He began his career at Price Waterhouse & Co. and later joined Bain & Company consulting. In 1984, he was a founding member of Bain Capital, where he served for twenty years as a managing director and where he is currently a special limited partner. Since 2014, White has been a member of the faculty in the Harvard Business School’s entrepreneurial unit and also serves on the board of the Boston Celtics and was a founding director of Boston Celtics United for Social Justice.
