College Announces Spring 2023 Commencement Speakers

College of Charleston alumnus Will Ward ’93 along with professors Cynthia May and Todd McNerney will be the featured speakers during the 2023 College of Charleston Spring Commencement ceremonies.

These accomplished individuals will deliver addresses to members of the Class of 2023 during three commencement ceremonies in the Cistern Yard on Friday, May 12, and Saturday, May 13, 2023.

Leon Stavrinakis

May, professor of psychology, will address graduates from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs at 4 p.m. on May 12, 2023. State Representative Leon Stavrinakis ’88 will receive an honorary degree during this ceremony.

Ward, founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based business development firm Forward Ventures, will give the commencement address to graduates of the School of Business, School of Education and School of Health Sciences at 10 a.m. on May 13, 2023.

McNerney, professor of performance in the Department of Theatre and Dance, will speak to graduates of the Graduate School, School of the Arts and School of Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering during the 4 p.m. ceremony on May 13, 2023

More than 2,000 students are expected to receive degrees during the three ceremonies.

Will Ward

After graduating from the College of Charleston in 1993, Will Ward, who majored in business and minored in Japanese, started his career in the mailroom of the music department of the prestigious talent agency, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), under Hollywood’s most powerful agent, Michael Ovitz.

From there, he was recruited by Endeavor’s CEO and super-agent, Ari Emanuel (the real version of HBO’s Entourage’s Ari Gold) to be a Motion Picture Talent trainee. Will became Endeavor’s fastest-promoted trainee as he rose to Motion Picture Talent Agent within just one year. There, he represented Adam Sandler, David Spade, Dustin Hoffman, Mark Wahlberg, and Ryan Reynolds, to name a few.

After three years, Ward left Endeavor to start a management/production company, ROAR. While at ROAR, Will signed and built the careers of such talents as Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Extraction), Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother), Oscar-nominated Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) and Aisha Tyler (Friends, Archer). Ward also signed and built the careers of major music acts, including Zac Brown Band, and managed Dead and Co, a reincarnation of the original Grateful Dead.

In 2013, Ward produced the $160 million-budgeted feature film, In the Heart of the Sea, for Warner Brothers, which was directed by Ron Howard.

In April 2018, after building ROAR into one of Hollywood’s most powerful and innovative management firms, Ward went on his own to launch Fourward, a global management, production, and business development company, with offices in Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, and Melbourne.

At Fourward, Ward has recently focused on the corporate division, the first deal being a partnership between Fourward, Chris Hemsworth, and one of the top private equity firms in the world, Quadrant, to roll up 600 gyms in Southeast Asia. Additionally, Quadrant, Ward and Hemsworth launched Centr, one of the most successful fitness apps on the market today. Last year, Ward sold Centr to HighPost, the private equity firm of the Bezos family office.

Ward recently founded Fourward Ventures, a $50M Venture Capital fund, that focuses on early-stage companies in Health and Wellness, Sustainability, Media-Tech, and CPG verticals. Fourward Ventures has recently become one of the most astute and respected Venture Capital firms in this space.

Ward and his wife, Christy, first met in middle school and were childhood friends, who later reconnected in 2015. Together, they have 6 amazing kids and an insane dog named, August.

Cindi May

Cindi May is a professor of psychology at the College of Charleston and the 2022 Distinguished Teaching Award recipient. A graduate of Furman University (B.A., 1990) and Duke University (Ph.D., 1995), May joined the College of Charleston in 1999 after teaching at the University of Arizona. She specializes in human memory, aging and disability, and teaches a variety of courses including introductory level courses in general psychology and cognition as well as upper level and laboratory courses in human memory and applied cognition. She co-authors a teaching column for the Association for Psychological Science and her publications include work on innovations in pedagogy.

May’s research is broadly focused on understanding human memory and cognition, with a specific aim of improving outcomes for individuals who experience cognitive challenges, including older adults and individuals with intellectual disability. Her publications include basic science research on circadian arousal, inhibitory processes in attention, flashbulb memory, and prospective memory, as well as applied work on inclusive education and disability in the workplace. May was named a Fellow for the Association for Psychological Science in 2016 and has been a regular contributor to Scientific American.

May is a passionate advocate for initiatives that offer access and opportunity to people with intellectual disabilities. She helped develop inclusive educational programs across the country, including the REACH Program at the College of Charleston, and received a $2.5 million grant from the U.S Department of Education to advance inclusive initiatives on campus and across the Lowcountry. She was appointed by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster to serve on the Disability Rights South Carolina Board of Directors and serves on the National Accreditation Team for Inclusive Postsecondary Education. She is a recent graduate of the Diversity Leadership Initiative at the Riley Institute of Furman University and is part of the team that will launch the Hidden Disability Sunflower Program on campus this fall.

Todd McNerney

Todd McNerney is an associate dean of the School of the Arts and a professor of performance in the Department of Theatre and Dance. He served as the department’s Chair from 2005 until 2014. In that time, he successfully led the department to its initial accreditation by the National Association of Schools of Theatre in 2008 and its subsequent re-accreditation in 2014. He served the College as Speaker of the Faculty from 2014 to 2017. In his nearly 35-year career in the theatre he has directed and/or acted in over 100 productions. He has worked professionally on both coasts in theatre, film and industrials. He is an active member of the department’s production program, directing productions of The House of Blue Leaves, On the Verge, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Take Me Out, Spring Awakening and RENT among others. McNerney is committed to the development of new plays for the department and has directed multiple original student works including the KC/ACTF winning The Mind’s I and Bread and Circuses.

Additionally, over the last eight years, he has annually directed staged readings of the runner-up and winning plays of a national contest created in his honor as part of Piccolo Spoleto. In the summer of 2016, he spent six weeks as a guest artist/director at the nationally recognized Hollins University Playwright’s Lab, a low residency MFA program in playwriting.

McNerney is also a co-founder of The Shakespeare Project, a former summer component of the department, which occurred between 1997 and 2013 and produced two productions of Shakepeare’s works each year.

To get the latest information about spring commencement, please use the College’s new mobile app by searching “CofC Spring Commencement” in the app store. With this resource, you get access to the most up-to-date information as well as networking tools, notifications and more.

Get all the details on spring 2023 commencement on your mobile device

Spring Commencement has gone mobile! Schedules, maps, reminders and more are now at your fingertips on your iPhone/Android for free. Scan the QR code to download the app or find it on Apple and Google Play.