Honorary Degree Recipients
Sheryl Sandberg (Undergraduate Speaker)
Doctor of Humane Letters
Sheryl Sandberg is the founder and chair of the Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to build a more equal and resilient world through three initiatives: Lean In, Option B and the Dave Goldberg Scholarship Program. Launched in 2013, Lean In supports a global community of over 140,000 Lean In Circles in 183 countries.
Sandberg is also the co-founder of Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners (SBVP), an early-stage venture investing in consumer, enterprise, climate and health care technology. Sandberg previously served as chief operating officer at Meta for 14 years, during which the company grew from $150 million to over $110 billion in annual revenue and implemented industry-defining benefits and programs to make the workplace more inclusive.
Earlier in her career, Sandberg was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google, chief of staff for the U.S. Treasury Department under President Clinton, a consultant with McKinsey & Company and an economist with the World Bank.
Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, Sandberg led the documentary “Screams Before Silence” (2024), which documents the sexual violence committed during the assault through firsthand testimony.
Sandberg is the bestselling author of three books: “Lean In” (2013), “Lean In for Graduates” (2014), and “Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy” (2017), which she co-authored with Adam Grant.
She received a BA, summa cum laude, from Harvard University and an MBA, with highest distinction, from Harvard Business School.
Isabel Wilkerson (Graduate Speaker)
Doctor of Humane Letters
Heralded as one of the most important narrative nonfiction writers of our time, Isabel Wilkerson is the author of two critically acclaimed bestsellers, both published by Random House: “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” (2010) and “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” (2020).
“The Warmth of Other Suns,” which earned a National Book Critics Circle Award, focuses on the personal experiences of three individuals to tell the sweeping history of the six million Black Americans who left the South in search of better lives between World War I and 1970. In 2024, The New York Times named it the No. 1 Nonfiction Book of the 21st Century and the No. 2 Best Book of the 21st Century.
“Caste,” which also relies on the true stories of real people, shows how an insidious hidden caste system in America determines who holds power and agency. A New York Times review called it “a book that changes the weather inside a reader” and “an instant American classic.” Time magazine named it the No. 1 Nonfiction Book of the Year.
Wilkerson began her professional career as a newspaper journalist. In 1994, while working as Chicago bureau chief at The New York Times, she won a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, honored in the feature writing category for her articles on the 1993 Midwestern floods and her profile of a 10-year-old Chicago boy who became a de facto parent to his four siblings. Wilkerson is the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and the first Black journalist to win for individual reporting.
A graduate of Howard University, she has lectured at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and taught at Princeton, Emory and Boston University.
Larry Kanarek ’76
Doctor of Business Administration
Larry Kanarek ’76 was an invaluable member of McKinsey & Co. for 34 years — serving as a senior partner for 23 of them — before retiring in 2014.
His client work at the global management-consulting firm included developing restructuring strategies that boosted corporate focus, customer satisfaction, product innovation, employment growth and investor returns at Fortune 100 companies. One such strategy resulted in what was then the largest-ever corporate breakup, creating a significant increase in employment, revenues and profitability.
As a top manager at McKinsey, Kanarek sat on the firm’s internal board of directors for 18 years, chaired its global-partner election and evaluation committees for 15 years, and served as its first chief risk officer. In all his roles at the company, he was adept at recognizing and nurturing the talents of others, especially their leadership abilities.
Brandeis has long benefited from Kanarek’s service. He was a member of the Board of Trustees from 2010-17, presiding as board chair from 2016-17. Alongside business professor Ben Gomes-Casseres, he also taught a course called Alliance, Acquisition and Divestment Strategy from 2015-19.
Kanarek currently consults on a pro bono basis in the field of education, most recently working with the president of Heterodox Academy, a nonpartisan membership organization that seeks to ensure universities remain places where intellectual curiosity, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement can thrive.
Meyer Koplow ’72, P’02, P’05
Doctor of Laws
Attorney Meyer G. Koplow ’72, P’02, P’05, is of counsel in the litigation practice of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a law firm in New York City.
Recognized for his expertise in the resolution of complicated and contentious legal and business issues, he was a principal negotiator of the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, which resolved issues between the major tobacco companies and 46 U.S. states, five U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. Koplow has also played a key role in major class-action asbestos and disabled-persons settlements and in the resolution of claims against mortgage lenders after the 2008-09 financial crisis.
After graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis, Koplow earned a JD from New York University School of Law, where he served as executive editor and notes and comment editor at the New York University Law Review.
Koplow has devoted years of service to Brandeis. From 2006-21, he was a member of the university’s Board of Trustees, presiding as chair during the last four years of his tenure. He also chaired the board’s budget and finance committee and the nominating and governance committee.
He is a board member and is active in Our Generation Speaks, a program housed at the Heller School, which annually brings 30 Israeli and Palestinian fellows to Brandeis to create startups together, engage in difficult conversations that result in lasting bonds between them and foster leadership skills to drive change in the Middle East. He serves on the board of Encounter, an educational organization that seeks to foster courageous Jewish communal leadership on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also serves as president of the International Beit Din, facilitating religious divorces for wives whose husbands refuse to free them to remarry.
Jeannette A. McCarthy
Doctor of Laws
A lifelong resident of Waltham, Massachusetts, Jeannette A. McCarthy has been serving the people of her hometown through public office and volunteer work for four decades. Her late mother worked at Brandeis for 25 years in the campus kitchen, becoming co-chair baker.
McCarthy, a member of Waltham High School’s Class of 1971, went on to graduate magna cum laude from Boston College with a degree in biology. After working as a bookkeeper in the family business to save money for graduate school, she earned a juris doctor, cum laude, from Suffolk University Law School, and a master’s degree in criminal justice from Northeastern University.
Following several years in private law practice, McCarthy served on the Waltham School Committee from 1986-91. She worked in the city’s Law Department as a staff attorney, assistant city solicitor and city solicitor from 1992-2000 and served on the Waltham City Council from 2002-03. In 2004 she was elected mayor of Waltham, a position she has held for the past 22 years.
As mayor, McCarthy has dedicated herself to improving public education, city services and quality of life in Waltham. During her years in office, she has worked to expand and preserve open space, including by extending the Mass Central Rail Trail, and overseen the $375 million construction of an innovative high school that combines academics with vocational programs.
McCarthy is Waltham’s only elected official to have worked in all three branches of the city’s government, and the first woman to serve as mayor. In 2014, her fellow mayors from across the Bay State elected her president of the Massachusetts Mayors’ Association. She has received honors from numerous other organizations, including the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, for her support for children and public education.
L. Rafael Reif
Doctor of Engineering
For more than four decades, electrical engineer L. Rafael Reif’s visionary leadership has informed and advanced scientific research and higher education in this country.
As MIT’s 17th president, from 2012-22, Reif was a driving force behind numerous pedagogical milestones, including the creation of the MITx and edX programs, which made free and fee-based online courses accessible to millions of learners across the globe. He spearheaded the Task Force on the Future of MIT Education, which in 2014 led to the Institute’s adoption of blended learning models. He oversaw the creation of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, which advances computer science and artificial intelligence education and research while furthering the study of the social and ethical dimensions of computing. He also established the MIT Quest for Intelligence, an Institute-wide initiative that probes the boundary between natural and machine intelligence.
During Reif’s tenure, Kendall Square emerged as a world-renowned hub of research and innovation. This was spurred in part by the 2016 launch of the incubator and venture-capital fund The Engine, which supports “tough tech” startups that bring scientific and engineering breakthroughs to bear on the world’s most pressing problems. A champion of nanotechnology, he oversaw the construction of the open-access, state-of-the-art MIT.nano research facility. In 2021, he released MIT’s ambitious action plan to address the global climate crisis.
The inventor or co-inventor on 15 patents, Reif has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1980. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received numerous honors for his pioneering work, including the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation’s Frank E. Taplin, Jr. Public Intellectual Award.
Shai Reshef
Doctor of Humane Letters
Following a highly successful career in the for-profit education sector, entrepreneur Shai Reshef has dedicated himself and his resources to transforming higher education from a privilege into a basic human right.
From 1989-2005, Reshef served as chair of the Kidum Group, an international for-profit educational services company. From 2001-04, he also chaired KIT eLearning, a subsidiary of Kidum and the online partner of the University of Liverpool, creating Europe’s first online university. In 2005, he sold Kidum to Kaplan Inc. and set his sights on opening the gates to education for the millions of people worldwide who face financial, cultural, political and other barriers.
In 2009, Reshef founded University of the People, or UoPeople, the first nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited American online university dedicated to opening access to higher education globally. UoPeople harnesses technology and volunteerism to make high-quality, low-cost higher education accessible to all qualified students, especially disadvantaged, displaced or underserved individuals. Today, UoPeople has a pool of 47,000 volunteer educators and serves 170,000 students in more than 200 countries — including refugees, Afghan women and internally displaced people. Based on a “learning to earning” model, UoPeople offers in-demand, job-related degrees, making graduates highly employable.
Reshef is widely lauded for his pioneering work in democratizing higher education. His numerous honors include the Yidan Prize for Educational Development, informally known as the “Nobel Prize for Education,” and an Ashoka fellowship. Named to Fast Company’s list of the 100 Most Creative People and to Wired Magazine’s Smart List of 50 People Who Will Change the World, he has given several influential TED Talks and is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the World Economic Forum and The Economist’s Human Potential Summit.
Toshizo Watanabe ’73*
Doctor of Business Administration
Toshizo Watanabe ’73, who majored in politics at Brandeis as a Wien International Scholar, is dedicated to strengthening educational and cultural ties between Japan and the United States.
To extend his philanthropic reach, he established the Toshizo Watanabe Foundation in 2008. He supports scholarships bestowed through the U.S.-Japan Council and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies at Stanford, and opened the Toshizo Watanabe Culinary Cultural Center at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Los Angeles.
In 2018, Watanabe gave Brandeis $10 million to establish the Toshizo Watanabe International Scholarship Program, the largest single gift from an international graduate to the university. The undergraduate and graduate students who come to Brandeis as Watanabe Scholars each year are selected from those who have studied or are studying at top-tier Japanese universities.
Watanabe, who grew up in Zushi, Japan, is former president/CEO of Nikken Global, a wellness products company. He credits his Brandeis education and the support he received through the Wien International Scholarship Program with making his career successes possible.
He has received many honors, including Iceland’s Order of the Falcon, Japan’s Foreign Minister’s Commendation and the Japanese American National Museum’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019, he was presented with the Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award, the highest recognition given solely to the university’s graduates.
* in absentia