A collection of features and graduate profiles covering Harvard’s 375th Commencement.
On any given day in the past year, Grier Wilt may have been, quietly, the most interesting person in Cambridge.
Not yet 40, Wilt has worked and studied on four continents. By now she’s an advanced speaker of French and Russian, and currently studying Arabic and Japanese. She’s certified as both a private pilot and an open-sea diver, with degrees or coursework in mechanical engineering, national security, business, and ethnomusicology.
And weeks after Wilt receives her latest diploma — her master’s in public administration, following a whirlwind year at the Harvard Kennedy School — she’ll resume the life-or-death responsibilities she holds at NASA: as a capsule communicator, spacewalk flight controller, and astronaut instructor.
You’d never know it, her teachers note.
