Google Manager to Deliver University of Richmond Commencement Address
April 29, 2005
Margaret J. Thomas, a human resources manager for Google Inc., will deliver the commencement address at the University of Richmond May 8. Some 740 undergraduates will receive degrees at the ceremony, which begins at 2 p.m. in the Robins Center. The student speaker will be Chase Austin Rowan of Knoxville, Tenn.
On May 7, Phyllis Katz, an attorney with Sands Anderson Marks & Miller, will speak at the Richmond School of Law commencement, which begins at 2 p.m. in the Robins Center, and David Cryer, retired history professor at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and mortgage lender, will deliver the commencement address for the School of Continuing Studies at 9:30 a.m. in the Robins Center.
Five people will receive honorary degrees May 8. They are Thos. Capps, chairman, president and CEO of Dominion Resources Inc.; Marian Grace Collins Lindblom, president of Central Communications Network Inc.; Kwang-I Yu, a computer scientist and founder of Paracel Inc.; Robert L. Burrus, chairman and partner of McGuire Woods L.L.P.; and Princess Cecilia de Medici, an international patron of the arts.
Lewis W. Moelchert Jr., president of the Spider Management Company, will receive the Trustees’ Distinguished Service Award.
Thomas, a 1992 Richmond graduate, is human resources manager and administrative head for Google’s Santa Monica, Calif., office. She hires and manages for the office and also recently established Google’s employee charitable gift matching program. She holds a B.A. in English and speech communication from Richmond.
She previously worked for the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and Credit Suisse First Boston in New York. In 2000 she became human resources director for start-up software development company Applied Semantics in Los Angeles, which was purchased by Google.
Rowan will receive a B.S.B.A. degree with a concentration in finance. He will begin working in July as an analyst in investment banking for Lehman Brothers in New York. He has held internships with Lehman Brothers, the British House of Commons and the U.S. Department of Justice. He also served as a page in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Katz is a member of Sands Anderson Marks & Miller’s employment and local government practice groups. In addition to her preventative law practice, she works on cases involving discrimination, wrongful termination, employment torts and contractual issues, among others. Prior to joining the firm, she was appointed by three different governors to direct Virginia’s Department of Employee Relations Counselors. Earlier, she was an assistant attorney general practicing in the areas of education, civil rights and disability law.
Katz also is founder of LINC (Legal Information Network for Cancer), which provides legal and business assistance to cancer patients. She is winner of the 2000 Pro Bono Publico award from the Richmond Bar Association and is an adjunct professor at Richmond School of Law. She earned a B.A. in political science from Rutgers, a master’s of urban and regional planning from Ohio and a J.D. from Richmond.
Cryer drove a taxi and collected bills while working his way to a bachelor’s degree from Richmond’s School of Continuing Studies. He went on to become a Henrico County history teacher, history professor, mortgage lender, bank director and investor.
Capps earned undergraduate and law degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill. After practicing law in Winston-Salem, N.C., he joined Carolina Power & Light as senior counsel. He joined Virginia Power as executive vice president in 1984. He assumed the presidency of Dominion in 1986, and in 1989 he became COO. He later served as CEO, chairman of the board, and president and CEO. After the company’s merger with Consolidated Natural Gas in 2000, Capps became vice chairman, president and CEO of the combined company. He assumed the title of chairman in August 2000.
Lindblom owns Central Communications Network, which provides cell phone equipment and supplies through four locations in Florida. She formerly owned U.S. Medical Corp., a wholesale computer company. She is a former financial analyst and received a B.A. degree from Richmond in 1952.
Yu is a 1973 graduate of the University of Richmond and a native of Hong Kong. A computer scientist in the field of high-speed computing, he made his mark in national security, space programming and the Human Genome Project, which indexed the 40,000 genes that define human beings. In the early 1980s, he invented the Fast Data Finder, a computer system that can cull through volumes of text and locate a desired passage within seconds. In 1992 he founded Paracel Inc., which provided high-speed supercomputer products for analyzing genome and other biological data. The company was sold to Celera Genomics in 2000.
Burrus, a member and former rector of the university’s board of trustees, is chairman of McGuireWoods L.L.P., where he works in corporate and fiduciary counseling, mergers and acquisitions, and shareholder disputes. He also serves as outside counsel for Dominion Resources, Circuit City Stores and a number of other public companies. He received a B.A. degree from Richmond and a law degree from Duke. The University of Richmond named a scholarship program for developing leaders after him in 2002, and he has received the Trustees Distinguished Service Award and the Richmond Alumnus of the Year Award.
de Medici promotes young American musicians through La Gesse Foundation, of which she is founder and president. The foundation also hosts an annual music festival in Toulouse, France. She is the widow of Dr. Abraham Horwitz, a physician, medical professor and prominent leader in public health in Chile until his death in 2001. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees in Greek and Latin from The Catholic University of America. Between work on her degrees, she studied piano at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
Moelchert is responsible for investment of the university’s billion-dollar endowment fund, which has long-term performance at the top quartile versus comparable funds. He is a former member and chair of Commonfund and a former member of the boards of Commonfund Capital and The Evergreen Mutual Funds. He served as chair of the investment advisory committee of the Virginia Retirement System and serves on similar committees for the MCV Foundation, VCU Endowment Fund and Virginia Historical Society. He received B.B.A. and master of accountancy degrees from the University of Georgia.