BVU Announces 2015 Commencement Speaker

April 7, 2015

Buena Vista University has announced that Laura Horn, retired America Online (AOL) business executive and former BVU Trustee, will be the 2015 Commencement speaker on May 23.

"It will be an honor and an inspiration to share such a special day with so many individuals who have worked hard and persevered to earn their degrees," says Horn. "I look forward to celebrating with BVU's class of 2015 and their families and friends. I am interested to hear their stories and know where their preparation, initiative and dreams will take them."

Horn graduated with honors from Buena Vista College in 1973 with a major in English and began her career at LEXIS-NEXIS when it was a young company. She worked at LEXIS-NEXIS for nearly twenty years, holding positions in sales and training, customer service, sales management, technical and product development, marketing and strategic planning. Her last position there was as vice president of marketing and sales for LEXIS Legal Publishing.

She left LEXIS-NEXIS for AOL in the mid-1990s, joining the company as general manager of new products and services, developing and acquiring new capabilities for AOL members. Horn then became vice president of technology for AOL, where she and her teams were responsible for many of the products that AOL's millions of consumers used every day, including e-mail, search and mobile services.

Horn left AOL in 2001 and co-founded Wondir, Inc., which provided a live Q&A service that combined search and instant messaging, linking people with questions to people with answers. A successful, venture capital funded start-up, Wondir was purchased by Revolution Health in 2005.

"Laura Horn achieved remarkable success during her executive career in the highly competitive online industry. Her knowledge and skills contributed a unique perspective to our Board of Trustees and the direction of our University," says BVU President Fred Moore. "The experiences and insight she can share as a business leader and an alumna will resonate with our graduates and set the stage as they step forward into their future."

Horn served on BVU's board of trustees from 2005 to 2014. She currently chairs the board of the Community Investment Collaborative, serves on the board of Poetry Daily, is president-elect of her Unitarian Universalist church and teaches specialty classes to middle-school students.

She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband Hasty, BV Class of 1971. The couple established an endowment fund at BVU to support the Women's Studies Program that is used for research, faculty development and travel, guest lectures and academic applications.