College Announces 2004 Graduation Speakers
April 16, 2004
The College at Penn has announced that NBC News correspondent Ron Allen, C’79, G’79, and senior Rebecca Fishman will speak at its 2004 graduation ceremony.
Ron Allen is a regular contributor to NBC News and MSNBC. During more than 20 years of journalism, including a decade abroad, Allen has been a correspondent for reporting teams that have won numerous awards, including six Overseas Press Club Awards, four Emmys, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, and a George Foster Peabody Award. His assignments in recent years have included reporting from Baghdad on the crisis with Iraq, from Pakistan and Afghanistan on the war on terror, from Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza on the Middle East Peace process, and from Belgrade and inside Kosovo on NATO’s war to remove Slobodan Milosevic.
Mr. Allen received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from Penn. He was a recipient of the University of Pennsylvania Trustees Award for scholarly research, and was president of the Onyx Senior Honor Society.
Rebecca Fishman grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where she attended Bat Torah Academy prior to coming to Penn. A psychology and communication major, Rebecca served as vice president of Hillel and was a winner of the University’s spring writing contest. Rebecca has also been active in Counterparts jazz and pop a cappella group, the Teatron theatre group, and the Yofi dance Troupe. In an internship at the Abramson Center she led multigenerational programming and at the Veteran’s Hospital she took part in research on congestive heart failure.