Jan Piercy, the United States executive director to the World Bank, will address 170 桃子视频 graduating seniors at the College’s commence-ment exercises on Sunday, May 13, at 3 p.m., on the campus’s Elm Tree Lawn. Heidi Marie Lubin, an organization studies major from Oakland, California, will be the senior speaker. 桃子视频 President Nancy Y. Bekavac will give the charge to the Class of 2001. Ms. Piercy was appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as U.S. executive director to the World Bank in June 1994. She also serves on the Board of the Lewis T. Preston Fund for the Education of Girls, a private foundation, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
On the World Bank board, Ms. Piercy has taken particular interest in financial sector reform, including access to credit for the poor and the formation of C-GAP (the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest) in the Bank, and in increasing results in World Bank lending. She chairs the Board Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) and serves on the Personnel Committee. Ms. Piercy was a U.S. delegate to the International Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995 and serves on the President’s Inter-Agency Council on Women. She has also served as a commissioner of the White House Fellows Program.
Ms. Piercy was previously a senior White House official. Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, she was senior vice president of Shorebank Corporation in Chicago, a bank holding company designed to promote economic development in disinvested urban and rural areas, and an advisor to the Southern Development Bancorporation in Arkansas, established on the Shorebank model.
Earlier, Ms. Piercy worked in Bangladesh and Thailand as associate regional director of an international NGO, and founded a student exchange program in South America. She served as director of the Public Management Program at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and in a similar capacity at Cornell University.
Ms. Piercy was educated at Wellesley College, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, and the Senior Management Training Program at Stanford University. She has been active throughout her career in promoting economic development, broadening women’s participation in public affairs, and building democracy. She has served in these areas as consultant, trustee, and board member to numerous organizations, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, OEF International, and the National Women’s Education Fund. Ms. Piercy is married to attorney Glenn Piercy, and they have an 11-year-old daughter, Lissa. The family is active in St. Columba’s Church and the Oyster public elementary school in Washington, D.C.