VCU news

By Tom Gresham

Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a private non-profit organization founded in 1995, will be the featured speaker at Virginia Commonwealth University’s spring commencement ceremony next month.

Her Highness, the consort of His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of the State of Qatar, has taken a leading role in the development of Qatar Foundation, which created Education City, the campus in Doha that hosts the VCU School of the Arts in Qatar, along with a cluster of world-class higher education institutions dedicated to providing academic excellence, including branches of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Carnegie Mellon University, Weill Cornell Medical College, Northwestern University and Texas A&M University.

Her Highness served as president of the Supreme Council for Family Affairs, which works to strengthen the role of the family in society and to address issues of concern to women and children in Qatar. She is a UNESCO Special Envoy for Basic and Higher Education, serves as a member of the High Level Group of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and is the chairperson of the Arab Democracy Foundation. Forbes magazine has ranked her as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world, and the Times of London called her one of the 25 most influential business leaders in the Middle East.

Her Highness graduated from Qatar University in 1986 with a degree in sociology. She has an honorary doctorate from VCU, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon, Imperial College London and the Georgetown University School of Foreign Science.

Commencement exercises will be held on Saturday, May 22, at 10 a.m. at the Richmond Coliseum. Doors will open for guests at 9 a.m. For more information, visit http://www.commencement.vcu.edu. A live streaming video of commencement exercises will run on the VCU website. The link can be found on graduation day at http://www.vcu.edu.