Getting to Know this Year's Commencement Speaker

Kandace Fernandez

The upcoming graduation ceremony for Mount St. Mary’s class of 2025 will mark the notable strength of our 217-year-old university.  

Five years after COVID, The Mount has continued to experience growth and success, while other schools struggled to rebound from the multifaceted effects of the pandemic.  At the helm from 2021 to 2024, Gracelyn McDermott served as chair of the Board of Trustees and spearheaded a time of positive development that included the formation of the School of Health Professions.  

McDermott’s professional and academic accolades are only part of why she was selected as this year’s commencement speaker. President Jerry Joyce, Ph.D, stated that McDermott “is a shining example of someone who leads a life of significance.” Words that filled McDermott with gratitude, joy and pride.   

In the spring of 1990 McDermott was a freshman who decided to “[take] a chance on The Mount,” as she put it. A straight-A student who was accepted into every college that she applied to was advised by her mother to choose, for herself, which college she should attend. 

McDermott confessed that her goal was simple: graduate. Although other members of her family had attempted, she would become the first to attain a college degree. Though McDermott eventually became a Catholic, her decision to attend Mount St. Mary’s was “less about the religious environment,” but primarily because she felt that The Mount was “…a place where [she] [could] learn to think”. She was right.

Not only did this institution provide a formal education to support the height of success McDermott would realize, but it also placed her in a challenging social context that prepared her to contend with the pressures of the real world.    

By the conclusion of her freshman year McDermott was accustomed to being met with an introductory line of questioning that started with, “Do you play basketball…? Run track…? What sport do you play…?” and when it became evident that she was not a student athlete her peers would often conclude by asking, “Well then, why are you here?”.  

Unlike most of the 11% of students of color attending the Mount at the time, McDermott was not affiliated with athletic pursuits or an “M R S degree,” that a certain demographic of women expressed as their goal.  

This context taught her how to meet people where they were and help them become comfortable with who she was. Indeed Gracelyn learned to operate with a heightened level of grace that gave way to the acceptance and normalcy of today’s increasingly diverse student and professional population.  

More importantly, McDermott recalls many moments in her journey that she attributes to “divine intervention” and “the grace of God” alongside a “willingness to walk through open doors”.  

When probed about her upcoming address to the Mount graduates in the coming weeks she expressed the desire to convey encouragement for new graduates to embrace open doors as a “portal to something.”  

From a young woman who just wanted a degree, to a receptionist, office manager, MBA student at Johns Hopkins, and then balancing impactful work as VP for marketing, sales and business development at Kaiser Permanente while moving up The Mount’s Board of Trustees to become the chair between 2021 and 2024, McDermott acknowledges that, “every position prepared [her] for the next one,” and when the doors open, she hopes that the Mount St. Mary’s graduates of 2025 will not be afraid to walk through them, like she did.