Wayne State University Alumni Association honors accomplished graduates with annual alumni awards

Each year, the Wayne State University Alumni Association recognizes alumni whose lives reflect what a Wayne State education makes possible: economic mobility and careers that make a difference in their fields, communities and the world. On Thursday, May 21, the Alumni Association honored four accomplished Warriors with its annual alumni awards during a special ceremony on campus. Their stories span decades and continents, but each one leads back to Wayne State.

"We extend our deepest congratulations and gratitude to all four honorees," Lyndsey Crum, executive director of the Alumni Association, said. "With 313,000 living alumni, Wayne State's story doesn't end at graduation. It goes on, and it goes everywhere. Detroit goes worldwide. You go worldwide, and you're part of something amazing."

Distinguished Alumni Awards

Sherry Gay-Dagnogo '04, '08

Of the 39 fellows in her Education Pioneers cohort, Sherry Gay-Dagnogo was the only graduate of an urban university. Her peers elected her unanimously as their commencement speaker.

That moment captures something essential about Gay-Dagnogo: She has spent her career walking into rooms where she wasn't expected and leaving them changed. She grew up in Detroit, a first-generation college student with no clear map, drawn to Wayne State by a lifelong habit of asking why. Why are people struggling? Why do so many go without? She took classes after work, never as a full-time student, always as someone with somewhere else to be and big dreams to accomplish.

Wayne State didn't just hand her a plan. Advisors noticed patterns in her interests and gently redirected her toward science - a pivot she calls the best decision she ever made. She eventually realized the most powerful classroom she could work in was government.

After earning both her bachelor's and master's degrees from Wayne State University, Gay-Dagnogo dedicated her career to public service and advocacy. In 2014, she was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives, where she served three terms from 2015 to 2020, championing policies focused on education, equity and community empowerment.

Following her service in state legislature, she was elected to the Detroit Public Schools Community District Board of Education and began serving in January 2021. Detroit voters reaffirmed their confidence in her leadership when they reelected her to the board in 2024.

Today, Gay-Dagnogo serves the City of Detroit as its appointed ombudsman, the person whose job, by definition, is to hold institutions accountable to the people they were built to serve.

"I'm a Warrior through and through," she said. "And having that Warrior spirit gave me the confidence and courage to stand toe-to-toe with 109 other members and let them know that this is why your policies are not sound, and until you do these things, they're not fair, they're not equitable and they're not advancing our state as a whole."

WSUAA Awards Chair Makini Jackson presented Gay-Dagnogo with the Distinguished Alumni Award. In her acceptance, Gay-Dagnogo spoke directly to Wayne State's mission and the urgency she feels about its future. "I am asking you to do what you have reflected in your mission as an urban institution," she said. "To make sure that you pour into the Black and Brown children in the city of Detroit. It is a must."

Iris Taylor '74, '78, '96

By the time Dr. Iris Taylor stepped back from the Detroit Medical Center in 2015, she had risen from staff nurse to chief nursing officer, and ultimately to president and chief business officer of one of the region's largest health systems. In that role, she was responsible for nine hospitals, two nursing centers and more than 50 primary care practices across Southeast Michigan. She had also held simultaneous academic appointments at Wayne State in the College of Nursing and the School of Medicine for decades, making a difference in the city and at her alma mater.

Taylor arrived at Wayne State in the early 1970s determined and resourceful, sitting in the library and writing letters to foundations to close her own financial aid gap. She came knowing she wanted to be a nurse and attend a top program, and she was pleased to discover that Wayne State was both accessible and elite. What she found here went far beyond a degree. Wayne State gave her room to grow at every stage, including when she returned years later for her doctorate and faculty helped design a course of study tailored to what she wanted to accomplish. It was the kind of flexibility that changes what's possible.

The classmates she met became colleagues. The students who followed her became new graduates she trained, then physicians she led.

"All of the residents came from the Wayne State School of Medicine," she said. "I grew up those people, until they became famous physicians practicing today. It became another part of my family."

After leaving the DMC, Taylor did not slow down. She launched a consulting practice, returned to the City of Detroit Health Department and sat on boards and in rooms where her voice could make a difference.

Makini Jackson presented Taylor with her Distinguished Alumni Award. In accepting it, Taylor reflected on a journey that began with hard circumstances: working full-time, caring for a father dying of cancer and grieving his death just before she crossed the commencement stage at the institution that held steady for her throughout.

"I never could have achieved what I have over the last 50-plus years if it had not been for the foundation that I got at Wayne State University," she said. "The three degrees I have achieved at Wayne are because I could do it here. I could continue to work full-time and go to school. I could continue to work in the community and go to school." She paused and smiled. "Yeah, and I did have a life, and it's been great."

Scott Compton '93, '96, '01

Dr. Scott Compton grew up in Detroit just south of Seven Mile and Van Dyke. His parents believed in hard work and being a good person. College, they told him, was for rich kids.

Wayne State was right there, accessible and affordable. A place where a kid from Detroit could show up and pay his way through. He enrolled to become a teacher because teachers were the only professionals he'd known growing up - the only model he had for what an educated life might look like. But while working a part-time job for a statistician at a local hospital, he watched the mechanisms of science moving in real time and thought, "I don't want to teach this; I want to do this."

One open door led to another: a research assistant position in pediatrics led to a faculty role in emergency medicine. A posting in the Chronicle of Higher Education that caught his eye led to an interview in Durham, North Carolina, then a plane to Singapore.

That was 14 years ago. Today, Scott Compton is a senior leader at Duke-NUS Medical School, one of Asia's most respected medical institutions, working alongside colleagues trained at Harvard, Penn, Stanford and Cambridge. He still identifies, without hesitation, as a Detroiter. He has a tattoo of an X on his hand marking his home on the east side.

"Everybody knows where I'm from," he said. "My trajectory may appear global, but my roots are unmistakably Detroit."

Compton sees his first-generation students in Singapore navigating a world their families couldn't have imagined, and he knows exactly what they need.

"I'm trying to be Wayne State for them," he said. "Because it's going to change their entire family."

Dean of the WSU College of Education Denise Taliaferro-Baszile accepted the Distinguished Alumni Award on Compton's behalf.

"That may be the greatest measure of [Scott's] impact, because this is what Wayne State does," she said, referring to his goal to "be Wayne State" for his students. "We open doors, we create opportunity and we prepare our students to thrive, to uplift others along the way. Scott's life and work remind us that when talent meets opportunity, the results can reach far beyond our campus to communities, to countries and to the world."

Homer D. Strong Award

Tosha Padgett Brown '99

Dr. Tosha Padgett Brown has spent most of her life giving back before anyone thought to ask. Wayne State was woven into her story before she ever enrolled. A scholarship awarded to her in eighth grade would follow her through high school and fund her undergraduate education at the university she'd been passing her whole life. She hadn't planned on staying in Detroit for college, but with her mother's encouragement, she did. 30 years later, she's become one of Wayne State's strongest advocates and most passionate supporters.

What Padgett Brown built here defies a simple list. She changed majors from computer science to business management information systems, and when that decision extended her educational journey beyond her scholarship, Padgett Brown took a secretarial position to close the funding gap. She found herself working for outgoing university president David Adamany, managing his correspondence, launching Wayne Law's first career fair, and absorbing lessons about networking and relationship-building she still cites today. When Adamany moved temporarily to help lead Detroit Public Schools, he brought Padgett Brown with him. She was 20 years old.

A decade later, Wayne State called Padgett Brown back as IT director for the Division of Finance. They remembered her name, she says, because she'd never stopped sending Christmas cards. She went on to join the Alumni Association Board of Directors, serve as its president, and in that role produced back-to-back fundraising increases of 31% and 40% in consecutive years. Professional fundraisers, as one nominator noted, can't always put numbers like that on a resume.

Since 1996, Padgett Brown has been a leader in Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. at the campus, regional and national levels. She credits the organization with giving her a real college experience at a commuter campus and connecting her to mentors whose own commitment to Wayne State deepened her own. Padgett Brown has established two scholarships: one for Wayne State students who are members of her sorority, and one open to current college students across Michigan pursuing degrees in STEM or business. Both are deliberately targeted at students already enrolled, because she learned early that funding gaps don't always appear at the beginning.

"I noticed that students will get so much money to get there," she said. "But they don't have enough money to maintain."

Today, Padgett Brown serves as director of enrollment management and associate professor at Cleary University. She has served as keynote speaker for the Mike Ilitch School of Business' 25 Under 25 event and remains a member of its alumni council. She also mentors students through the Ilitch School's Multicultural Professional Readiness Education Program, supporting first-generation students with advice and insight. A proud Detroiter, she returned to her alma mater, Cass Tech, to coach track when her own daughters were students there, illustrating the kind of problem-solving approach to community need that defines how she moves through the world. Padgett Brown is the person you call when something needs to get done quietly and quickly, not the one standing at the front of the room claiming credit.

That instinct runs deep. She describes her giving not as ambition but as obligation, rooted in faith, modeled by the mentors who poured into her, and paid forward to students who, like her, just needed someone to show them the seat was theirs.