At the 180th Commencement on May 19, the College will award honorary degrees to doctor and immigrant-community healthcare champion Steven Larson '83, lawyer and college-accessibility proponent Joan Mazzotti, and computer scientist and privacy advocate Latanya Sweeney.
Each year Haverford College awards honorary degrees to people who have distinguished themselves in letters, the sciences, or the arts. Many recipients are noted for their contributions to the overall betterment of humankind and/or Haverford College. At the 180th Commencement ceremony, which will be held Saturday, May 19, the College will award honorary degrees to doctor and co-founder of comprehensive community wellness center Puentes de Salud Steven Larson '83, lawyer and college-accessibility proponent Joan Mazzotti, and computer scientist and privacy advocate Latanya Sweeney.
Steven Larson '83 is a co-founder and the executive director of Puentes de Salud, an ambulatory care health clinic dedicated to the health and wellness of the Latino population of the Philadelphia area. Larson is assistant dean for Global Health Programs and an associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. in fine arts from Haverford College and his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the past 25 years, he has developed an extensive working knowledge of the healthcare issues facing immigrant populations in the United States and in underserved populations worldwide. In 1993 he established Frontline Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine to help students and residents explore the complex issues facing underserved populations. In 1999, with the goal of collaborating nationally with other medical educators committed to global health, Larson joined IHMEC, the International Health Medical Education Consortium (now GHEC). In 2000 he was elected to its Governing Council. From 1993 to 2006, Larson served as the volunteer medical consultant for Project Salud, a nurse-managed migrant health clinic located in rural southern Chester County that provides healthcare to the predominantly Mexican labor force employed in the local agricultural industry. In 2003, recognizing the rapid growth of an urbanized, undocumented Latino population, Larson and his colleagues Jack Ludmir and Matthew O’Brien initiated work to establish Puentes de Salud.
Joan C. Mazzotti was for 16 years executive director of Philadelphia Futures, a nonprofit organization that provides Philadelphia’s low-income, first-generation-to-college students with the resources and opportunities necessary for admission to and success in college, before stepping down in 2017. Upon her retirement, the organization had an annual budget of $3.5 million, a staff of 30, and net assets of over $10 million. She joined Philadelphia Futures in 2000 following 23 years practicing law at Aramark Corporation. At Aramark, she held the position of senior vice president and chief legal counsel of Aramark’s Food and Support Services Group, then a $5.3 billion operating segment of the company. In 1985, she was one of the first women to be included in Aramark’s senior management group.
Mazzotti served as chairwoman of the Rider University Board of Trustees from 1998 to 2002, and was a trustee from 1996 to 2005. In 2006, she and her husband, Michael Kelly, established the Mazzotti Awards in Women's Leadership to provide leadership development opportunities for Rider's women faculty and administrators. In 2014, the University awarded her an honorary doctorate of humane letters. She has also received the Manhattan Institute's Social Entrepreneurship Award, Team Up Philly's 2016 Hero of the Year award, a 2017 Philadelphia City Council resolution recognizing her “exceptional leadership and dedication over the last 16 years as the executive director of Philadelphia Futures,” and the honor of Outstanding Champion of Public Education from the Education Law Center.
Latanya Sweeney creates and uses technology to assess and solve societal, political, and governance problems, and teaches others how to do the same. She is a faculty dean and professor of government and technology in residence at Harvard University, editor-in-chief of open-access forum Technology Science, director and founder of the Data Privacy Lab, former Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and distinguished career professor of computer science, technology, and policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Sweeney has three patents, more than 100 academic publications, and her work is explicitly cited in two U.S. regulations, including the U.S. federal medical privacy regulation (known as HIPAA). She is a recipient of the prestigious Louis D. Brandeis Privacy Award and the American Psychiatric Association's Privacy Advocacy Award. She is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and has testified before government bodies worldwide. She earned her Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 2001—the first African-American woman to do so—and her undergraduate degree in computer science from Harvard University.
Larson, Mazzotti, and Sweeney will all speak at the Commencement ceremony on May 19, which begins at 10 a.m. For more information on Commencement: www.haverford.edu/commencement.
