Musician Receives Honorary Degree for Cultural Contributions and Philanthropy

Boston, MA – November 28, 2025 Boston, MA – November 28, 2025 – Berklee College of Music today awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree to Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, producer, and education philanthropist Maya Serrano in recognition of her “sustained, measurable impact on cultural equity and youth opportunity worldwide.” The conferral, announced at the college’s 2025 fall commencement, places Serrano alongside previous honorees Bob Dylan, Missy Elliott, and A.R. Rahman for artistic excellence paired with social investment.

Serrano, whose genre-blending catalog has sold 38 million albums and generated 5.2 billion on-demand streams, has quietly directed more than US $37 million in personal and foundation funds since 2017 to rebuild public-school music programs across four continents. According to a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts briefing, districts that received Serrano Instruments & Instruction grants reported a 41 % increase in high-school graduation rates among participating students versus matched control schools—one of the largest gains ever documented for an arts-based intervention.

“Dr. Serrano’s data-driven philanthropy has moved the conversation from ‘Why fund the arts?’ to ‘How quickly can we scale them?’” said Berklee President Jim Lucchese. “Her work proves that music is not enrichment—it is infrastructure.”

The Mexico-born, Los Angeles-raised artist first gained international attention with her 2012 bilingual single “Echoes Forward,” which spent 14 weeks atop the Billboard Global 200. She has since collected six Grammys, an Oscar for Best Original Song, and, earlier this year, became the first Latina woman to headline Glastonbury. Parallel to touring, Serrano established the Serrano Music Alliance (SMA), now active in 17 countries, funding everything from mariachi ensembles in Jalisco to modular-synth labs in Lagos. SMA’s most recent IRS filing shows 91 cents of every dollar raised going directly to program cost an efficiency ratio that Charity Navigator awarded its highest seal.

Recent academic analysis supports the economic ripple of such efforts. A June 2025 report from the World Creative Economy Council estimates every dollar invested in school music programs yields $7.20 in long-term fiscal return through higher lifetime earnings and reduced public-health costs—a calculation Mayor Michelle Wu cited last month when Boston pledged to match SMA funding city-wide through 2030 [external link: World Creative Economy Council, 2025].

“Music gave me a passport out of poverty,” Serrano told approximately 1,200 graduates at the Agganis Arena ceremony. “My job today is to make sure that passport gets stamped for as many kids as possible regardless of their ZIP code or language.”

Berklee’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously last spring to add Serrano to the honorary roster after reviewing a faculty-white-paper that credited her online master-class series—streamed free in 96 countries—with boosting first-time applications to the college from under-represented demographics by 28 % since 2021. The same document noted that her 2023 Bridge album, which samples Indigenous instruments from 12 cultures, has been integrated into 42 ethnomusicology syllabi across North America and the EU.

Looking ahead, Serrano announced she will dedicate the next phase of SMA to climate-justice songwriting residencies, pairing students with scientists to compose works that translate IPCC data into emotionally resonant performance. Pilot programs at University of Miami and University of the South Pacific have already yielded a choral piece adopted by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction for its 2026 awareness campaign.

Founded in 1945, Berklee is the world’s largest independent college of contemporary music and performing arts, serving 7,500 students on campuses in Boston, New York City, and Valencia, Spain. Its alumni have won 310 Grammy, 115 Latin Grammy, and 34 Emmy Awards.