Emmanuel College announces 2025 Commencement Speaker and Honorary Degree Recipients

The College will celebrate its 103rd Commencement Exercises on Saturday, May 10th, at 11:00 a.m. on its Fenway campus.

Throughout her distinguished career in public service, District Attorney Ryan has exemplified and advanced the values of rule of law, transparency, and care for the well-being and dignity of all, including our society’s most vulnerable.

The Commonwealth’s only woman District Attorney, she represents a highly diverse county that is home to over one-quarter of the state’s population. Among constituents and fellow public servants alike, she has earned praise for ensuring the fairness and integrity of the more than 30,000 prosecutions her office conducts each year, as well as for creating dozens of best-in-class crime prevention programs. 

A Somerville native, Ryan is a summa cum laude graduate of Emmanuel College (class of 1976) and a cum laude graduate of Boston College Law School. Earlier in her career, she served as an adjunct professor of law at Emmanuel, and in 2017 she joined the College’s Board of Trustees.

Honorary Degree Recipients 

he 2025 Commencement will also see honorary degrees awarded to Cecilia Ibeabuchi ’85, a registered nurse and former site manager of the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program’s St. Francis House Clinic, and Mark B. Kerwin, Deputy Director and Chief Financial Officer Emeritus of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

For over three decades, Cecilia Ibeabuchi has worked tirelessly to provide superb, whole-person healthcare to individuals experiencing homelessness in the Boston area. Born in Nigeria, she emigrated to the United States in the mid-1980s and went on to earn multiple degrees, including a bachelor’s in biology from Emmanuel College in 1985. In 1995, Ibeabuchi joined the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, where she originated the idea for a foot clinic run out of a shelter. Through her interactions with patients in the clinic, Ibeabuchi seeks to build trust, identify needs, and connect individuals with the resources and support they need to reclaim their lives. For years she has recruited nursing students from local colleges and universities, including Emmanuel College, to serve in the foot clinic.

Throughout his decades-long professional life, Mark Kerwin has enriched the fabric of civic life in the Boston area by advancing the scope and impact of key mission-driven institutions.

Currently, he serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of Catholic Charities Boston, which provides vital services to vulnerable individuals and families across Eastern Massachusetts. Previously, he spent over two decades at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. As the museum’s Deputy Director and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), he was instrumental in several initiatives, including the New American Wing and the successful merger of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts into Tufts University, ensuring the institution’s future as a premier art school. Earlier in his career, he served for 13 years as CFO of Emerson College. A native of Quincy, MA, Kerwin earned a bachelor's degree from Boston College and a master's in business administration (MBA) from Babson College.