Honorary Degree Recipient & Commencement Speaker
Tjada D’Oyen McKenna
Chief Executive Officer, Mercy Corps
Honorary Doctor of Public Service
As Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Corps, Tjada leads a global team of more than 5,600 humanitarians, who provide immediate relief to save lives and livelihoods and work to create transformational change reaching 37 million people in more than 40 countries.
Previously, she served as Chief Operating Officer of CARE, where she oversaw the organization’s programming and global operations. Tjada has also served as Chief Operating Officer at Habitat for Humanity. Tjada spent more than a decade working to end world hunger in roles with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. government. During the Obama administration, Tjada served as the Deputy Coordinator of Development for Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative, and as the Assistant to the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Food Security in Washington, D.C.
Tjada also brings a passion for innovation to her work, developed early in her career, through various roles at McKinsey & Company, American Express and General Electric.
Honorary Degree Recipient
Roger Hull
Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts
Roger Hull is an independent arts writer and curator and Professor of Art History Emeritus at Willamette University. He has written monographs and organized retrospective exhibitions on a dozen Oregon artists, most recently Lucinda Parker and John Stahl.
Roger envisioned and helped establish the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University and served as senior faculty curator at the Museum. He has written monographs and curated retrospective exhibitions on nine Oregon artists: Carl Hall (2001), Jan Zach (2003), Charles E. Heaney (2005), George Johanson (2007), Harry Widman (2009), Henk Pander (2011), Manuel Izquierdo (2013), Nelson Sandgren (2016), Louis Bunce (2017), and Clifford Gleason (2020).
In 1993, Roger was named Oregon Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. In 1999, he received an Oregon Governor's Arts Award, which recognizes and honor individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the arts in Oregon.