Kogod School of Business and Professional Studies

Honorary Degree Recipient: David M. Rubenstein

David M. Rubenstein is co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private investment firms. Established in 1987, Carlyle now manages $426 billion from 28 offices around the world.  

A Baltimore native, Rubenstein is the control person of Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles. 

Rubenstein serves as chair of the boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Gallery of Art, the Economic Club of Washington, and the University of Chicago; a trustee of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Constitution Center, the Brookings Institution, and the World Economic Forum; and a director of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among other board seats. 

A leader in the area of patriotic philanthropy, Rubenstein has made transformative gifts for the restoration or repair of the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Monticello, Montpelier, Mount Vernon, Arlington House, Iwo Jima Memorial, the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, the National Archives, the National Zoo, the Library of Congress, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.  

Rubenstein is an original signer of the Giving Pledge; the host of The David Rubenstein Show, Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein, and Iconic America: Our Symbols and Stories with David Rubenstein; and the author of The American Story, How to Lead, The American Experiment, and How to Invest. 

School of Public Affairs

Honorary Degree Recipient: Michael S. Barr

Michael S. Barr took office as the vice chair for supervision of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System on July 19, 2022, for a four-year term. He also serves as a member of the board of governors for an unexpired term ending January 31, 2032. 

Prior to his appointment to the board, Barr was the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Frank Murphy Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, the Roy F. and Jean Humphrey Proffitt Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, and the founder and faculty director of the University of Michigan’s Center on Finance, Law, and Policy. At the University of Michigan Law School, Barr taught financial regulation and international finance and co-founded the International Transactions Clinic and the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project. 

Barr served as the US Department of the Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial institutions from 2009 to 2010. Under President William J. Clinton, he served as the treasury secretary’s special assistant, as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury, as special adviser to the president, and as a special adviser and counselor on the policy planning staff at the US Department of State. 

Additionally, Barr served as a law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter in 1993, and previously to the Honorable Pierre N. Leval, then of the Southern District of New York. 

Barr received a BA in history from Yale University, an MPhil in international relations from Oxford University, and a JD from Yale Law School. 

School of International Service

Honorary Degree Recipient: British A. Robinson

British A. Robinson serves as the coordinator for Prosper Africa, a US presidential national security initiative aimed at strengthening the strategic and economic partnership with African countries. She collaborates closely with the White House National Security Council and 17 US federal agencies to forge partnerships with businesses, investors, and government leaders. 

Robinson is a visionary leader with decades of experience in public-private partnerships, social impact investing, corporate social responsibility, global public health, education, and government policy. She launched her career at Citibank in retail banking and private wealth. For more than a decade, she worked with the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States as national director of the Office of Social and International Ministries, where she managed their socially responsible investing program. 

Robinson began her career in government at the US Department of State working on the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as deputy coordinator/director of private sector engagement, where she oversaw public-private partnerships to strengthen the world’s largest global health program addressing HIV/AIDS. She recently served as president and CEO of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. 

In 2022, Robinson was recognized for her distinguished career by Forbes magazine’s 50 Over 50 for Impact, a list of entrepreneurs and changemakers helping to make the world a better, more equitable place. She holds a master’s degree in government from Johns Hopkins University, a bachelor’s degree in public policy and business administration from George Washington University, and an honorary doctorate from Fairfield University. 

College of Arts and Sciences

Honorary Degree Recipient: Caroline Aaron, CAS/BA '74

Caroline Aaron is known to theater, film, and television audiences and is also a published author and playwright. 

Aaron made her Broadway debut in Robert Altman’s Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and later appeared in the film. The following Broadway season, she starred in the revival of The Iceman Cometh. She next starred in Mike Nichols’s Broadway smash comedy Social Security, then in I Hate Hamlet. Aaron headlined the West Coast premiere of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig, for which she was acknowledged with both a Helen Hayes and Dramalogue Award. Back on Broadway, she starred in Woody Allen’s comedy Honeymoon Hotel, then headlined Lincoln Center’s award-winning play A Kid Like Jake. When Aaron played the title role in All the Days at McCarter Theatre Center, she was named best actress by several newspapers in the New York/New Jersey area. At the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles, she headlined Call Waiting, which became a hit and was later made into a film available on Amazon Prime Video. 

Aaron has been in more than one hundred films and is frequently in demand from top directors such as Woody Allen, the late Mike Nichols, Nora Ephron, Paul Mazursky, and Robert Altman. Her favorite film roles include Kevin Spacey’s Beyond the Sea, 21 and 22 Jump Street, Just Like Heaven, Nancy Drew, Surveillance, Love Comes Lately, Edward Scissorhands, Anywhere but Here, Big Night, and Bounce among others. Later this year she will be seen in Theater Camp, Between the Temples, and Fourth Dementia. 

Television audiences are also familiar with her work as a guest star on hundreds of shows. She has recurred on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ghosts, Episodes, and Transparent. Aaron is best known for her role as Shirley Maisel on the hit Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. 

School of Education and School of Communication

Honorary Degree Recipient: Kwame Alexander

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, Emmy Award–winning producer, and number one New York Times bestselling author of 40 books, including This Is The Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, Why Fathers Cry at Night, An American Story, The Door of No Return, Becoming Muhammad Ali (co-authored with James Patterson), Rebound, which was shortlisted for the prestigious UK Carnegie Medal, and The Undefeated, the National Book Award nominee, Newbery Honor, and Caldecott Medal–winning picture book illustrated by Kadir Nelson.  

Alexander is also the Emmy-winning executive producer, showrunner, and writer of The Crossover, a television series based on his Newbery Medal–winning novel of the same name, which premiered on Disney+ in April 2023. The series was produced in partnership with LeBron James’s SpringHill Company and Big Sea Entertainment, Alexander’s production company that is dedicated to creating innovative, highly original children’s and family entertainment. Other current projects in development at Big Sea include America’s Next Great Author, the groundbreaking reality television series for writers.  

A regular contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition, Alexander is the creator and host of the Why Fathers Cry podcast, which premiered September 2023, featuring conversations with fathers and sons about love and parenting and loss. He regularly shares his passion for literacy, books, and the craft of writing around the world at such events as the Chautauqua Lecture Series, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and a global literacy symposium in Ghana, where he opened the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic. Most recently he was appointed the Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and inaugural writer in residence at the Chautauqua Institution.  

His mission is to change the world, one word at a time. 

Washington College of Law

Honorary Degree Recipient: Sherrilyn Ifill

Sherrilyn Ifill is a civil rights lawyer and scholar. From 2013 to 2022, she served as the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. Ifill recently served as a Ford Foundation fellow and as the Klinsky Visiting Professor for Leadership and Progress at Howard University School of Law. Ifill is currently the Vernon Jordan Distinguished Professor in Civil Rights at Howard Law, where later this year she will launch the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy. Ifill holds a fellowship at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 

Ifill’s tenure at the helm of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was widely praised for elevating the profile, voice and influence of the organization, and for expanding and deepening its work across multiple areas of civil rights law. Ifill’s voice and analysis played a prominent role in shaping our national conversation about race and civil rights during a tumultuous period of racial reckoning in our country. Her strategic vision and counsel remain highly sought after from leaders in government, business, law, grassroots organizations, and academia.  

Ifill began her legal career as a fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, before joining the staff of the LDF as an assistant counsel, where she litigated voting rights cases in the south. In 1993, Ifill left LDF to join the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, where she taught for twenty years before rejoining LDF in 2013 as its president and director-counsel.  

Ifill’s scholarly work has appeared in leading law journals, periodicals, and the nation’s leading newspapers. Her book On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century, was highly acclaimed and is credited with laying the foundation for contemporary conversations about lynching and reconciliation. She is currently completing a new book about race and the current crisis in American democracy titled Is This America?, which will be published by Penguin Press.  

Ifill is a graduate of Vassar College and earned her JD from New York University School of Law. She is the recipient of numerous honorary doctorates and was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021. Ifill is a recipient of the Radcliffe Medal, the Brandeis Medal, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, and the Gold Medal from the New York State Bar Association.