Contact: Lucas Held, 212-854-7583 [email protected]
Tony Award winning actress Zoe Caldwell to give keynote address at Barnard College 107th Commencement
Caldwell, Esther Dyson, Abby Joseph Cohen and William Golden each to receive Barnard Medal of Distinction
NEW YORK, NEW YORK—-Zoe Caldwell, four-time Tony Award winner and "one of the world's great actresses" according to Time magazine, will address Barnard College's Class of 1999 at 2:30 p.m., May 18th at the College's 107th Commencement on Lehman Lawn (rain location: Levien Gymnasium, Columbia University.)
The Barnard Medal of Distinction will be awarded to Caldwell along with: Abby Joseph Cohen, a partner at Goldman Sachs and one of the nation's most highly regarded investment strategists; Esther Dyson, author, leading authority on the emerging digital age and president and owner of EDventure Holdings; and William T. Golden, longtime advocate for scientific research, author and trustee emeritus of Barnard.
"Barnard women have a tradition of extraordinary achievement, intellectual courage and service to the community. As we pay tribute to our new graduates, both for what they have accomplished and will accomplish in the future, it is fitting that we honor these four distinguished men and women who exemplify the College's enduring ideals," remarked Judith Shapiro, president of Barnard.
Zoe Caldwell
Known for her acclaimed stage portrayals of complex women, Caldwell, 65, entered the theatrical life at an early age. Born in Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, she made her professional theater debut at the age of 9 in Peter Pan, and at 20 became a member of the Union Theater Repertory Company in Melbourne. After attending the Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne, she earned a scholarship to join the Shakespearean stage at Stratford-upon-Avon, while there winning approval for her Bianca to Paul Robeson's Othello and Cordelia to Charles Laughton's King Lear. She soon found her way to Canada and then to Broadway.
Caldwell's first major Broadway role was in Tennessee Williams' Slapstick Tragedy, leading in 1966 to her first Tony Award for her portrayal of Polly. Two years later, she returned as a full-fledged star, winning her second Tony for her performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In 1970, she returned to London to star in Terrence Rattigan's Bequest to the Nation, during which she was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
Since 1971, Caldwell has performed in New York, co-starring with Robert Shaw in Dance of Death, in Arthur Miller's Creation of the World and Other Business, and as Mary in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, playing opposite Jason Robards. In 1982, starring in Medea opposite Judith Anderson in a production directed by her husband Robert Whitehead, she won her third Tony Award.
In 1977, Caldwell began directing plays including: An Almost Perfect Person (1977), Richard the II (1979), These Men (1980), Hamlet (1985), and The Taming of the Shrew (1985.) At the same time, she continued acting in such plays as A Perfect Ganesh (1993), and won her fourth Tony Award for her portrayal of diva Maria Callas in Master Class (1995).
Widely honored, she won the Theatre World Award in 1996, the John Gielgud Award presented by the Shakespeare Guild in cooperation with the Folger Library in 1998, and was the first recipient of the Linda Wilson Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Theater from the University of Florida. She was also the 1999 recipient of the Bernard B. Jacobs Excellence in the Theatre Award from the UJA Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in New York City.
She and her husband, who live in New York's Upper West Side, have two sons, Sam and Charlie.
Esther Dyson
Dyson, 47, is the chairman, president and owner of EDventure Holdings, an information services company that focuses on emerging information technologies and markets throughout the world. She is editor and publisher of the widely read newsletter Release 1.0 and her book Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age, now in a revised edition paperback, has won wide acclaim for its insights into the social effects of technology. She is also currently the interim chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, and a member of both the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation " a digital civil liberties watchdog group - and the President's Export Council Subcommittee on Encryption. She co-chaired the Information Privacy and Intellectual Property Subcommittee of the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council.
Dyson has been profiled by publications such as The New York Times, Upside, The Washington Post, Forbes and Vanity Fair which in 1995, 1996 and 1997 listed her as one of 50 people in their annual list of "the New Establishment," where in 1995 she was also the only woman included among the 50. She was named to Russia's Who's Who in the Computer Market, ranking 23rd world-wide, as well as the Fortune list of the 50 most powerful women in American business.
Dyson describes herself as trying to "find worthy ideas and people and get attention for them"¦and promote new ideas." She was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1951 and grew up among intellectuals and Nobel Prize winners in Princeton, New Jersey, before getting her B.A. in economics from Harvard University. After graduation, she spent five years as a securities analyst at New Court Securities and Oppenheimer & Co., and three years as a reporter for Forbes. She resides in New York City.
Linton Weeks of The Washington Post describes Esther Dyson as "that rare person who makes sense out of nonsense. As the doyenne of the digerati, she brings together some of the country's most influential tycoons, politicos and intellectuals." Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire business-info purveyor who has much admiration for Dyson, describes her as "a combination of being smart and being a show person, electric, unique"¦and diminutive in size but larger than life."
Abby Joseph Cohen
Abby Joseph Cohen, 47, partner and chief market strategist at Goldman Sachs & Co., is also known as Wall Street's most respected stock analysts and its most prominent Bull. Her opinions carry much weight in the stock market. Louis Rukeyser, host of Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser, said of her in June 1998, "A year ago, when Abby was inducted into our Hall of Fame, I said she was the most influential woman on Wall Street. But now I would say that she is the most influential market forecaster, period."
Cohen holds a demanding job at Goldman Sachs & Co.; she is, moreover, in constant demand as a commentator on TV networks including PBS, CNN, and CNBC. In 1997 alone she logged 125,000 miles of air travel, gave 150 speeches at schools, universities, and other public functions, and has taught several business classes at some of the nation's most prestigious schools. She was named the "prophet of Wall Street" and the top portfolio strategist two years in a row in Institutional Investor magazine's highly regarded survey. Charles Ellis, managing partner of Greenwich Associates said of her, "Abby Cohen is already recognized as the best in her line of work, and [she's] getting better and better."
Cohen was born in Queens, N.Y., where she still lives today with her husband of 25 years, David Cohen, director of labor and employee relations at Columbia University, and her two daughters. She received her B.A. in economics and computer science from Cornell University in 1973 and her M.A. in economics in 1976 from George Washington University.
William T. Golden
Golden, 90, has spent a lifetime as an advocate for scientific research, work for which he has received numerous honors, and as a philanthropist. He served as a trustee of Barnard College from 1973 until being named an emeritus trustee in 1998.
Rita Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation and a former Barnard Medal of Distinction winner, noted: "Throughout his life, Bill Golden has served heroically in the cause of humanity. His commitment to science springs from his enjoyment of the beauty of science and awe of its potential for the future of humankind. All of us who toil in the fields of science owe Bill Golden a debt of gratitude for his work"¦accomplished quietly and in the shadows"¦on our behalf. We, at the National Science Foundation salute Bill Golden, truly a man of distinction, for his support of science and scientific research."
After service in the U.S. Navy, for which he received a Letter of Commendation from the Secretary of the Navy for the invention of a naval gunfire device, he was named assistant to the commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Agency and continued to serve as a consultant to the agency until 1958. He was chairman of the National Radiator Co. from 1952 to 1974, and of Federated Development Co. He was a director of numerous corporations including General American Investors Inc., Block Drug Co. Inc. and Mitre Corp.
He served as chair of the Scientists' Committee on Public Information, vice chairman of the Mount Sinai Medical Center, vice chairman of the Mayor's Commission on Science and Technology, and former chair of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Government and Technology. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and on the Board of Governors of the New York Academy of Sciences. His awards include five honorary degrees, the Distinguished Public Service Award from the National Science Foundation and a Tribute of Appreciation from the National Science Board. Golden was also the editor and co-author of two books, Science Advice to the President in 1980 and Science and Technology Advice to the President, Congress, and Judiciary in 1988. Golden earned his A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania, M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and M.A. in biology from Columbia University.
Active in philanthropy and president of the Golden Family Foundation, he is a generous supporter of institutions including Barnard College and the American Museum of National History. The Foundation bought Black Rock Forest in Cornwall, New York from Harvard University in order to establish a consortium of secondary schools, colleges (including Barnard), and universities that conduct research there. He was married to the late Sibyl Levy Golden, a graduate of the Barnard College Class of 1938.
Barnard College, founded in 1889, is a highly selective, independent college for women affiliated with Columbia University and located in New York City. Barnard has 2,300 students from 49 states and 25 foreign countries. Its graduates are leaders in fields including business, medicine, government, science, education, public service and the arts.
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