Honorary Degree Citation
Doctor of Commercial Science
Jane Bryant Quinn
Jane Bryant Quinn, today we celebrate your life’s work as a shining example of the role of
women in shaping the world of finance. Guided throughout your life by common sense
combined with critical thinking, you have been a voice of sound judgment and compassion in
financial journalism. Espousing rigorous analysis over mathematical wizardry, your financial
advice is made even more penetrating by the clear language you use to translate a field that
can intimidate into one that can support—providing people with the simple tools they need to
take control over their financial futures.
Much like your advice to investors, you have built a successful career based on common
sense, commitment, and hard work. You helped put yourself through Middlebury College with
your savings as a library page and graduated magna cum laude in 1960. After summer jobs at
the Niagara Falls Gazette, you started your career as a journalist at Look Magazine’s Insiders
Newsletter, where you watched your new employer deduct the 30 percent “female discount”
from your salary. You persisted in your career as a journalist and embarked upon a self-taught
education in finance that would one day make you one of the country’s most successful
financial journalists, a best-selling author, and media commentator.
You served as contributing editor to Newsweek, spent more than 25 years writing a
syndicated column for the Washington Post Writers Group, and have written regularly for
Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, and Bloomberg.com. You are author of three best-selling
financial books, and have also hosted your own television program for PBS and appeared
regularly on CBS and ABC news. It is no surprise that The World Almanac named you one of
the 25 most influential women in America.
Author Joseph Nocera once said of you, “there is no more trustworthy figure in all of American
journalism,” and that could not have been more evidenced in the recent financial crisis when
the dreams of millions of Americans were threatened: Your advice represented a steady,
courageous, and wise voice of reason, urging your readers to remain committed to the tenets
of investing for the long-term.
Your tireless championship of the small investor personifies Pace’s mission of Opportunitas.
Your best-selling books, including Making the Most of Your Money, named by Consumers
Union as the best personal finance book, have guided countless small investors through
arcane financial concepts, enabling them to avoid the pitfalls of ill-conceived financial
products, and helping them attain financial independence. Today, we celebrate with you the
power of education to transform individual lives and those in the generations that follow.
For all these reasons and more, Pace University is very proud to confer upon you the degree
of Doctor of Commercial Science, honoris causa, with all the rights and privileges pertaining
thereunto.