 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf |
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia and 2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, will deliver the commencement address to graduating students of the UMass Chan at the institution’s 39th Commencement exercises, to be held Sunday, June 3. Prominent Boston businessman, Joey Fund founder and cystic fibrosis activist Joseph O’Donnell and U.S. Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin, MD, MBA, will receive honorary degrees.
A peace activist known for her decades-long, non-violent struggle for freedom, justice and equality in Liberia, Johnson Sirleaf became the first elected female head of state in Africa when she was inaugurated as Liberia’s 24th president in January 2006. Prior to her election, she spent decades fighting to improve the Liberian government while holding numerous public positions. As president, Johnson Sirleaf has worked tirelessly to rebuild the country by focusing on developing infrastructure, maintaining peace and eradicating corruption, as well as improving the health care and educational systems of the country. In 2011, Johnson Sirleaf successfully ran for re-election to a second term as president.
Born in Monrovia, Liberia, Johnson Sirleaf attended high school at the College of West Africa before traveling to the United States to pursue her college studies. She went on to earn a degree in accounting from Madison Business College in Madison, Wis., and continued her studies at the Economics Institute at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 1969, she enrolled at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she studied economics and public policy, earning a master of public administration degree in 1971.
Her career in politics began in 1972 when she delivered a famed commencement address at the College of West Africa, during which she sharply criticized the Liberian government. In 1979, she was named minister of finance by then-President William Tolbert and introduced several measures to curb the mismanagement of government finances. After the 1980 military coup d’état, she briefly served as president of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment, before fleeing the country and the increasingly oppressive military government.
In 2003, when the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL) was formed, Johnson Sirleaf returned to Liberia, where she led the country’s anti-corruption efforts as chairperson of the Governance Reform Commission. She resigned this position to successfully run for president in the 2005 elections.
Johnson Sirleaf received the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Tawakel Karman of Yemen, “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work,” according the Nobel committee that awards the prize.
Over the last several years, the Liberian government has worked closely with UMass Chan on multiple projects aimed at helping the war-torn country rebuild its medical infrastructure, including the establishment of health care training programs at the University of Liberia (UL) and an initiative to rebuild the main library and the A. M. Dogliotti School of Medicine library at UL.
Entrepreneur and cystic fibrosis advocate Joseph O’Donnell to receive honorary degree
 Joseph O’Donnell |
