Non-Profit CEO is Guest Speaker at Harcum's 103rd Commencement

Bryn Mawr, PA -- (April 24, 2019) -- More than 410 students will become official graduates of Harcum College during the 103rd Commencement to be held Saturday, May 11, 2019. The ceremony begins at 11 a.m. on the Great Lawn of the Academic Center at Harcum, 750 Montgomery Avenue in Bryn Mawr, PA.

This year’s Commencement Speaker is Corinne O’Connell, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia. O’Connell brings two decades of experience in nonprofits specializing in housing and homelessness to her leadership role. She worked at the YWCA of Seattle and Project HOME before she joined Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia as Director of Development in 2009. She served as Habitat’s Associate Executive Director from 2011 to 2017 before she stepped into her current role as the organization’s first Chief Executive Officer.

O’Connell is an alumna of Saint Joseph’s University and has a master’s degree in Nonprofit Leadership from Seattle University. She has served on the boards of Gearing Up and the Ignatian Solidarity Network and shares her nonprofit and fundraising expertise as a speaker and panelist throughout the Philadelphia region. She was awarded the Ignatious Award from St. Joseph’s University in 2015 in acknowledgement of her efforts to be in service to others. She is also a 2017 awardee of the Valentine Leadership Fund, which recognizes and enhances female leadership in nonprofits.

Harcum College will confer the Associate of Arts and the Associate of Science degrees at Commencement and an honorary degree to Corinne O’Connell. Selected student and faculty will also be recognized at the event, including the winners of the Harcum Award, the Student Leadership Award, and the President’s Award for students and the Philip Klein Award for outstanding teaching, named for the former College president whose grandson Alexander Klein currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

About Harcum College
Harcum College, one of Pennsylvania’s first independent, two-year colleges, was founded in Bryn Mawr, PA in 1915. Harcum was the first associate degree college in Pennsylvania co-founded by a woman, Edith Hatcher Harcum, and the first chartered by the state to grant associate degrees. Harcum offers fully accredited, career-ready majors in nursing, the allied health professions, business and social sciences on campus, online, and at Partnership Sites throughout southeastern Pennsylvania.