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commencement 2009

Citations for Medalists

While brief citations are read to the Medalists at the commencement ceremony, a longer citation is read to them at the Medalist Brunch that takes place the morning of the ceremony. The full citations are available for you to read here.


Indra K. Nooyi

Indra K. Nooyi. World-renowned leader. Strategic thinker. Advocate for women in the corporate sphere. No billions in sales can begin to measure your influence on the ways of business.

To get here you've taken a far from ordinary path: Born in the state of Tamil Nadu in India, you played in an all-women's rock band. From lead guitar to the cricket field at Madras Christian College. An MBA from Calcutta's Indian Institute of Management before leaving the country of your birth – unheard of for a Brahmin girl in 1978 – and heading to the United States. At Yale, while earning a Master of Public and Private Management, you worked the graveyard shift as a dorm receptionist. Nights paid an extra fifty cents an hour, after all.

At the start of your meteoric rise, you held influential positions at Asea Brown Boveri and Motorola and, in 1994, joined PepsiCo as chief strategist. Your ability to make tough decisions and envision new directions was immediately apparent. Today, as PepsiCo's Chair and CEO, you oversee 198,000 employees working in nearly 200 countries and bringing in annual revenues of more than forty-three billion dollars.

You are a rare executive by any standards. In cricket terms, your leadership vision is something of a corporate "hat trick" – the three elements of what you've aptly named Performance with Purpose. Human, environmental, and talent sustainability are at the heart of every aspect of the quintessentially American company you so brilliantly lead. Under your direction, with your insistence on healthier foods, social responsibility, global awareness, and the best possible business practices for both employees and consumers, its future is more than bright.

You turn your time and talent to others, as well, serving on such boards as the International Rescue Committee, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and Eisenhower Fellowships. When you were named the first female chair of the U.S.- India Business Council just last year, you spoke of India's amazing transformation saying, "The country I go back to is not the same country I left."

As a woman, as a leader, you are never business as usual.
Today, we marvel at your energy, your savvy, your sharp mind, and your inspiring story. We raise a glass – an ice-cold Pepsi, no doubt – in celebration of your many remarkable achievements.


Irene J. Winter

Irene J. Winter. Preeminent scholar. Beloved teacher and prolific author. Expert on the art and architecture of ancient Mesopotamia. With enviable authority and depth of knowledge, you unfailingly bring the past to light.

Your own story begins right here in New York City, and your college years, even closer at Barnard. Class of 1960, you graduated with a B.A. in anthropology – the foundation thereby laid, you claim, for all that was to follow. A masters in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago and then back to Morningside Heights for a Columbia PhD in Art History. Your dissertation, “North Syria and Ivory Carving in the Early First Millennium B.C.” set the place and time and artistic focus for many a future exploration.

Your teaching has taken you from Queens College, City University to Hebrew University in Jerusalem. From New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts to the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge University. But it is at Harvard, where you have been on the faculty since 1988, that you continue to make an indelible mark. William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts since 1995. Department Chair from 1993 to 1996. Member of standing committees on Women, Archaeology, Sanskrit and Indian Studies, and World Religions. Cross-appointed in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Radcliffe Institute Fellow.

In the late 60’s and early 70’s you excavated in Iran at Godin Tepe and Hasanlu. More recently, you served on the Iraq Task Force of the Archaeological Institute of America. You have been active in encouraging efforts to recover and restore looted materials there, to control the plundering of sites, to preserve cultural heritage and the region’s rich history.

That you rarely leave a stone unturned is evidenced by your countless articles, reviews, and edited volumes. In a 1995 essay on Homer’s Phoenicians you wrote about the serendipity of scholarship – “a new perspective on one’s own material occasioned by an unusual lens.” Time and again, you bring this fresh vision to an ancient world.

Today, it is our distinct honor, our privilege, and a point of great pride to celebrate your scholarship. To welcome you back to our own land between two rivers. You have enriched the academic community that we at Barnard hold dear, and for that and so much more, we offer our deepest thanks.


Kay Crawford Murray

Kay Crawford Murray. Attorney. Mentor to women. Acclaimed pioneer in the field of law. For decades, your contribution to your profession and to this, our beloved New York community, has exemplified only the highest ideals.

With an undergraduate degree from Bennington College in Vermont, you went on to earn a master’s from Teachers College, Columbia University. Ever loyal to Morningside Heights, you graduated from Columbia Law School in 1976, a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar during your time there. You began your legal career at Shearman & Sterling and then, in 1979, when the New York City Department of Juvenile Justice was born, you became its first general counsel, a position you held and mastered for the next twenty-three years. For your extraordinary work on behalf of this city’s youth, you received the agency’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

As chair of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Women in Law in the 1980’s, you proposed a childbirth and parenting leave policy for law firms. And in your many years as a member of the committee, you devoted significant efforts to pointing out and helping to eliminate seemingly entrenched gender bias in the legal profession. In 2008, you were the inaugural recipient of the award they named in your honor – the Kay Crawford Murray Award. Following your lead and in your trailblazing spirit, future recipients will strive to advance the professional development of women attorneys and hold the fight for diversity at the core of their work.

It is a testament to the strength of your service that you have been so many times honored. Past president of the Columbia Law School Alumni Association, you were awarded the Lawrence A. Wien Prize for Social Responsibility in 1997. You received the prestigious Howard A. Levine Award for Excellence in Juvenile Justice, and the Edith I. Spivack Award, which for us has special meaning. Spivack graduated from Barnard in 1929. Awards from chapters of the Black Law Students Association of Columbia and Fordham are among those you cherish most.

Today, we gather to cherish you. To pay tribute to your remarkable dedication on behalf of women and children. We marvel at the vital contributions you have made to the cause of justice as we join with our neighbors and the citizens of this great city to praise your life’s work.

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