Undergraduate Commencement 2023

Tim Ryan ’88 is PwC’s US Chair and Senior Partner with over 30 years of diversified experience serving clients across the globe. A forward-thinking leader committed to driving human-led, tech-powered outcomes to build trust in society and solve important problems, Tim has a proven record in advancing strategy, growth, collaboration, innovation, and upskilling. 
 
He has reimagined PwC for the modern era, leading a complete digital transformation and launching a bold new strategy—The New Equation—to get ahead of the rapid pace of change in the industry bringing the best people, capabilities and technology together to support clients in building trust and delivering sustained outcomes. Recognizing that trust is more important than ever before, he founded PwC’s Trust Leadership Institute to equip tomorrow’s C-suite leaders with the trust-based skills needed to operate in a complex world. 
 
Identifying a need for more explicit conversations around diversity and inclusion in business, Tim opened up a firmwide conversation about race in the workplace at PwC during his first week as Chair in 2016. With equity foundational to Tim’s trust-based leadership, he went on to co-found CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™—the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, with 2,400 signatory organizations—as well as CEO Action for Racial Equity to promote scalable, sustainable policies and corporate best practices to address systemic racism and social injustice. And in 2021, he renewed the firm’s commitment to Access Your Potential, to support a more equitable future for 25,000 Black and Latinx college students through advanced career-readiness training, mentorship, and technology upskilling for the in-demand jobs of today and tomorrow—including 10,000 who PwC US aspires to hire by 2026.
 
Tim is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Brookings Institution and the Financial Accounting Foundation, where he is Co-Chair of its Standard-Setting Process Oversight Committee. He is also Chair of the Center for Audit Quality’s (CAQ) Governing Board, a non-partisan, non-profit group dedicated to enhancing investor confidence and public trust in the global capital markets.  
 
He is a thought leader and mentor to fellow CEOs, sharing frequent insights on complex issues affecting businesses, community and the betterment of society in the New York Times, Washington Post, Fortune, Harvard Business Review and his LinkedIn newsletter Talking Trust. 
 
Raised in Boston, Tim learned early leadership lessons when he started his first job at age 14 as a grocery store stocker. He joined PwC after graduating from Babson College. He is a certified public accountant in Massachusetts and New York and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Tim is a runner and proud father of six children—and a dog.

Mr. Ryan will be presented with an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters during the ceremony on May 13, 2023.

Since 2014, Martha DiMatteo Vorlicek ’81 has served as senior advisor at the private equity firm, HarbourVest Partners, LLC, where she also serves on the audit committee.

Previously, she had served as a managing director and chief operating officer, and was involved in all aspects of HarbourVest’s business, including fund formation, initial investments, portfolio and fund accounting, investment monitoring, liquidations, and strategic planning.

She also oversaw the firm’s finance, administration, and data systems operations. HarbourVest Partners, LLC is a private equity investment firm specializing in direct, fund of funds, and secondary indirect investments. Within direct investments, the firm makes private equity, venture capital, and mezzanine debt investments in established, growing companies at a variety of stages, including later-stage venture, growth equity, private debt—providing capital for senior debt and credit investments, special situations like turnarounds, buyout, management buyouts, and buyout co-investment opportunities. She joined the firm in 1992 from Ernst & Young, where she specialized in the entrepreneurial and emerging businesses practice. She has been recognized as a leader in the field, having received the Leadership Award from Private Funds Management in 2015, and was a founding board member of the Private Equity CFO Association.

In the community, Ms. Vorlicek has served as a trustee of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center since 2018.

At Babson, Ms. Vorlicek has long been a highly engaged alumna, serving as Trustee from 2009 to 2021 after an earlier stint on the Alumni Association Board. She also served on the Babson Connect Worldwide Advisory Board for the college’s centennial in 2019. She has been a Trustee Emerita since 2021, and an inaugural member of the Circle of Distinction since 2019. She established and continues to support the DiMatteo Family Endowed Alumni Scholarship at Babson.

Her late father, John R. DiMatteo’53, P’81’84, served as a member of the Babson Corporation from 1981 to 1984. Her brother, Andrew R. DiMatteo’84, also graduated from Babson.

Ms. Vorlicek will be presented with an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters during the ceremony on May 13, 2023.