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Seymour “Sy” Sternberg, B.E.E.’65, Voza Rivers, and the late Lloyd Williams are T��ɫ��Ƶ’s 2025 President’s Medal recipients.

Sternberg and Rivers received their medals from CCNY President Vincent G. Boudreau at the annual President’s Circle Dinner on Nov. 4 at the University Club of New York. Williams’s son, Lateef Ade Williams, accepted his father's posthumous honor on the family’s behalf.

The President's Medal is awarded for distinguished achievement and public service. Past recipients include: Nelson Mandela; Nobel Laureates Robert Aumann and Leon M. Lederman; Coretta Scott King; Gen. Colin L. Powell, US Army (ret.); astronaut Mario Runco Jr.; former Secretary of State and former U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.); and Benjamin B. Ferencz, who was 99 and the last surviving former Nuremberg war crimes trials prosecutor when he received the medal in 2019. The 2002 Medal was awarded to the men and women of New York City's uniformed services for their heroic service on and after Sept. 11, 2001.

Sternberg was the longest-serving chairman of the board of New York Life Insurance Company, the largest mutual life insurance company in the U.S. and one of the largest life insurers in the world. He and his wife, Laurie Sternberg, established the Sternberg Lecture in Public Service at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership in 2014 to foster conversations about relevant public and policy related discussions. This gift also established the Sternberg Family Lecture in Public Scholarship, as well as the Sternberg Family Professorship of Leadership at the Colin Powell School, a position now held by former New York City Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene Dave A. Chokshi, M.D.

Sternberg has served CCNY and CUNY as a member of the City College 21st Century Foundation Board and the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies Advisory Council, and as chair of the CUNY Business Leadership Council. As chairman of the New York Life Foundation, he announced the Foundation’s $10 million grant to establish the New York Life Endowment for Emerging African-American Issues at what was then the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies. 

"Sy Sternberg has been an energetic and forceful supporter of City College since the founding of the 21st Century Foundation,” said President Boudreau. “I had the lucky opportunity to work with him since I began directing the Colin Powell Center back in 2002, and he guided our efforts from that point through to the founding of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. It was a deep and personal honor to present him with the President’s Medal."

For his distinguished service to college, city and country, Sternberg received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from his alma mater in 2010.

Award-winning music and theater producer Rivers took over Harlem’s New Heritage Repertory Theater in 1983 from its founder, the playwright, set designer, actor and lecturer Roger Furman. As executive producer, Rivers reorganized the theater as New Heritage Theatre Group. Now the oldest Black nonprofit theater in New York state, NHTG has spawned productions, workshops, and presentations that reflect the historical, social and political experiences of African and Latino descendants in America and abroad. NHTG counts luminaries such as Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Gertrude Jeanette, Rosetta Lenoir and Alice Childress among its many alumni.

Rivers and NHTG co-founded the  in 2001. It has since grown from a founding membership of 12 to more than 400 arts and culture members representing all disciplines and areas of the arts.

Last year, to mark the 60th anniversary of its 1964 founding, NTHG donated its extensive archives to CCNY’s Libraries Archives and Special Collections Division. 

"Voza Rivers is an icon in Harlem and in the world of theater. He brought some of the most groundbreaking acts of music and drama to the Harlem community. But we are particularly proud that some of his most remarkable, dramatic endeavors graced our stage in the Aaron Davis Theater,” said President Boudreau. “This medal both recognizes Voza’s lifelong achievements in the world of the arts and our mutual commitment to work together as we revitalize the Leonard Davis Center for the Performing Arts at City College."

Williams chaired the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce for more than half a century. The organization spurred residential and commercial development, tourism, and pride in the neighborhood’s history and potential. He was a founder and architect of Harlem Week, a festival that began in 1974 as Harlem Day, originally conceived as a one-time event that was expanded to a week the next year. He also served as a chairman of the CCNY President’s Executive Advisory Board.

Williams passed away on Aug. 17, during Harlem Week 2025.

“Lloyd was an unwavering friend of CCNY,” said President Boudreau. “He served the Harlem community, where he spent his life, tirelessly helping shape it into a beacon of African American culture and a popular destination for tourists from around the world. He was unrelenting in his mission to better Harlem and was an unfailing partner of the community's major institutions.” 

CCNY Assistant Professor of Education Gail Buffalo, who directs the Early Childhood Education program at CCNY’s Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education and is the author of the forthcoming book, "Certified in Uncertain Times," served as the evening’s keynote speaker.