Born in South Carolina in 1916, she moved to New York City to live with an aunt during the Great Depression. By 1974, when she earned a bachelor’s degree from Fordham College at Lincoln Center, she was in her late 50s. She had served as executive secretary of the city’s Community Mental Health Board, and two years earlier, helped form and lead Black Citizens for Fair Media, a volunteer group that challenged broadcasters’ discriminatory employment practices and negative depictions of Black people.

“At first we thought broadcasters could do as they pleased. … Then we found out that ‘the airwaves belong to the people,’ and that phrase became our slogan and call to action,’” she once wrote.

They pressured major networks into changing their programming, employment, and training policies—and if they resisted, Bowen’s group filed challenges to the renewal of their broadcast license with the Federal Communications Commission until they relented. In the late 1980s, her group became the Foundation for Minority Interests in Media. Renamed the Emma Bowen Foundation following her death in 1996, it connects students of color with internships at leading media companies.

At Fordham, Emma Bowen’s spirit is reflected not only in the public service mission of WFUV but also in the students supporting Bronx farmers markets through the Center for Community Engaged Learning and in alumni like trustee Valerie Irick Rainford, FCRH ’86, and Patricia David, GABELLI ’81, recently honored by Inclusion magazine as “trailblazing leaders who wrote the playbook for implementing” diversity, equity, and inclusion values and practices in the workplace. Bowen’s life and legacy deserve to be better known.

Fordham trustee Valerie Irick Rainford, FCRH ’86, and Patricia David, GABELLI ’81, are among the eight executives in the magazine’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Hall of Fame Class of 2023.

In her “Last Word” column in the winter 2023 issue of the magazine, Sheila A. Robinson, the founder Diversity Woman Media, noted that Rainford, David, and the other honorees “began this work before there even were titles like chief diversity officer.”

“While we still have a long way to go and much work to do, now is the time to salute those women and men on the front lines who have made a difference. … They paved the way for the rest of us,” Robinson wrote, “and their tireless work in the trenches of the battle for equity, inclusion, and belonging is why I feel optimistic for the next generation.”

A ‘Pay-It-Forward Commitment’ to Elevating People

David, who was born in England and grew up in the Bronx, graduated from Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics and a minor in accounting. She capped a decades-long corporate career at JPMorgan Chase, where she served as the chief diversity officer and was instrumental in launching the company’s Advancing Black Leaders strategy and its Office of Disability Inclusion, which she described as her proudest achievement.

“Disability can and will affect everyone,” she told Inclusion magazine. “Raising awareness, busting the myths, and being intentional about this community was personally refreshing to me.”

The magazine also noted David’s “pay-it-forward commitment” to supporting students at Fordham, where she has “led large-group diversity education sessions for first-year students” at the Gabelli School of Business and supported a high-school pipeline program to help bring more students of color to Fordham.

In 2016, she received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Fordham and delivered the keynote address at the Gabelli School of Business graduate diploma ceremony. One year earlier, the Gabelli School paid tribute to her by creating the Patricia David Trailblazer Award, presented annually to a graduating senior who has demonstrated a dedication to inclusiveness in the business world.

Since retiring from JPMorgan Chase in 2018, David has been working as a mentor, coach, and consultant. She also recently published a book, The ‘Her’story of Davidisms: My Straight-Shooting Answers to 30 Years of Career Questions People Have Asked Me (Picard Press, 2021).

Challenging Assumptions, Providing Opportunities

Like David, Rainford grew up in the Bronx and eventually worked at JPMorgan Chase, where she was a managing director and led the company’s Advancing Black Leaders strategy.

“Under her leadership, representation of Black professionals rose to historic levels, with an increase in Black senior executives by over 50 percent in three years,” Inclusion magazine reported.

Prior to her tenure at JPMorgan Chase, she had a 21-year career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where she was the first Black woman to rise to senior vice president. Today, as the founding CEO of Elloree Talent Strategies, she advises C-suite executives on the best strategies for advancing diverse talent.

She is also the author of an award-winning memoir, Until the Brighter Tomorrow: One Woman’s Courageous Climb from the Projects to the Podium (Eloree Press, 2014), and a founding member of the Black Women for Black Girls Giving Circle. She has received numerous awards and distinctions, including recognition on Black Enterprise’s list of the Most Powerful Women in Business and on The Network Journal’s list of 25 Most Influential Women in Business.

Rainford has been a generous supporter of Fordham and its students. She joined the University’s Board of Trustees in 2019, and in early 2021, she was the driving force behind the creation of the Diversity Fund, which provides financial aid to economically disadvantaged undergraduates and those from underrepresented groups who are living on campus.

“I want my legacy—from struggle to success—to challenge long-standing assumptions and expectations for what talent from underserved communities can achieve when provided with access and opportunity,” she told Inclusion magazine.

Dr. Skorton will be awarded an honorary doctorate during the commencement ceremonies, as will eight other people who have distinguished themselves in business, law, the arts, or public service. See here for full details on Fordham’s commencement ceremonies.

Honorary doctorates of humane letters will be awarded to Dr. Skorton and to Judith Altmann, vice president of the Holocaust Child Survivors of Connecticut; Gregory Boyle, SJ, head of the gang-intervention group Homeboy Industries; Maurice “Mo” Cunniffe, FCRH ’54, a successful businessman and key supporter of Fordham; Patricia David, GABELLI ’81, global head of diversity for JPMorgan Chase; and Sr. Carol Keehan, DC, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association of the United States.

An honorary doctorate of laws will be awarded to Loretta A. Preska, LAW ’73, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Honorary doctorates of fine arts will be awarded to Robert Battle, artistic director for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and to Henry Cobb, founding partner at the architecture firm Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners and co-designer of Fordham Law School’s new building.

Cobb and Preska will receive their honorary doctorates at the law school’s diploma ceremony, to be held Monday, May 23, at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan. All other honorary doctorates will be awarded at the main University commencement on May 21.

Preska will speak at Fordham Law School’s diploma ceremony. David will speak at the Gabelli School of Business’ diploma ceremony for master’s degree candidates, to be held May 23 at the Beacon Theatre. Father Boyle will speak at the diploma ceremony for the Graduate School of Social Service, to be held May 23 at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall.

David Skorton became the first physician to lead the Smithsonian Institution when he began his tenure in July 2015. He oversees 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoo, and various research centers devoted to astrophysics, tropical research, the natural environment, and other areas.

During his tenure, Dr. Skorton has made arts programming a priority at the Smithsonian, and he continues to advocate for a greater national commitment to arts and humanities education. In an address at the National Press Club in December, he called for reversing what he called our nation’s “disinterest and disinvestment in the arts and humanities” while also preserving the nation’s commitment to science.

As he put it, “This commitment must be based on an understanding that the arts and humanities complement science and that together they us make better thinkers, better decision makers, and better citizens.”

Dr. Skorton earned both his bachelor’s degree in psychology and his medical degree from Northwestern University before completing his residency and fellowship in cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1979. He then joined the faculty of the University of Iowa, where he held professorships in internal medicine, biomedical engineering, and other fields before serving as the university’s president from 2003 to 2006.

In 2006 he was named president of Cornell University, where under his leadership the university joined with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to win a competition to develop a new campus, Cornell Tech, on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. He also won praise as a highly effective fundraising at both Cornell and the University of Iowa.

Dr. Skorton has also served as a professor in Cornell’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and in the departments of medicine and pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is a pioneer in applying computer analysis and processing to improve cardiac imaging, and has published two major texts and numerous other writings on cardiac imaging and image processing.

He is also an amateur flute and saxophone player who once co-hosted a weekly Latin jazz program on the University of Iowa’s public radio station.

Other Honorary Degree Recipients:

Judith Altmann is a Holocaust survivor who shares her story widely in Connecticut and Westchester County schools as a way of encouraging young people to make a better world. Born in 1924 in Jasina, Czechoslovakia, she was confined in Nazi camps at Auschwitz, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, and Bergen Belsen in 1944 and 1945. She is a vice president of the Holocaust Child Survivors of Connecticut and recipient of the Anti-Defamation League’s Daniel R. Ginsberg Humanitarian Award for 2013.

Robert Battle is artistic director for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which offers a BFA in dance in conjunction with Fordham. Renowned for his challenging, athletic, and lyrical choreography, Battle was named one of the Masters of African American Choreography by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2005, among his other honors. He established the Ailey company’s New Directions Choreography Lab to nurture emerging talents, and continues to expand the company’s community outreach and education programs.

Gregory Boyle, SJ, is executive director of Homeboy Industries, one of the nation’s largest gang-intervention organizations. Hundreds of former gang members have changed their lives by taking advantage of the organization’s work program and its services including education, legal help, and substance abuse counseling. Father Boyle is an internationally recognized expert on gang intervention approaches and author of The New York Times bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (Free Press, 2011).

Henry N. Cobb is a founding partner at the award-winning architecture firm Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners. Along with his colleague Yvonne Szeto, he designed the new 22-story Fordham Law School and McKeon Residence Hall building at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. His many other distinctive projects include the iconic John Hancock Tower over Boston’s historic Copley Square, which earned the prestigious Twenty-Five-Year Award from the American Institute of Architects.

Maurice “Mo” Cunniffe, FCRH ’54, chairman and CEO of Vista Capital, is a successful engineer, businessman, entrepreneur, and Fordham trustee emeritus who is one of the University community’s most vital and longstanding supporters. He played a pivotal role in the expansion of Fordham Prep as one of its trustees from 1983 to 1995, and his extraordinary financial support for Fordham was recognized in 2013 with the renaming of the Administration Building at the Rose Hill campus in his honor. He served on the Fordham University Board of Trustees from 1995 to 2003.

Patricia David, GABELLI ’81, managing director and global head of diversity for JP Morgan Chase, has been widely recognized for integrating diversity efforts throughout the company over the past 15 years. With her help, the company was named to Black Enterprise’s 2015 list of the most diverse companies, and she herself has received honors including the YMCA’s Black Achievers in Industry award. She serves on the advisory board for the Gabelli School of Business and was named the school’s Alumna of the Year for 2015.

Sr. Carol Keehan, DC, is a passionate advocate for expanding health care access. Sister Carol was recognized by President Obama for helping to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, and Pope Benedict XVI bestowed on her the Cross for the Church and Pontiff to honor her humanitarian efforts. Since 2005 she has been president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, a membership organization comprising more than 600 Catholic hospitals and 1,400 other health ministries.

Loretta A. Preska, LAW ’73, is chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In more than two decades as a judge she has ruled on many high-profile cases, such as those involving computer hacking, sentencing of a Somali pirate involved in hijacking a U.S.-flagged cargo ship, and the parody of an Annie Leibovitz photograph. She is a steadfast and generous supporter of Fordham who received Fordham Law School’s Louis J. Lefkowitz Public Service Award and the Fordham Law Alumni Association’s Medal of Achievement. A member of the Fordham University Board of Trustees from 2007 to 2013, she is now a trustee fellow.