Award-Winning Journalist and Alumna Kimberly Dozier
Will be the 2009 Commencement Speaker at Wellesley College

WELLESLEY, Mass. -- Kimberly Dozier, a CBS News correspondent reporting from Baghdad, Iraq, became the victim of a car bombing on Memorial Day 2006. The rest of her crew was killed, as were the U.S. Army captain and an Iraqi translator she had been following for a story about American soldiers working with Iraqi security forces.  

Dozier, a Wellesley College alumna from the class of 1987, had lost nearly all her blood by the time she arrived at a treatment center, and her heart stopped twice. In her subsequent memoir about the attack and its aftermath, Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Report and Survive the War in Iraq, she writes about recovering from injuries including shrapnel in the head, a fractured femur, severe burns and emotional distress. She is now back to reporting for CBS, but the attack has changed her, she says.

“You know that ticker you’ve got running in your head going, ‘Got to please Mom, got to please boss, got to’ — you’ve got all these judges out there,” she said in The New York Times. “Especially women do this. I have a freedom I never had before in terms of saying: ‘You know what? I don’t care.’ Because I know what’s important.”

Dozier will address the approximately 600 members of the Class of 2009 and their friends and families at Wellesley College’s 131st Commencement Friday, June 5, at 10:30 am on the Academic Quad on the Wellesley, Mass., campus.

“Kimberly Dozier is a testament to the independence and resilience that Wellesley women exemplify,” said Alice Chen, Wellesley College senior class president. “With her unique experiences, inspirational story and distinct voice, she will offer our class valuable advice as we leave Wellesley to take on the world. We very much look forward to hearing Ms. Dozier address the Class of 2009 at our commencement.”

Prior to her CBS News appointment, Dozier was the chief correspondent for WCBS-TV New York’s Middle East bureau in Jerusalem, where she covered the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Iraq. Dozier has also served as the London bureau chief and chief European correspondent for CBS Radio News, as well as a reporter for CBS News television.

Her assignments have included the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the crisis and refugee exodus in the Balkans, Vladimir Putin’s election, the death of Princess Diana, Northern Ireland’s peace process and the Khobar barracks bombing in Dhahran. Dozier has interviewed dozens of newsmakers, including Gerry Adams and Yassir Arafat. In addition to her work for CBS Radio News, she also reported for the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, the CBS Evening Newsweekend editions, the Early Show and CBS Newspath, the network’s 24-hour news service.

In 2008, Dozier became the first woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation's Reagan "Tex" McCrary's Award for Excellence in Journalism. She is the recipient of numerous other awards, including a 2008 Peabody Award and the 2008 RTNDA/Edward R. Murrow Award for Feature Reporting. She has also received three American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Awards for her radio reports on Mideast violence, Kosovo and the Afghan war, as well as the organization's 2007 Grand Gracie Award for her work in Iraq.

Dozier graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley with a bachelor’s degree in human rights and Spanish, and from the University of Virginia in 1993 with a master’s degree in foreign affairs and the Middle East. She has residences in Jerusalem and London and is currently on assignment in CBS News’ Washington, D.C., bureau.

Wellesley College has been a leader in the education of women for more than 130 years.The College's 500-acre campus near Boston is home to 2,300 undergraduatestudents from all 50 states and 65 countries.

###