Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian-American reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize and one of Newsweek's "150 Women Who Shake the World," will present the commencement address at Rice University May 14.
WuDunn and her husband, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, shared the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for their coverage of the mass movement for democracy and its subsequent suppression in China. More recently they co-authored "A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity," a 2014 best-seller about altruism and how to effect change in society with evidence-based strategies. The book became a three-part PBS documentary in 2015.
WuDunn is among the few who have worked at The New York Times as a journalist and an executive. She held management roles in strategic planning and circulation sales and served as editor for international markets, energy and industry. As a foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Beijing, WuDunn reported on economic, financial, political and social issues.
The wife-and-husband team also co-authored a No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," about the challenges facing women around the globe. To create more awareness of this issue, WuDunn helped launch the "Half the Sky" multiplatform digital effort, which included a popular documentary series on PBS, mobile games and a Facebook game that was ranked No. 9 in popularity in its second week on the platform.
A former vice president in the investment management division at Goldman, Sachs and Co. and a former commercial loan officer at Bankers Trust, WuDunn has an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. She also has a B.A. from Cornell University and a Master of Public Administration degree from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Among her many other honors are the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the Asia Women in Business Corporate Leadership Award, the Pearl S. Buck Woman of the Year Award, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Prize, the George Polk Award and an Overseas Press Club award. She has been a judge for the State Department's Secretary's Innovation Award for Women's and Girls' Empowerment and has won a White House Project EPIC (Enhancing Perceptions in Culture) Award.
WuDunn served as the first anchor of an evening news headlines program for a digital cable TV channel, the Discovery-Times. Last year Business Insider named her one of the 31 most successful graduates of Harvard Business School.
A committee of undergraduate and graduate students worked with the Office of the President to select WuDunn as the commencement speaker. Melissa Marschall, professor of political science, served as faculty adviser to the committee, and David Vassar, senior assistant to the president, also served on the committee.