TV producer Shonda Rhimes ’91 will deliver the commencement address to the Class of 2014, the College announced today. Rhimes will be the 11thwoman to address a graduating class since the start of the 20thcentury.
Rhimes — the creator, head writer and executive producer of "Grey’s Anatomy" and "Private Practice" as well as the political drama "Scandal" — formed her own production company, Shondaland, in 2004. She has written feature films “Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement” (2004) and “Crossroads” (2002). She will receive an honorary Doctor of the Arts from the College.
After Dartmouth, where she studied English literature and creative writing and directed the College’s Black Underground Theatre and Arts Association, she earned an MFA from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. She has won three Golden Globe awards and has been nominated for an Emmy three times.
Rhimes has been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine and has served as a trustee for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2013. She has also been named to Fortune’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Business,” Variety’s “Power of Women” and Glamour’s “Women of the Year.
Other honorary degree recipients include Pulitzer prize winner and Columbia University history professor Eric Foner, astrophysicist and Smithsonian researcher Margaret Geller, entrepreneur and Stanford University professor David Kelley, novelist, poet and playwright Zakes Mda and attorney, philanthropist and chair emeritus of the College’s Board of Trustees William Neukom ’64.
