On Oct. 25, the Wellesley College Alumnae Association (WCAA) awarded three graduates of the College the Alumnae Achievement Award, the highest accolade for graduates, in recognition of their distinguished work in their respective fields.
The graduates honored at the Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall were Claire Parkinson ‘70, Joanne Berger-Sweeney ‘79, and Amy Weaver ‘89. The work of the three recipients span the fields of climatology, neuroscience, higher education administration, the corporate world and the law.
Parkinson graduated from Wellesley as a mathematics major but discovered in her last semester that astronomy fascinated her. Parkinson was the first of her family to attend college, and she had always wanted to work on science but also understand its application with the broader world.
After Wellesley, Parkinson attended Ohio State, where she received her PhD and joined the Antarctica expedition as part of its Institute for Polar Studies. Despite being the only woman on the expedition, this strip, alongside a summer working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, convinced her to spend her life studying the climate.
Parkinson has worked at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center since 1978 as one of the world’s leading climatologists, understanding the development of the Earth’s climate models and systems. She also worked on communicating to the public the state of the earth’s climate and the necessity to find solutions. The recipient of many honors, including the Goldthwait Polar Medal, Parkinson continues to conduct critical research and engage the public in the study of global climate change.
Weaver studied political science and American studies at Wellesley. Coming from a family of lawyers, Weaver attended Harvard Law School after college, clerked for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked in Hong Kong for a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council. She entered private practice there as well and then moved to Expedia, serving as Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President, and Deputy General Counsel at Expedia.
Since 2017, Weaver has served as the President of Salesforce, a Fortune 500 company, which she joined in 2013 as Senior Vice President and General Counsel. In 2020, Weaver was appointed Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the company, thus becoming one of the few women who serve a high role at a company of such scale.
Under Weaver, Salesforces’ revenue has increased significantly and its ranking in the Fortune 500 has gone up. Weaver credits her time at Wellesley as motivating her to amplify the voices of women leaders and the Wellesley network as being a group that has had her back her entire life.
Berger-Sweeney graduated from Wellesley with a degree in neuroscience.. Berger-Sweeney went on to receive her PhD in neurotoxicology at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health.
She has spent her scientific career studying a variety of neuroscience topics, including working on a drug used to treat Alzheimer. Berger-Sweeney came back to Wellesley in 1991, serving as the Head of the Neuroscience Department and then the Associate Dean of 20 years, becoming the first African American woman at the College to become a full professor. She then went on to serve as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts and is now the President of Trinity College in Connecticut.
In an interview with The News, Berger-Sweeney emphasized how transformational Wellesley was in instilling her a love of learning, curiosity, and finding connections between seemingly unconnected things. Wellesley offered a space for her to fully thrive and develop a deep sense of equity, something she’s carried as she soared through the ranks of science and higher education.
“It is truly special to be back at Wellesley. The weather is glorious, the campus is beautiful, there is so much vitality in the students I’ve met and there’s nothing quite like being honored on your own.”
In offering advice to current Wellesley students, Berger-Sweeney said, “Enjoy your time here. Wellesley is a magical place and it is really about the best that higher education in the United States has to offer and I just hope that the people who are here appreciate the incredibly powerful network you are a part of by being a Wellesley student and in the future, a Wellesley alum.”
Contact the editors responsible for this story: Lyanne Wang
