2024 Commencement Honorees

Roberto has had the privilege to build groups to express their inner thoughts on a wide range of collective art projects. For decades, he has carried out community artworks that illustrate, empower, and enrich the cultural environment of the communities in which they are created.

The many mural projects Chao has created and directed are highly respected and enhance the streets of Boston (Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, South End, Waltham, Chelsea, and East Boston) as well as other cities, like Lowell, Salem, Worcester, and Manchester, NH., and countries like Uruguay, Puerto Rico, México, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

In November 2023, Chao spearheaded the development of "An Ode to Africa in the Americas," a collaborative project involving two dozen Black and Brown artists from the Roxbury community, in a distinctive partnership with Roxbury Community College. The project celebrates Africa’s profound influence on and cultural manifestations within the American continent, highlighting its rich history and heritage.

Multilingual and multicultural, Roberto is a people-oriented lover of Boston, and a community artist who is committed to creating a meaningful visual landscape in our city through community participation, with the aim of achieving the change that everyone in the city envisions and deserves. He is most animated when working directly with the communities that his art strives to illustrate.

Liz Walker, former journalist, humanitarian, and minister, leads the Cory Johnson Program for Post-Traumatic Healing (CJP). Named after a young, murdered member of Roxbury Presbyterian Church where Reverend Walker served as pastor until December of 2021, CJP is a faith-inspired, clinically supported, community-based program that addresses the epidemic of Post-Traumatic Stress in a neighborhood too often overrun by violence. CJP offers weekly community gatherings called ‘Can We Talk…’ where residents are encouraged to share traumatic experiences, increase their understanding of psychological trauma, and learn coping skills. The program also offers access to mental health support that some residents might not otherwise receive. Since it began in 2014, CJP has served thousands of residents and is in the process of replicating its ‘Can We Talk…’ community sharings around the country.

Reverend Walker took a lead role in vaccine education for communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, serving on Massachusetts Governor Baker’s Advisory group for COVID vaccine distribution.

With a life filled with many chapters, Liz Walker is still best known as Boston’s first Black television news anchor, a position she held for 21 of her 28-year television news career. She is the recipient of two Emmys, symbolizing the highest recognition from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and an Edward R. Murrow award for journalistic excellence.

A 2005 graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Reverend Walker has long been actively involved in a healing ministry. She helped found the Jane Doe Safety Fund, a multimillion-dollar anti-violence initiative in Massachusetts that continues to work on policy and supports domestic abuse shelters and safe houses around Massachusetts. She spent 10 years as a humanitarian working in South Sudan, one of Africa’s most troubled countries, and helped build a girls’ school there.

Considered one of the nation’s most healing voices, Reverend Walker has served as a member of the Core Strategy Team of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, the Board of Trustees for Boston Medical Center, the Board of Trustees for Andover Newton Theological Seminary, the Tufts Health Foundation, and Board of Overseers for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She is the mother of three and grandmother of two.

Shaumba-Yandje Dibinga is a Congolese American born to Rev. Dr. Dibinga wa Said and Dr. Ngolela wa Kabongo, refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who became international freedom fighters and educators.

She received her BA from University of Massachusetts Boston and holds additional studies and training from the Boston Conservatory and the Alvin Ailey Summer Professional Program with an invitation to study in the two-year fellowship program. She is the Founding Artistic Director of the OrigiNation Cultural Arts Center, which was founded and established in 1991 and became a non-profit in 1994. OrigiNation utilizes dance as a tool to empower young people, one dancer at a time.

Ms. Dibinga has extensive training, teaching, and performance experience in all areas of dance and theater and has been writing poetry and plays for decades. She is a trustee at the Boston Renaissance Charter Public School, a member of the Boston Arts Academy Board of Trustees (Co-Chair of the Family Council), sits on the Summerstars Foundation Board, is a member of the Barr Fellows Class of 2011, and former Barr Fellows Alumni Advisory Board member. She has received numerous awards, including the Boston NAACP Image Award, The Philanthropic Initiative's Boston Fellows Award, the Portraits of Courage Upstander's Award, the Berklee College of Music Urban Service Award, the Community Catalyst Award, the Next Steps Award, and the Brother Thomas Fellowship.

She has appeared in many newspapers and television interviews from NECN to Cityline and more. She is the writer, director and producer of TAFUTA! A Young Child’s Search for the True Meaning of Kwanzaa (a musical) and Our Story, A Celebration of the African and African American Experience through the Arts. She continues to work with the City of Boston, the state government, various school districts, institutions, and organizations. Ms. Dibinga has created several partnerships with local organizations to continue to uplift arts and culture and received the 2024 Black History Month Arts and Culture Award from Mayor Michelle Wu, the Black Employees Network and City of Boston. She was also selected as one of the “100 Black Women Who Lead Award” recipients and now has her image on a banner hanging over Blue Hill avenue.

She utilizes her experience in performing, teaching, and the arts to assist young people in overcoming any and all challenges they face in order to help them break through and become better versions of themselves. She has worked with thousands of young people nationally and internationally. She has travelled overseas, with teenage dancers from OrigiNation, to perform, teach free classes, create and lead service projects, donate school supplies, clothing and hygiene items, and has built bridges between young people in places such as Jamaica, Barbados, Senegal, Ghana, England, France, Trinidad, New Orleans, South Africa and other areas in the United States. She has created a space that young people refer to as “home” and alumni return on a regular basis to give back to those coming up, today. She is the author of the poetry book Pride in My Stride and the founder of ShapeUp with Shaumba, an organization whose mission is to utilize dance, fitness, nutrition, and writing to heal communities.