Ph.D. graduate surprised with gift registry: 'You deserve to be celebrated'

By Yi-Jin Yu

What do you get a friend who just earned their doctorate?

For one Stanford graduate, one of her best friends surprised her not with a typical bouquet of flowers or a celebratory stuffed animal, but with a gift registry.

"My freshman roommate and bestie made a gift registry to congratulate me for graduating with my PhD, because 'we shouldn't only reward women for marriage and babies' and distributed it to everyone who RSVPd to my defense. Y'all… I…," Danielle Greene wrote in a now-viral tweet that has been liked nearly 135,000 times.

My freshman roommate and bestie made a gift registry to congratulate me for graduating with my PhD, because "we shouldn't only reward women for marriage and babies" and distributed it to everyone who RSVPd to my defense.

Y'all… I… 🥹

— danny, phd. (@blackhomeva) June 2, 2023

Courtesy of Danielle Greene

Liz Powell created a gift registry for Danielle Greene to celebrate Greene earning her Ph.D.

Greene told "Good Morning America" she was "really surprised" when her good friend Liz Powell asked if she could set up a registry in her honor, to mark the five years of work Greene put in for her doctorate in education, which culminated in a 200-page dissertation.

"Back in December, after I had defended [my dissertation], my college roommate, Elizabeth -- Liz Powell -- she reached out to me and was like, 'Hey, I would love to celebrate you. This is such a hard thing. You worked on it for a really long time. I was thinking about a gift registry,'" Greene recalled.

Courtesy of Danielle Greene

Greene describes Powell as an "amazing" friend who is "so giving, so kind, [and] so compassionate."

At first, the 33-year-old said she wasn't really on board with the idea.

"My first instinct was like, 'Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's like, too much.' It felt like, in the moment, I was going to be telling people to reward me for this work. And she kind of had to massage it a little bit," Greene said. "She was like, 'You worked really hard for this. You have put your entire life on hold for this research. … The work that you're doing is something that could potentially help other people. And I think you deserve to be celebrated for that.'"

Greene's work since 2017 has centered around her specialization in race, inequality, and language in education, and specifically focused on the impact of race on majority Black schools and what led to their closures.

After her research wrapped up, Greene said she eventually came around to Powell's idea, which Powell also mentioned to Greene's fiance and another one of her best friends.

"She was very intentional about like, 'I want to make sure that you are celebrated in ways that are meaningful to you,'" the former middle school social studies teacher said.

Courtesy of Danielle Greene

Danielle Greene and Liz Powell have been friends since they were first-year undergraduate students and roommates at William & Mary in Virginia.

Another talking point that Greene and Powell discussed resonated with both of them and also caught others' attention when Greene tweeted about the gift registry.

"The statement about [how] women should be celebrated beyond marriage and babies … that was something that I think a lot of people have had a kind of a visceral reaction to. And I want to be clear that when we were talking about it, it was more so we were in conversation about how often women are thought about in relationship to other people, whether it's as a caretaker, as a mother or as a wife," Greene said. "It's not necessarily a reward or anything like that, but it is an acknowledgment that your life is changing and you people want to be a part of that community and support you. And so, for me, my life was changing because I was finishing my doctorate and she was like, 'This is a seminal point in your life and I want people to be able to support you in community regardless.'"

Courtesy of Danielle Greene.

Danielle Greene graduated in June with a doctorate in education from Stanford University.

Now that Greene has been on the receiving end of a non-traditional gift registry, she said she highly recommends it for any other kind of life change, not just when someone gets married or welcomes a child.

"We should be rewarding and supporting people as they move into new stages of their lives," Greene said. "Giving people the things that they need in a really intentional way is one of the smallest ways that we can kind of show up and be in community together. So, I think that yes, if you get your doctorate, absolutely, gift registry. If you open a new business or close on a home or you know, anything, it's really up to you."