Distinguished Alumni Bill Boyle ’81 and Dr. Wendy R. Sanhai, MBA ’09, Announced as 2024 Smith School Commencement Speakers

Undergraduate Commencement

Bill Boyle ’81 will deliver the keynote address at the 2024 Undergraduate Commencement ceremony on May 22.  Boyle founded and was president of FiberGate Inc., a Washington D.C. metro area provider of dark fiber services. FiberGate developed local fiber optic backbones along strategic routes in Baltimore, Howard, Montgomery, Prince George’s, and Frederick Counties in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and the City of Alexandria, Loudoun, Fairfax and Arlington Counties in Northern Virginia. He ran the company for 17 years and successfully exited in the fall of 2012.

Boyle recently gave a generous gift of $1 million towards the construction of a new, virtual teaching studio to further help the Smith School’s Strategic Plan to reimagine learning. The Virtual Teaching and Media Studio at Smith will be the first of its kind on campus.

Boyle serves as the primary donor for the Terp Startup Accelerator program and the Terp Startup Fellows program, part of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. The Terp Startup Fellows is the center’s newest effort to accelerate the most promising student startups and an extension of the Terp Startup summer accelerator. Boyle also mentors students in the Terp Startup Fellows program and is a member of the Dingman Center advisory board.

Graduate Commencement

Dr. Wendy R. Sanhai, MBA ’09, will deliver the keynote address at the 2024 Graduate Commencement Ceremony. Dr. Sanhai is a leader in the healthcare and global health fields who served in senior positions in academia, at federal agencies NIH (Technology Licensing Specialist and Patent Advisor); FDA (Senior Scientific Advisor, Office of the Commissioner); the Foundation for NIH (FNIH: Director, Public Private Partnerships) and Industry (Senior Director, Global Regulatory Affairs).

Dr. Sanhai’s dedication to the advancement of biomedical research and public health began in academia while serving first as Clinical Chemistry Fellow, then scientific researcher, and ultimately a faculty member in the Departments of Pathology and Medical and Research Technology at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine. She left academia in 2001 to join the NIH, Office of Technology Transfer as a Technology Licensing Specialist and Patent Advisor, where she managed a license and intellectual property portfolio of more than 300 NIH invention families from across 27 Institutes and Centers of the NIH, with special emphasis on the National Cancer Institute.

Today, Dr. Sanhai is a Specialist Leader at Deloitte Consulting: Federal Strategy and Operations. In this role, she combines unparalleled subject matter expertise and business acumen to address the needs of clients in the pharmaceutical, biomedical and medical device fields, and leverages her expertise along with Deloitte’s multidisciplinary teams of strategy and advisory consultants to provide in-depth analysis and develop strategic solutions for clients.

Dr. Sanhai serves on multiple Boards and advisory committees, including as an Executive in Residence, Senior Executive Education Fellow and past Chair of the Advisory Board at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. She is an Associate Professor (adjunct) at Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Sanhai received a Ph.D. in clinical biochemistry from the School of Medicine, State University of New York at Buffalo, an Executive MBA, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and a baccalaureate degree in chemistry from the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Learn more about the Robert H. Smith School of Business Commencement.