Deborah Bial is 2025 College of Arts and Sciences Commencement Speaker

We are pleased to announce that Deborah Bial, president and founder of the Posse Foundation, will be the 2025 College of Arts & Sciences Commencement Speaker.

The Posse Foundation is a youth leadership-development and college-success organization that sends teams (“posses”) of students from diverse backgrounds to selective colleges and universities, including Lewis & Clark College.

Bial received her BA in American and English Literature from Brandeis University (1987) and an MA (1996) and Ed.D. (2004) from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. She has served as the founder and president of the Posse Foundation since 1989. Bial is also the founding partner of the consulting company Firefly Education, LLC. An expert in the field of higher-education administration, college success and leadership development, Deborah Bial’s extensive experience in facilitating dialogue related to issues of access, equity and diversity — and in guiding selective institutions of higher education toward improved admissions policy — has gained her national recognition in the higher-education community in the United States.

Since 1989, the Posse Foundation has identified more than 13,000 Posse Scholars. These young people have won more than $2 billion in leadership scholarships from Posse’s partner colleges and universities, are persisting and graduating at a rate of 90 percent, and are active leaders both on their campuses and in the workforce. Since 2001, Posse Scholars and alumni have won more than 600 prestigious national fellowships. In 2010, President Barack Obama named Posse as one of 10 nonprofits that would share his Nobel Peace Prize money.

As well as being known for her concept for the foundation, Bial is known for developing the Bial–Dale College Adaptability Index, a method for determining whether students are ready for college that avoids written testing in favor of interviews and activity-based assessment. In October 2007, Bial received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The grant is awarded to individuals who have shown exceptional creativity in their work and the promise to do more. Additionally, she was one of the 2013 winners of the Harold W. McGraw Prize in Education. In 2013, the Harvard Graduate School of Education gave her the Anne Roe Award – established in honor of the first woman tenured at Harvard University.