62 Notable alumni of St. John’s College

Isaac Nevett Steele was an American diplomat and lawyer who was "universally recognized for years as the leader of the Maryland Bar."

Claudia Stack was an educator, writer, and documentary filmmaker. Her film productions included “Under the Kudzu” (2012) and “Carrie Mae: An American Life” (2015), both of which focused on schools that African American families helped to build during the segregation era. African American families in the South built schools of many different kinds from Reconstruction through the 1950s. Rosenwald schools...

William Pinkney was fifth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.

Sydney Emanuel Mudd I was a politician, elected as Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates (1896) and as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives (1890–1891; 1897–1911), at a time of dominance by Democrats in much of the state. He was first seated by Congress in 1890 after it found in his favor in relation to the...

John Carlyle Herbert was an American lawyer, planter, military officer in the War of 1812 and politician. He served as a legislator in both Virginia and Maryland, as well as a U.S. Congressman representing Maryland's 2nd congressional district (1814-1818).

William Hersey Hopkins was an American academic who served as the first president of Goucher College and acting president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.

Anne S. Ferro is an American government official, currently serving as president and CEO of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, a nonprofit organization creating model programs in motor vehicle administration, law enforcement, and highway safety. She previously served as president of the Maryland Motor Truck Association, administrator of the United States Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and as...

Liz Waldner is an American poet.

Alexander Contee Hanson was an American lawyer, publisher, and statesman. He represented the third district of Maryland in the U.S. House, and the state of Maryland in the U.S. Senate. The town of Hanson, Massachusetts is named after him.

Robert Allen Goldwin was an American political scientist specializing in the study of the Constitution, who left academia to enter government at the invitation of his friend Donald Rumsfeld, serving as adviser and "intellectual-in-residence" for the presidential administration of Gerald Ford. He was subsequently a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Cynthia E. Keppel is the Associate Director for Physics at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Her research focuses on the quark-gluon structure of the nucleon, while also considering applications of nuclear physics in medicine. She was a founding member of the Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute.

Christopher Harrison was the first lieutenant governor of Indiana, serving alongside Governor Jonathan Jennings. Harrison briefly acted as governor while Jennings was engaged in negotiations with the native tribes in northern Indiana. He later resigned from office following a dispute with Jennings. Harrison became a Quaker in his later life and freed all the slaves he inherited from his family....

William Hartwell Harrison was a decorated officer of United States Marine Corps with the rank of brigadier general. He is most noted as commanding officer of 11th Marine Regiment during Battle of Peleliu in September 1944. Harrison later commanded the Automotive Section within Service Command, Fleet Marine Force Pacific.

Jan Lisa Huttner is an American film critic, journalist, activist, and independent scholar. Huttner has authored columns for prominent publications, including Women's eNews, the Huffington Post, and The Forward, and is the author of a blog, "The Hot Pink Pen," which is devoted to reviewing films by women filmmakers. She is also known for her work as a proponent of...

Robert A. George is a Trinidadian-American journalist, professor and comedian who formerly worked as an editorial writer for Bloomberg Opinion, the New York Daily News and the New York Post. He is generally seen as a conservative or libertarian.

John Leeds Kerr was an American politician.

Frederick Stone was a lawyer who served two terms as a U.S. Congressman from the fifth district of Maryland from 1867 to 1871.

Thomas Eugene Bourke was a United States Marine Corps general who, during World War II, commanded Marine artillery units at the Battle of Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Leyte. At the end of World War II, he commanded the 5th Marine Division in the occupation of Japan, and the Fleet Marine Force, Pacific.

Lewis Jefferson Fields was a highly decorated officer of the United States Marine Corps with the rank of lieutenant general. He served with 1st Marine Division during Vietnam War and later as commanding general of United States Marine Corps Development and Education Command.

James Harry Preston was the Mayor of Baltimore from 1911 to 1919. He also served in the Maryland House of Delegates. From 1920 to 1921, he served as president general of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.

James Thomas served as the 23rd governor of the state of Maryland in the United States from 1833 to 1836. He practiced medicine and served as judge in several courts throughout Maryland, and served in the Maryland State Senate from 1824 to 1830.

Addison Wiggin is an American writer, publisher, and filmmaker. He is the host of the YouTube show The Wiggin Sessions, covering financial markets, the economy and politics. He writes the financial daily The Daily Missive. Addison is also the host and editor of The Essential Investor, a resource for individuals who manage their own money.

Joseph J. Himmel SJ was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit. For much of his early life, he was a missionary throughout the northeast United States and retreat master. Later in life, he was president of Gonzaga College and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Kenneth Lewis Kronberg was an American businessman and long-time member of the LaRouche movement, an organization founded by American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.

Pamela Sklar was an American psychiatrist and neuroscientist. She was Chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, and genetic and genomic sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She was also chief of the Division of Psychiatric Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Sklar is known...

Francis Thomas was an American politician who served as the 26th governor of Maryland from 1842 to 1845. He also served as a United States representative from Maryland, representing at separate times the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh districts. He also served as United States minister to Peru from 1872 to 1875, and speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates...

Emerson Columbus Harrington was an American politician who served as the 48th Governor of Maryland from 1916 to 1920. He also served as Comptroller of the Maryland Treasury from 1912 to 1916.

Allan Clay McBride was an American brigadier general and chief of staff in the Philippines at the time of the Japanese invasion. He died of starvation in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp on Formosa.

Allenna Leonard is an American cybernetician, consultant and director of Team Syntegrity International, specializing in the application of Stafford Beer's Viable System Model and Syntegration. She was president of the American Society for Cybernetics from 2002 to 2004 and president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences in 2009–2010, and led the organization of its 54th annual meeting in...

Charles Sidney Winder was a career United States Army officer and a Confederate general officer in the American Civil War. He was killed in action during the Battle of Cedar Mountain.

Laura Gabriela Gil Savastano is a Colombian internationalist, political scientist, journalist, media analyst, columnist, expert on human rights issues, international law and humanitarian law, born in Uruguay.

John Mullan Jr. was an American soldier, explorer, civil servant, and road builder. After graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1852, he joined the Northern Pacific Railroad Survey, led by Isaac Stevens. He extensively explored western Montana and portions of southeastern Idaho, discovered Mullan Pass, participated in the Coeur d'Alene War, and led the construction crew which built...

Michael Herman Elias is an American writer, film director and producer.

Seth Cropsey is an American political figure and former United States Department of Defense official. He is the author of several books and studies on maritime strategy and the president of the Yorktown Institute, which describes itself as focused on "great power competition and the U.S. naval and military supremacy that must undergird American grand strategy." He is a former...

Oden Bowie, a member of the United States Democratic Party, was the 34th governor of the State of Maryland in the United States from 1869 to 1872.

Warren Winiarski was an American Napa Valley winemaker and the founder and proprietor of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars.

Lucy Tamlyn is an American diplomat who had served as the United States ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She previously served as chargé d'affaires to Sudan (from February to August 2022); as United States ambassador to the Central African Republic (from 2019 to 2022); and as United States ambassador to Benin (from 2015 to 2018).

Thomas Gordon Palmer is an American libertarian author and theorist, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and Vice President for International Programs at the Atlas Network.

Timberlake Wertenbaker is a British-based playwright, screenplay writer, and translator who has written plays for the Royal Court, the Royal Shakespeare Company and others. She has been described in The Washington Post as "the doyenne of political theatre of the 1980s and 1990s".

Miyoko Schinner is an American-Japanese vegan chef, cookbook author, activist, cooking show host and social entrepreneur. Since 2024, she has been on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Eilen Jewell is an American singer-songwriter from Boise, Idaho. She has released 13 albums.

Allucquére Rosanne "Sandy" Stone is an American academic theorist, media theorist, author, and performance artist. She is an Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin where she was the Founding Director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) and the New Media Initiative in the department of Radio-TV-Film. Stone has worked in and written about film, music,...

Reverdy Johnson was an American politician, statesman, and jurist from Annapolis, Maryland. He gained fame as a defense attorney, defending notables such as Sandford of the Dred Scott case, Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter at his courts-martial, and Mary Surratt, conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. A former Whig, he was a strong supporter of the Union war effort....

Lewis Hyde Brereton was a military aviation pioneer and lieutenant general in the United States Air Force. A 1911 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, he began his military career as a United States Army officer in the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps prior to World War I, then spent the remainder of his service as a career...

Jac Holzman is an American record executive. He is the founder of the record labels Elektra Records and Nonesuch Records. Holzman helped commercially launch the CD and home video formats, as well as the pilot program which became MTV. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

Lydia Frances Polgreen is an American journalist. She was editorial director of NYT Global at The New York Times, and the West Africa bureau chief for the same publication, based in Dakar, Senegal, from 2005 to 2009. She also reported from India. She spent much of her early career in Johannesburg, South Africa where she was The New York Times...

Glenn Robertson Yarbrough was an American folk singer and guitarist. He was the tenor lead singer of the Limeliters from 1959 to 1963 and also had a prolific solo career. Yarbrough had a restless dissatisfaction with the music industry that led him to question his priorities, and he later focused on sailing and setting up a school for orphans.

Graham Harman is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of objects led to the development of object-oriented ontology. He is a central figure in the speculative realism trend in contemporary philosophy.

Charles Lincoln Van Doren was an American writer and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s. In 1959 he testified before the United States Congress that he had been given the correct answers by the producers of the NBC quiz show Twenty-One. Terminated by NBC, he joined Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. in 1959, becoming a...

George Washington Parke Custis was an American antiquarian, author, playwright, and slave owner. He was a veteran of the War of 1812. His father John Parke Custis served in the American Revolution with then-General George Washington, and died after the Battle of Yorktown that ended the revolution.

Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš is a Latvian and American politician who served as the prime minister of Latvia from 2019 until 2023. A linguist and businessman by profession, he previously served as Latvia's minister of Economics and a Member of the European Parliament. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, United States, to parents who had left Latvia during the Soviet occupation, he was...

Michael Anton is a conservative writer and bureaucrat.

Ahmet Ertegun was a Turkish-American businessman, songwriter, record executive and philanthropist.

Lhasa de Sela, also known by the mononym Lhasa, was an American-Mexican-Canadian singer-songwriter who was raised in Mexico and the United States and divided her adult life between Canada and France. Her first album, La Llorona, went Platinum in Canada and brought Lhasa a Félix Award and a Juno Award.

Francis Scott Key was an American lawyer, author, and poet from Frederick, Maryland, best known as the author of the poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry", which was set to a popular British tune and eventually became the American national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner". In 1814 Key observed the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812....

Benjamin Eric Sasse is an American politician and academic administrator. He represented Nebraska in the United States Senate from 2015 to 2023, resigning to become the president of the University of Florida. He is a member of the Republican Party. He is a critic of Donald Trump and was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Trump of...

Terrance Alan Teachout was an American author, critic, biographer, playwright, stage director, and librettist.

Ninian Pinkney, also spelled Pinckney, was a United States Navy surgeon and medical director. He graduated from St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, in 1829, and from Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1833. He spent his entire naval career helping to further develop the field of surgery and medicine. He was especially prominent—and praised—during the American Civil War.

William Bowie was an American geodetic engineer noted for promoting geophysical sciences and for being the first President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The William Bowie Medal, the highest honor of the AGU, is named in his honor.

Cleland Kinloch Nelson was the Third Bishop of the U.S. state of Georgia and the first bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. Nelson was the 160th bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA).

John C. Wright is an American writer of science fiction and fantasy novels. He was a Nebula Award finalist for his fantasy novel Orphans of Chaos. Publishers Weekly said he "may be this fledgling century's most important new SF talent" when reviewing his debut novel, The Golden Age.