NYIT Announces 2015 Honorary Degree Recipients

NYIT will award two honorary degrees at its 54th commencement next month. The university plans to honor two highly accomplished and noteworthy women: Susan Sobbott, a senior executive at a global corporation who also is an avid supporter of small and midsized companies and a leading advocate for women in business, and Gail Wilensky, Ph.D., an economist and senior fellow at an international health foundation whose efforts over the past three decades have focused on driving healthcare reform and improving healthcare for current and former members of the military. Both honorary degrees will be conferred on Sunday, May 17, during the commencement ceremony on NYIT’s Old Westbury campus.

The recipients will be honored before an expected audience of 7,500. Sobbott, president of global corporate payments at American Express, will receive a Doctor of Commercial Science; Wilensky, senior fellow with Project HOPE, will receive a Doctor of Science and also will speak at NYIT’s College of Osteopathic Medicine Hooding ceremony on Monday, May 18.

NYIT President Edward Guiliano, Ph.D., said, “We are honored to recognize these leading professionals who have contributed so much to their respective fields and who embody the values and attributes for which NYIT stands as a global university.” President Guiliano will preside at NYIT Commencement and salute graduates, as well as acknowledge relatives and friends during his address to the Class of 2015. 

Susan Sobbott
Widely known for advocacy in supporting women entrepreneurs and executive leaders, Sobbott is an officer of American Express and president of American Express Global Corporate Payments. 

As a strategic leader with a remarkable track record, she worked diligently to earn the loyalty of her customers, focusing on delivering products and services to meet their core needs. The daughter of a small business owner, Sobbott took her lifelong passion for small businesses and turned it into a mission for American Express. In her previous role as president of American Express OPEN, she transformed the division into the leading credit card issuer for small businesses. She created Small Business Saturday, a grassroots movement encouraging consumers to shop locally, and which has been described as “the best marketing campaign of the decade” by Fast Company.

She holds an M.B.A. from the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia; and a B.S. from Georgetown University. She sits on the boards of The Children’s Place, a children's apparel retailer; Red Ventures, a digital marketing company; the New Jersey Performing Arts Center; and the New York Osteopathic Foundation. She also is a trustee of the Darden School of Business.

Gail Wilensky, Ph.D.
Wilensky is an economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere), an international health foundation that works to achieve sustainable advances in healthcare around the world by implementing health education and providing humanitarian assistance.

Previous roles include serving as the White House senior health and welfare adviser to President George H. W. Bush. She co-chaired the President’s Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation’s Veterans and served as a commissioner on the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors.

She currently serves as a trustee of the Combined Benefits Fund of the United Mine Workers of America and the National Opinion Research Center, is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, and resides on the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Wilensky testifies frequently before Congressional committees as an advisor to elected officials and speaks nationally and internationally before professional, business, and consumer groups. She received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Michigan and has received several honorary degrees.