Commencement Speaker & Honorary Degree Recipient

Brian Collins is a MassArt alumnus, designer and co-founder of COLLINS, the business transformation design company with offices in San Francisco and New York City. Founded with a bold vision—”Make the future so irresistible, it becomes inevitable”—COLLINS has grown into a globally recognized creative powerhouse. The company has worked with leading brands such as Spotify, Nike, Disney, and Bose. 

Over the last seven years, COLLINS has been named Design Agency of the Year by both AdAge and D&AD in London, including Business Transformation Agency of the Year. Before launching COLLINS, Brian spent a decade as Chief Creative Officer of the brand and innovation division at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. Brian has reached a global audience, speaking at Columbia, Princeton, and Harvard about the effect of design on the future. Collins was also the first graphic designer invited to participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos. 

For more than 20 years, he served as a professor in the Graduate Program at the School of Visual Arts. His dedication to diversity in design is reflected in COLLINS’ decade-long High School Internship Program, encouraging students of color to pursue creative careers. 

Recognized as an American Design Master by Fast Company in 2005, Brian’s contributions to the field have been further honored with a Distinguished Alumnus award from the Massachusetts College of Art and an Honorary Doctorate from the Art Center College of Design in 2008. Collins is a native of Lexington and lives in Manhattan and Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Honorary Degree Recipients

Hank Willis Thomas is an internationally recognized conceptual artist, based in Brooklyn, NY, whose work explores identity, media, and popular culture. His studio practice, collaborative projects, and public artworks address issues of race, history, and civic engagement. Thomas’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, Crystal Bridges, International Center of Photography, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Musée du quai Branly, Hong Kong Arts Centre and many others.

Thomas co-founded For Freedoms, an artist-led organization promoting civic discourse through creative projects. His major collaborations include “Question Bridge: Black Males,” “In Search of the Truth (Truth Booth),” and “The Gun Violence Memorial Project.” His public artworks include “The Embrace” (2023) on Boston Common, “REACH” at O’Hare International Airport, and “Unity” in Downtown Brooklyn. 

A recipient of the 2022 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts, Thomas has also been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Gordon Parks Foundation, and the Soros Equality Fellowship. He holds a B.F.A. from New York University (1998), and an MA/MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. He has received honorary doctorates from California College of Arts, San Francisco, CA, the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland ME.

Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD is committed to building healthy, culturally vital communities where all people can thrive. Dr. Jackson has a 30+ year career in strategic planning, policy research, policy and program design, implementation and evaluation in philanthropy, government, and nonprofit organizations.

Dr. Jackson’s work has focused on understanding and elevating arts, culture, and design as critical elements of healthy communities. After confirmation by the U.S. Senate in December 2021, Dr. Jackson was appointed by President Joseph Biden and became the 13th chair of the National Endowment for the Arts where she served in that capacity until January 2025. During her time leading the NEA she elevated the role of the arts in all aspects of our society and advanced opportunities for all people to lead artful lives.

Dr. Jackson is currently on leave from Arizona State University, where she is a tenured Institute Professor in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and holds an appointment in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. Dr. Jackson has served as an advisor on philanthropic programs and investments at national, regional, and local foundations. For nearly 10 years, she served as a senior advisor to the Kresge Foundation.

For 18 years, Dr. Jackson was at the Urban Institute, a Washington, DC-based national public policy research organization where she led pioneering applied research on the roles of the arts in communities, support systems for artists, comprehensive community development and planning.

She was appointed to the National Council on the Arts by President Barack Obama in 2012 and served in that capacity for nearly 10 years. She was co-chair of the County of Los Angeles Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative and has been on advisory and governing boards of numerous national and local organizations.

A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a doctorate in urban planning, Dr. Jackson holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Southern California. Dr. Jackson grew up in South Los Angeles.

The Godine Award and 2025 Awardee

The Morton R. Godine Award for Service to the Community was established in 1989 in memory of a former Vice President and Trustee of Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Morton Godine, an admired community leader, teacher, and passionate advocate for the college’s public mission. The recipient of the award is that rare individual whose history of service to the community exemplifies Godine and MassArt’s mission to help students engage creatively in the well-being of society. Past awardees include former Mayor Thomas Menino and Mrs. Angela Menino (2013) and former Governor Michael Dukakis and Mrs. Kitty Dukakis (2011).

Peter Nessen, founder and president of Nessen Associates, is a certified public accountant who has served on the governing boards of national investment banking firms. He was Assistant Secretary of Administration and Finance under Governor Dukakis. Additionally, he served as Secretary of Administration and Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a role that made him a senior member of the cabinet of Governor William Weld. Nessen has served four governors of the Commonwealth and has been a partner in the accounting firms of BDO and Henry J Bornhoff and the Dean for Resources and Special Projects at Harvard Medical School.

Nessen has also chaired the Massachusetts Cultural Council, served on the Governor’s Commission evaluating school reform, as well as a member of the Board of Higher Education and represented Massachusetts on the New England Accreditation Commission.

Nessen has served on the MassArt Board of Trustees since 2015 and on many other boards of corporate and not-for-profit organizations, including The Boston Foundation. Nessen holds a Bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Tuck School of Business.

###

About MassArt

The only independent public college of art and design in the country, MassArt was founded in 1873 in response to a bold idea: art and design are essential to our daily lives, and key to improving our society and economy. What began as a school to teach drawing is today a bold, comprehensive art and design institution that spans 18 undergraduate and nine graduate programs, certificates, continuing education, and post-baccalaureate study.

Media Contact:
Amanda Karr
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer
akarr@massart.edu