Barbara L. Pearce

Barbara L. Pearce, community leader, businesswoman, lawyer, graduate of Radcliffe and Harvard, marathon runner, voracious reader, advocate for women, successful Realtor, wife and mother, you are an individual who attacks everything you do with unmitigated zeal and superior intelligence, and who takes on innumerable tasks in the name of community. After leaving the prestigious New York law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, you joined your father's real estate firm, H. Pearce Company Realtors, one of Connecticut most prominent real estate companies. Rising to president and CEO, you have expanded the company's specialized services and significantly grown its market share. Yours is an example of a life that offers balance in career, community commitment and personal responsibilities, even if the balance is reached by overdoing virtually everything to which you commit. A past chair of the board for United Way of Greater New Haven, you helped to raise a record $5.6 million in the 2003-2004 United Way campaign. Your service as chair of the boards of St. Raphael's, the Long Wharf Theatre, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, the Regional Leadership Council, the Women Organizing Women Political Action Committee, the United Way Board of Directors and the Community Foundation, and your volunteer efforts on behalf of New Haven's International Festival of Arts and Ideas are just a few of the efforts that have made you a visible leader in the community, overshadowed only by your recently nurtured and passionate commitment  to the newly created Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, spurred by your two children's challenges with dyslexia. Your dynamic approach to empowering women led you to found the Women Organizing Women Political Action Committee, which reaches across political divides to increase the participation of women in the political process. Your family, spurred by your father, the Realtor Herb Pearce, has been a committed supporter of the University of New Haven for more than 50 years. As a businesswoman striving to be a successful wife, mother and community leader, you have set a standard for others to meet, all while maintaining a countenance of intelligence and compassion. Barbara L. Pearce, for your commitment to the betterment of the Greater New Haven community, your numerous examples of superb leadership in improving the future for the underprivileged, the arts, women's rights, health care and local business, and your embrace of life to its very fullest in all you do, the University of New Haven is pleased to confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.