Ceremony Speakers
2013 Communication Satellite Ceremony Speaker
Zev Yaroslavsky
LA County Supervisor, 3rd District
Zev Yaroslavsky was first elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1994, representing the western part of the County and a constituency of two million people, after serving 19 years on the Los Angeles City Council. He was re-elected four times, most recently in 2010. Yaroslavsky is a longtime leader on fiscal, health care, transportation, cultural and environmental matters. He authored the 1996 Proposition A parks and open space acquisition and preservation measure, as well as the 2002 Proposition B trauma tax, credited with stabilizing the County’s emergency health care network. He is considered the County’s fiscal watchdog, insisting that it live within its means. He was the driving force behind the Orange Line busway across the San Fernando Valley, an integral part of the region’s public transit network. He led the effort in 2004 to rebuild and modernize the Hollywood Bowl, and he was instrumental in the successful completion of Walt Disney Concert Hall, which opened in 2003. He has also helped fund major investments in the L.A. County Museum of Art and the County’s Museum of Natural History. He holds an M.A. in British Imperial History and a B.A. in Economics and History from UCLA.
2013 Journalism Satellite Ceremony Speaker
Geneva Overholser
School of Journalism Director and Professor 
Geneva Overholser is a professor and director of USC Annenberg's School of Journalism. Previously, she held the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the Missouri School of Journalism, where she was based in the school’s Washington bureau. She was editor of The Des Moines Register from 1988 to 1995, where she led the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. While at the Register, she also earned recognition as Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation and was named “The Best in the Business” by American Journalism Review. She has been ombudsman of The Washington Post, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group, and a reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun. She has been a columnist for the Columbia Journalism Review and frequent contributor to Poynter.org. She serves on the boards of the Center for Public Integrity, the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the John S. Knight Fellowships at Stanford University, the Fund for Independence in Journalism and the Academy of American Poets, and on the Journalism Advisory Committee of the Knight Foundation. She was for nine years a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, the final year as chair, and is a former officer of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
2013 Main University Commencement Speaker
Jimmy Iovine
Chairman of Universal Music Group's Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records
Click here for Jimmy Iovine's full bio.
You can view a list of previous commencement speakers here .