Babson Names Entrepreneurs Kevin Colleran '03 and Richard Saul Wurman as 2015 Commencement Speakers and Honorees

WELLESLEY, Mass., May 11, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Babson alumnus Kevin Colleran '03, an early Executive at Facebook and current Managing Partner of a top tier venture capital firm, Slow Ventures, and Richard Saul Wurman, a renowned American architect and author who created and chaired the TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Conference, will both be honored during Babson's 2015 Commencement Ceremonies on May 16, 2015.

Colleran will address the Undergraduate School Ceremony at 10 a.m. and Wurman will address the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business Ceremony at 3 p.m. Each will receive an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

"We are fortunate to have two impactful Commencement speakers who have changed the way we connect to each other, and to the world, by demonstrating the power of entrepreneurship to create economic and social value everywhere," said Babson College President Kerry Healey.

Kevin Colleran '03

As one of Facebook's first 10 employees, Kevin Colleran helped the social networking service grow from a small, unknown website to one of the world's most influential global companies. As Facebook's Global Partnership Lead, he was responsible for managing the advertising relationships with some of the world's largest advertisers. Colleran left Facebook after a seven-year stint, having become the most tenured employee at the company second to Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg. 

At Slow Ventures, a venture capital firm Colleran co-founded and now manages, he invests the personal capital of dozens of top technology founders, CEOs, and executives into early-stage companies based in the United States. His investments include Evernote, Nest, Pinterest, Tumblr, Dropbox, Slack, Birchbox, Postmates, Plated, Classpass, and more than 150 other growing companies.

Colleran is also a Venture Partner at General Catalyst Partners, a multi-billion dollar venture capital firm based in Boston, New York, and San Francisco that focuses on Series A and Series B technology investing. He is an active member on the Boards of Directors and Advisory Boards for Yik Yak, Datalogix, Humin, PillPack, Chatous and more. He is also a regular contributor to The Accelerators, a column in The Wall Street Journal on topics pertaining to entrepreneurship and technology startups.

Colleran graduated Magna Cum Laude from Babson in 2003. During his junior year, he raised capital from Babson and several nonprofit entrepreneurship organizations to establish Babson's first undergraduate business hatchery. He was also the first freshman to win Babson's Student Business Initiative Award .

Richard Saul Wurman

Richard Saul Wurman is an American architect and graphic designer who co-founded and chaired the TED Conference, as well as the TEDMED Conference, the e.g. and WWW conferences, and the forthcoming 555 Conference consisting of narrowly constructed, focused & superbly communicated predictions for 2020. 

Wurman has written, designed and published more than 90 books on a range of topics including the award-winning ACCESS travel guides using graphics and logical editorial organization to make places such as New York, Tokyo, and Rome understandable to visitors, as well as two literary works on Louis I Kahn, his mentor. Several of his books are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and he is credited with coining the term information architect and the acronym LATCH, referring to the organization of information. 

Wurman is currently working with ESRI and @radical.media on a comparative cartographic initiative for mapping urban settings. The collaboration, named the Urban Observatory™ 19.20.21 Project, will culminate in the creation of a network of live Urban Observatories around the world. 

He received both his Masters of Architecture and Bachelors of Architecture Degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1959 with the highest honors, and is a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Fellowship program. Wurman is the recipient of four honorary doctorate degrees, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Smithsonian - Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards,  among others, and also recently became a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Design in the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University.

About Babson College

Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds^®. The College is a dynamic living and learning laboratory, where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society—while at the same time evolving our methods and advancing our programs. We shape the leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, and motivate teams in a common purpose to create economic and social value. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought and Action^® as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value.

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