2018 Commencement Ceremony

Featuring guest speaker Nancy Rubin.

Nancy Hirsch Rubin served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights during the Clinton administration. She has been a teacher, public servant and global champion for human rights, social justice, public service and mental health.

She began her career as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District before going into public service. She worked for the Corporation for National and Community Service and helped build AmeriCorps, which has engaged over 800,000 young Americans in public service programs since 1994.

Rubin was a director of the International Human Rights Law Group and chaired election observation for countries making the transition to democracy. She served on the Leadership Council for Amnesty International and chaired the Committee on Women, Law  and Development, which built legal literacy clinics in Asia, Africa and Latin America. She served on the Brookings Institution’s expert committee on UN Human Rights Mechanisms and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Rubin is a director of the National Democratic Institute and previously served as Director of Women for Women International. She is a leader in the ongoing effort to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and she represented the U.S. at the NGO Forum of the 1985 and 1995 World Conferences on Women. She founded Community Outreach and was the first chair of the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign and served on the board of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services.