Meet the 2025 Smith College Medalists

Alum News

Four extraordinary alums will receive the Smith College Medal at Rally Day in February, in recognition of their contributions to their communities and the world.

Published September 12, 2024

This year’s medalists, announced at a faculty meeting in September, are:

Historian Nancy Weiss Malkiel ’65
Venture capitalist and entrepreneur Deborah Farrington ’72
Engineer Iris González ’11
Entrepreneur Margaret Nyamumbo ’11

This year’s honorees will receive their medals at Smith’s annual Rally Day ceremony on Thursday, Feb. 20, at 1:30 p.m. in John M. Greene Hall. Classes are canceled for the occasion, which marks the first time seniors publicly wear their graduation gowns—along with inventive hats—in keeping with the day’s spirit of Smith pride.

The Smith Medal was established in 1962 to recognize alums who exemplify in their lives and work “the true purpose” of a liberal arts education. More than 200 outstanding alumnae have received the award in recognition of their professional achievements and outstanding service.

About the Medalists

Nancy Weiss Malkiel ’65

Historian

Nancy Weiss Malkiel is a renowned historian whose scholarship has shaped our understanding of civil rights, race relations, and higher education. Currently professor of history, emeritus, at Princeton University, Malkiel broke down barriers as one of only three female faculty members at the university in 1969, the first year of undergraduate coeducation, when she began her career there. She was the first woman to join Princeton’s history department. Later, she would go on to serve for a record 24 years as Princeton’s dean of the undergraduate college. Malkiel has a long and distinguished career as a writer and professor. She taught many of Princeton’s largest and most popular classes, including her signature course, The United States Since 1940, co-taught with her diplomatic historian colleague, Richard D. Challener. Through the years, she also taught classes on women’s history, African American history, and the history of higher education. She is the author of five notable books: The National Urban League, 1910–1940 (Oxford University Press, 1974), Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR (Princeton University Press, 1983), Whitney M. Young, Jr., and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Princeton University Press, 1989), Changing the Game: William G. Bowen and the Challenges of American Higher Education (Princeton University Press, 2023), and “Keep the Damned Women Out”: The Struggle for Coeducation (Princeton University Press, 2016), a comprehensive study of the movement by elite colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom to go coed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1968, Smith College published her senior thesis, Charles Francis Murphy, 1858-1924: Respectability and Responsibility in Tammany Politics. Malkiel served for more than 40 years on the board of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, which she chaired for a decade; she served on Smith College’s board of trustees from 1984 to 1994. In 1997, Smith awarded Malkiel, who studied history as an undergraduate, an honorary doctor of laws degree.

Deborah Farrington ’72

Venture capitalist, entrepreneur

Deborah Farrington is co-founder and managing partner of New York City-based Starvest Partners, one of the largest majority women–owned venture capital firms in the United States. Farrington’s interest in business and finance was instilled at an early age, thanks to regular visits to Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange with her father, who worked in the financial services industry. Throughout her long career, Farrington has been a major player in a field where fewer than 10% of partners in venture capital firms are women. In 2000, she led a $20 million round of investments in a then little-known company called NetSuite. Seven years later, she made headlines when the company went public at a value of $1.8 billion, scoring the second-largest public offering of a tech company since Google. She has since been called Wall Street’s “top female technology deal maker” and a “venture capitalist with the golden touch.” She has also appeared numerous times on Forbes magazine’s Midas 100 list of top venture capitalists, securing the top spot in 2008 and 2011. In 2018, she was awarded The Foreign Policy Association Centennial Medal for Achievement in Financial Services. As one of only a few prominent women venture capitalists, Farrington is deeply committed to mentoring and providing opportunities to other women interested in pursuing careers in business and finance. She has shared her expertise on the boards of various organizations, including the International Women’s Forum, the American Friends of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and Opportunity International, which provides microloans to women in Africa and Central America. For Smith, Farrington has served on the board of trustees and as a judge for the college’s Draper Competition for Collegiate Women Entrepreneurs. She has also worked directly with students, helping them develop their own business plans. Farrington, who studied economics at Smith, holds an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

Iris González ’11

Engineer

Iris González is an engineer and health care advocate who is deeply dedicated to ensuring equitable and comprehensive care for society’s most vulnerable. As current chief operating officer of North America at IVI RMA Global, headquartered in Spain, González uses her skills to deliver world-class clinical outcomes for adults in their family planning journeys to achieve their dream of having a baby. As a student at Smith, González was part of a team that designed automation components of a microwave-based tissue processing system for use in point-of-service facilities, reducing both the time and cost of tissue processing. Now, González is using her experiences to mentor others and increase equity in both STEM and business. She is also the author of The Wedge Effect, which chronicles her own journey out of extreme socio-economic, financial, and cultural odds to become a successful entrepreneur and STEM leader. She has been recognized by the Miami Marlins Foundation as a Community Gamechanger, has been honored by the City of Boston as an “Outstanding Bostonian,” and is also a past Broward County Commission on the Status of Women Women’s History Month Honoree. Iris also serves as president at Improve Your Operations, delivering executive operation services to companies. González graduated from Smith with a degree in engineering and a minor in Africana studies.

Margaret Nyamumbo ’11

Entrepreneur

As the founder and CEO of Kahawa 1893, Margaret Nyamumbo is the first Black woman to own a nationally distributed coffee brand in the United States. Originally intending to study medicine at the University of Nairobi, Nyamumbo shifted gears and pursued economics instead, with the hope of one day launching her own business. Before making that happen, though, she worked for several years in investment banking, eventually accumulating enough savings to leave her job and pursue her dream of starting a business. Having grown up on a coffee farm in Kenya, Nyamumbo has long had an affinity for coffee. She often picked coffee berries with her mother and was intimately familiar with the ins and outs—as well as the good and the bad—of the coffee trade. In starting Kahawa 1893, Nyamumbo wanted to break down the inequalities in Kenya’s coffee supply chain by creating an ethical and inclusive company that would safeguard the needs and interests of coffee laborers and Kenyan women, who provide nearly 90% of the farm labor needed to harvest coffee. Today, nearly eight years since Kahawa 1893 coffee hit the market, the company has grown and evolved. Consumers, for example, can now offer tips to farmers that are then matched by Kahawa. Nyamumbo, who studied economics at Smith and also has an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, has been featured on the hit television series Shark Tank and has been recognized worldwide for her ethical business practices.

Margaret Nyamumbo wearing a sweatshirt with the slogan "Coffee: Africa's Gift to the World"