WYOMISSING, Pa. — A new class of approximately 200 Penn State Berks students will receive their baccalaureate and associate degrees at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 10, at the Santander Arena in downtown Reading, when Berks hosts its spring 2025 commencement ceremony. The honorary keynote speaker this year will be U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA-06).
The first woman to represent Pennsylvania's 6th District in Congress, which encompasses Berks and Chester counties, Houlahan is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Armed Services Committee, where she also serves on the Subcommittee on Military Personnel as a ranking member and the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation.
Houlahan is an Air Force veteran, engineer, entrepreneur and educator. She is the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. She earned her bachelor’s degree in engineering from Stanford University with an ROTC scholarship that launched her service in the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves, and later earned her master’s degree in technology and policy from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She has helped lead several southeastern Pennsylvania companies, including AND1, a basketball apparel company headquartered in Paoli, and B Lab, the organization that launched the B Corporation movement. She served in Teach for America as a chemistry teacher at Simon Gratz High School in North Philadelphia, and then led and scaled a nonprofit to help underserved students across America build their literacy skills.
In addition to her committee assignments, she has taken on several leadership roles, including serving as the co-chair of the bipartisan Paid Family Leave Working Group, bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, and the Servicewomen and Women Veterans Caucus.
Since her time in Congress, she has been awarded the Abraham Lincoln Leadership for America Award, presented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to honor lawmakers for their work supporting a free enterprise system; and three Congressional Management Foundation Democracy Awards, recognizing achievement in the categories of transparency and accountability, constituent services and workplace environment.