100 Notable alumni of Vassar College

Emily Kunstler is an American documentary filmmaker and activist. Her documentaries have won awards at South by Southwest and have been featured at Sundance. Kunstler is the daughter of lawyer William Kunstler, famous for his historic civil rights cases and Margaret Ratner Kunstler, a prominent New York human rights attorney.

Sau Lan Wu is a Chinese-American particle physicist and the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She made important contributions towards the discovery of the J/psi particle, which provided experimental evidence for the existence of the charm quark, and the gluon, the vector boson of the strong force in the Standard Model of physics. Recently,...

Elizabeth "Lizzy" Plapinger, known professionally as LPX when performing as a solo artist, is the lead vocalist of indie pop duo MS MR and co-owner of boutique record label Neon Gold Records.

Philip Stuart Kitcher is a British philosopher who is the John Dewey Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University. He specialises in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of mathematics, and more recently pragmatism.

Katherine Sherar Pannill Center is an American author of contemporary fiction.

Elizabeth Lewisohn Eisenstein was an American historian of the French Revolution and early 19th-century France. She is well known for her work on the history of early printing, writing on the transition in media between the era of 'manuscript culture' and that of 'print culture', as well as the role of the printing press in effecting broad cultural change in...

Alice Huyler Ramsey was an American who was the first woman to drive an automobile across the United States from coast to coast, a feat she completed on August 7, 1909.

Alexa Meade is an American installation artist best known for her portraits painted directly onto the human body and inanimate objects in a way that collapses depth and makes her models appear two-dimensional when photographed. Her work was described by American media organization NPR as "portraiture in triplicate: A photo of a painting of a person, and the real person...

Violet Lucille Fletcher was an American screenwriter of film, radio and television. Her credits include The Hitch-Hiker, an original radio play written for Orson Welles and adapted for a notable episode of The Twilight Zone television series. Lucille Fletcher also wrote Sorry, Wrong Number, one of the most celebrated plays in the history of American radio, which she adapted and...

Wesley Strick is an American screenwriter who has written such films as Arachnophobia, Wolf and Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear. Strick also worked as a writer/executive producer on The Man in the High Castle.

Nancy Harkness Love, born Hannah Lincoln Harkness, was an American pilot and airplane commander during World War II. She earned her pilot's license at age 16. She worked as a test pilot and air racer in the 1930s. During World War II she convinced Colonel William H. Tunner of the U.S. Army Air Forces to look to set up a...

Michael Portnoy is an American visual artist, filmmaker, choreographer and performance artist. He calls himself a "Director of Behavior". He has been described in Art in America as "one of the most interesting performance artists anywhere", and by Artforum as "the great Absurdist".

Suzanne Liselotte Marguerite Massie was an American scholar of Russian history who played an important role in the relations between Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union in the final years of the Cold War. In 2021 she was awarded Russian citizenship.

Ellen Churchill Semple was an American geographer and the first female president of the Association of American Geographers. She contributed significantly to the early development of the discipline of geography in the United States, particularly studies of human geography. She is most closely associated with work in anthropogeography and environmentalism, and the debate about "environmental determinism".

Carlos Eduardo Espina is a Uruguayan and American social media personality and activist, based in Houston, Texas.

Philip Nathan Jefferson is an American economist who has been serving as 23rd vice chair of the Federal Reserve since September 2023. He has been a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since 2022. He was nominated for the position by President Joe Biden in January 2022, and was confirmed by the Senate in May 2022. Upon taking...

Malinda Kathleen Reese, known professionally as Malinda (stylized in all caps), is an American internet personality, singer-songwriter and stage actress. She is best known for her Irish music covers on TikTok and her channel Twisted Translations on YouTube, on which she performed songs and performances from song lyrics and other texts that have been translated through multiple languages and back...

Meghan Elizabeth Daum is an American author, essayist, podcaster, and journalist.

Jon Fisher is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. As of 2021, Fisher is the CEO and a co-founder of software company ViciNFT. As a co-founding CEO, Fisher built multiple companies including Bharosa—which produced the Oracle Adaptive Access Manager and sold to Oracle Corporation for a reported $50 million in 2007, NetClerk—now part of Roper Technologies, AutoReach—now part of AutoNation, and CrowdOptic.

Bernadine Patricia Healy was an American cardiologist and the first female director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Crystal Catherine Eastman was an American lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She was a leader in the fight for women's suffrage, a co-founder and co-editor with her brother Max Eastman of the radical arts and politics magazine The Liberator, co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and co-founder in 1920 of the American Civil Liberties Union....

Samuel Bingham Endicott is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actor and director. He is best known as the lead vocalist of The Bravery with whom he recorded three studio albums.

Shana Alexander was an American journalist. Although she became the first woman staff writer and columnist for Life magazine, she was best known for her participation in the "Point-Counterpoint" debate segments of 60 Minutes in the late 1970s with conservative James J. Kilpatrick.

Pauline Newman is an American lawyer and jurist formally serving as a U.S. Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. As of 2025, she is the longest-serving active federal judge; she was suspended from her duties in September 2023 due to concerns about her productivity and cognitive ability, which she disputes.

Urvashi Vaid was an Indian-born American LGBT rights activist, lawyer, and writer. An expert in gender and sexuality law, she was a consultant in attaining specific goals of social justice. She held a series of roles at the National LGBTQ Task Force, serving as executive director from 1989 to 1992 — the first woman of color to lead a national...

Margaret Floy Washburn, was a leading American psychologist in the early 20th century, was best known for her experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory development. She was the first woman in the United States to earn a PhD in psychology (1894); the second woman, after Mary Whiton Calkins, to serve as president of the American Psychological Association (1921);...

Lynn Povich is an American journalist. She began her career as a secretary in the Paris Bureau of Newsweek magazine, rising to become a reporter and writer in New York in the late 1960s. In 1970, she was one of a group of women who sued the magazine for sex discrimination. Five years later, she was appointed the first woman...

Michael Scott Kimmel is an American retired sociologist specializing in gender studies. He was Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University in New York and is the founder and editor of the academic journal Men and Masculinities. Kimmel is a spokesman of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) and a longtime feminist. In 2013, he founded the...

Alexandra Ripley was an American writer best known as the author of Scarlett (1991), written as a sequel to Gone with the Wind. Her first novel was Who's the Lady in the President's Bed? (1972). Charleston (1981), her first historical novel, was a bestseller, as were her next books On Leaving Charleston (1984), The Time Returns (1985), and New Orleans...

Linda Nochlin was an American art historian, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor Emerita of Modern Art at New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and writer. As a prominent feminist art historian, she became well known for her pioneering 1971 article "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" published by ARTnews.

Enrico Anthony Lazio is an American attorney and former four-term U.S. representative from the State of New York. A Long Island native, Lazio became well-known during his bid for U.S. Senate in New York's 2000 Senate election; he was defeated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Lazio also ran unsuccessfully for the 2010 New York State Republican Party gubernatorial nomination.

Baroness Uryū Shigeko, was a Japanese educator, one of the first two Japanese women to attend a college, and one of the first piano teachers in Japan.

Anita Florence Hemmings was known as the first African American woman to graduate from Vassar College. With both European and African ancestry, she passed as white for socioeconomic benefits. After graduation, Hemmings became a librarian at the Boston Public Library.

Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards was an American industrial and safety engineer, environmental chemist, and university faculty member in the United States during the 19th century. Her pioneering work in sanitary engineering, and experimental research in domestic science, laid a foundation for the new science of home economics. She was the founder of the home economics movement characterized by the application...

Tarun Tahiliani is an Indian fashion designer. With his wife Sailaja 'Sal' Tahiliani, he co-founded the multi-designer boutique Ensemble in 1987, and Tahiliani Design studio in 1990. Based in Delhi, he is best known for his ability to infuse Indian craftsmanship and textile heritage with tailored silhouette. His signature is to combine traditional aesthetics with modern design. Over the years,...

Emily Jenkins, who sometimes uses the pen name E. Lockhart, is an American writer of children's picture books, young adult novels, and adult fiction. She is best known for the novels The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and We Were Liars; the latter was adapted into a television series in 2025.

Lucy Burns was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate. She was a passionate activist in the United States and the United Kingdom, who joined the militant suffragettes. Burns was a close friend of Alice Paul, and together they ultimately formed the National Woman's Party.

Inez Milholland Boissevain was a leading American suffragist, lawyer, and peace activist.

Lilli Cooper is an American actress.

Hung Huang is a Chinese-American media figure. She was the publisher of the fashion magazine iLook from 1999 to 2015.

Jane Smiley is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991).

Elizabeth Helen McCaughey, formerly known as Betsy McCaughey Ross, is an American politician who was the lieutenant governor of New York from 1995 to 1998. She unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination for governor after Pataki dropped her from his 1998 ticket, and she ended up on the ballot under the Liberal Party line. In August 2016 the Donald Trump...

Caterina Fake is an American entrepreneur and investor. She co-founded the websites Flickr in 2004 and Hunch in 2007. Fake is a trustee for nonprofit organizations and served as the chairwoman of Etsy. For her role in creating Flickr, Fake was listed in Time magazine's Time 100, and she has been recognized within Silicon Valley for her work as an...

Marc Alexander Thiessen is an American political columnist, speechwriter, and political commentator. He is a columnist for The Washington Post, a Fox News contributor, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. From 2004 to 2009, he was a member of President George W. Bush’s speechwriting team, serving as chief speechwriter in the final years of the administration. Earlier,...

Matthew Newton is an American actor, filmmaker and acting coach.

Scott David Westerfeld is an American writer of young adult fiction, best known as the author of the Uglies and the Leviathan series.

Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld is an American writer. She is the author of two collections of short stories, You Think it, I’ll Say It (2018) and Show Don't Tell (2025), as well as seven novels: Prep (2005), the story of students at a Massachusetts prep school; The Man of My Dreams (2006), a coming-of-age novel and an examination of romantic love;...

Sherrilyn Ifill is an American lawyer and the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights (Vernon E. Jordan) at Howard University. She is a law professor and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She was the Legal Defense Fund's seventh president since Thurgood Marshall founded the organization in 1940. Ifill is a nationally...

Mary Therese McCarthy was an American novelist, critic and political activist, best known for her novel The Group, her marriage to critic Edmund Wilson, and her storied feud with playwright Lillian Hellman. McCarthy was the winner of the Horizon Prize in 1949 and was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, in 1949 and 1959. She was a member of the National Institute...

Gregory Rucka is an American writer known for the series of novels starring his character Atticus Kodiak, the creator-owned comic book series Whiteout, Queen & Country, Stumptown and Lazarus, as well as lengthy runs on such titles as Detective Comics, Wonder Woman and Gotham Central for DC Comics, and Elektra, Wolverine and The Punisher for Marvel. He has written a...

Jonás Cuarón Elizondo is a Mexican film director, screenwriter, producer, editor and cinematographer. He is the son of the Academy Award-winner Alfonso Cuarón and his first wife, Mariana Elizondo.

Dan Bucatinsky is an American actor, writer and producer, best known for his role as James Novak in the Shonda Rhimes drama series Scandal, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2013. In 2014, Bucatinsky starred on NBC's Marry Me, as well as the revived HBO series The Comeback, which...

Victoria Garance Alixe Legrand is a French-American musician, best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter and keyboardist of the dream pop band Beach House.

Rachael Amanda Yamagata is an American singer-songwriter and pianist from Arlington, Virginia. She began her musical career with the band Bumpus before becoming a solo artist and releasing five EPs and four studio albums. Her songs have appeared on numerous television shows and she has collaborated with Jason Mraz, Rhett Miller, Bright Eyes, Ryan Adams, Toots and the Maytals, Ray...

Princess Ōyama Sutematsu was a Japanese socialite in the Meiji era, and the first Japanese woman to receive a college degree. She was born into a traditional samurai household which supported the Tokugawa shogunate during the Boshin War. As a child, she survived the monthlong siege known as the Battle of Aizu in 1868, and lived briefly as a refugee.

Jessi Ruth Klein is an American writer, actress and stand-up comedian from New York City. Klein has regularly appeared on shows such as The Showbiz Show with David Spade and VH1's Best Week Ever and has performed stand-up on Comedy Central's Premium Blend. She provided commentary for CNN in the debates of the 2004 presidential election. A self-proclaimed "geek", Klein...

Brooke Hayward is an American actress. Her memoir, Haywire, was a best-seller.

Ruth Fulton Benedict was an American anthropologist and folklorist.

Angela Bethany Goethals is an American film, television and stage actress. Goethals made her acting debut as a child actor in the 1987 Broadway production of Coastal Disturbances, and was 14-years-old when she won the Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress, for her portrayal of Edna Arkins in the 1991 Off-Broadway production of The Good Times Are Killing...

Kenneth M. Levine is an American video game developer. He is the creative director and co-founder of Ghost Story Games (formerly known as Irrational Games). He led the creation of the BioShock series and is also known for his work on System Shock 2.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet and playwright. Millay was a renowned social figure and noted feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She also wrote prose under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd.

Alexander "Sasha" Hedges Steinberg, known professionally as Sasha Velour, is an American drag queen, artist, actor, and stage and television producer, based in Brooklyn, New York. Velour is known for winning the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race, her drag revue NightGowns, and her one-queen theatrical work, Smoke & Mirrors.

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps "the...

Vera Florence Cooper Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studying galactic rotation curves, the first evidence for the galaxy rotation problem, one key piece of evidence for dark matter. Measurements by other astronomers using 21 centimeter hydrogen line radio telescopes...

Alysia Reiner is an American actress. She is best known for playing Natalie "Fig" Figueroa in the Netflix comedy drama series Orange Is the New Black, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award for her role as part of the ensemble cast.

Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer was an American painter who lived in Washington D.C. She was married to Cord Meyer from 1945 to 1958; she became involved romantically with President John F. Kennedy after her divorce from Meyer.

Neil Darrow Strauss also known by the pen names Style and Chris Powles, is an American author and journalist. His book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, describes his experiences in the seduction community in an effort to become a "pickup artist". He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and also wrote regularly for The New...

Stacy London is an American stylist, TV personality, author, and midlife advocate. She is best known as the co-host of the iconic TLC show What Not to Wear.

Owen Philip King is an American author of novels and graphic novels, and a television film producer. He published his first book, We're All in This Together, in 2005 to generally positive reviews, but his first full-length novel, Double Feature, had a less enthusiastic reception. King collaborated with his father, writer Stephen King, in the writing of the women's prison...

Michael Wolff is an American journalist and media consultant, as well as a columnist and contributor to USA Today and The Hollywood Reporter. He has received two National Magazine Awards, a Mirror Award, and has authored seven books, including Burn Rate (1998) about his own dot-com company, and The Man Who Owns the News (2008), a biography of Rupert Murdoch....

Frances Hussey Sternhagen was an American actress. She was known as a character actress who appeared on- and off-Broadway, in movies, and on television for over six decades. Sternhagen received numerous accolades, including two Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award, and a Saturn Award, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards.

Andrew Scott Zimmern is an American chef, restaurateur, television and radio personality, director, producer, businessman, food critic, and author. Zimmern is the co-creator, host, and consulting producer of the Travel Channel television series Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Bizarre Foods America, Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations, Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre World, Dining with Death, The Zimmern List, and Andrew Zimmern's Driven by...

Marguerite Moreau is an American actress. She is known for her role as Jesse Reeves in the fantasy horror film Queen of the Damned, Katie in the comedy Wet Hot American Summer, and her role as Connie in The Mighty Ducks series of films. She has also made appearances on the television series Smallville, Lost, Cupid and The O.C.

Elisabeth Murdoch CBE is an Australian-born British and American media executive based in the United Kingdom. She was a non-executive chairperson of Shine Group, the UK-based TV programme production company she founded in 2001, until the company's parent 21st Century Fox merged its Shine Group division with Apollo Global Management's Endemol and Core Media production houses, to specialise in reality...

Sakina Jaffrey is an American actress. Jaffrey is best known for portraying as Linda Vasquez in the Netflix original series House of Cards, and Denise Christopher in the NBC series Timeless.

Kerri Green is an American actress best known for her roles in The Goonies (1985), Summer Rental (1985), and Lucas (1986). She co-wrote and directed the film Bellyfruit (1999).

Katharine Meyer Graham was an American newspaper publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, from 1963 to 1991. Graham presided over the paper as it reported on the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. She was one of the first 20th-century female publishers of a major American newspaper and the first woman...

Lecy Goranson is an American actress. She played Becky Conner in the television sitcoms Roseanne (1988–1997; 2018) and The Conners (2018–2025). She has also had supporting roles in the films How to Make an American Quilt (1996), Boys Don't Cry (1999), and The Extra Man (2010).

Jason Ferus Blum is an American producer. He is the founder and CEO of Blumhouse Productions, best known for horror franchises including Paranormal Activity (2007–2021), Insidious (2010–present), The Purge (2013–2021), and Halloween (2018–2022).

Michael Louis Diamond, known professionally as Mike D, is an American rapper, musician, and music producer. He is a founding member of the hip-hop group Beastie Boys.

Hope Davis is an American actress. Her accolades include nominations for three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award.

Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), The Fireman (2016) and King Sorrow (2025); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). Awards include: Bram Stoker Awards,...

Ethan Samuel Slater is an American actor and singer. He played the character of SpongeBob SquarePants in the 2016 musical of the same name, for which he won a Drama Desk Award and received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He played Boq Woodsman / The Tin Man in the musical films Wicked (2024)...

Troian Avery Bellisario is an American actress and filmmaker. The daughter of producer Donald P. Bellisario and actress Deborah Pratt, she gained international attention for her portrayal of Spencer Hastings in the Freeform drama series Pretty Little Liars (2010–2017), for which she received various accolades.

Mark Daniel Ronson is a British and American musician, record producer, songwriter, and DJ. He has won ten Grammy Awards, including Producer of the Year for Amy Winehouse's album Back to Black (2006), as well as two for Record of the Year with her 2006 single "Rehab" and his own 2014 single "Uptown Funk" (featuring Bruno Mars). Ronson has also...

Noah Baumbach is an American filmmaker. He is known for making light comedies set in New York City and his works are inspired by filmmakers such as Woody Allen and Whit Stillman. His frequent collaborators include Wes Anderson, Adam Driver, and his wife, Greta Gerwig. He has received award nominations for four Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards and two Golden...

Grace Brewster Hopper was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. She was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language and COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today. She was also one of...

Lisa Valerie Kudrow is an American actress and writer. She rose to international fame for her role as Phoebe Buffay in the American television sitcom Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004. The series earned her Primetime Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, Satellite, American Comedy and TV Guide awards. Phoebe has since been named one of the greatest television characters of...

Justin Jacob Long is an American actor.

Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis, also known as Jackie Kennedy, and as Jackie O following her second marriage, was the first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. She was regarded as an international icon for her unique fashion choices, and her work as a cultural ambassador of the United States...

Jane Seymour Fonda is an American actress and activist. Fonda's work spans several genres and over six decades of film and television. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for a Grammy Award and two Tony Awards. Fonda...

Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress. Known for her versatility and adept accent work, she has been described as "the best actress of her generation". She has received numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over five decades, including three Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, eight Golden Globe Awards, four Emmy Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild...

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway is an American actress. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Her films have grossed over $6.8 billion worldwide, and she appeared on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2009. She was among the world's highest-paid actresses in 2015.

Sophia Takal is an American actress, writer and director, perhaps best known for her work in independent features such as All the Light in the Sky, Supporting Characters and Gabi on the Roof in July. Filmmaker magazine named Takal one of the "25 New Faces of Film" in 2011. She directed and co-wrote the 2019 remake of the 1974 horror...

Jean Webster was the pen name of Alice Jane Chandler Webster, an American author whose books include Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy. Her best-known books feature lively and likeable young female protagonists who come of age intellectually, morally, and socially, but with enough humor, snappy dialogue, and gently biting social commentary to make her books palatable and enjoyable to contemporary readers.

Jonathan Frederick Tenney is an American actor. He played Special Agent Fritz Howard in TNT's The Closer and continued in its spin-off Major Crimes.

Anthony Michael Bourdain was an American celebrity chef, author and travel documentarian. He starred in programs focusing on the exploration of international culture, cuisine, and the human condition.

Linda Fairstein is an American author, attorney, and former New York City prosecutor focusing on crimes of violence against women and children. She was the head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office from 1976 until 2002.

Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American NKVD spymaster, who was recruited from within the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union as the primary handler of multiple highly placed moles within both the United States Federal Government and the Office of Strategic Services from 1938 to 1945. She defected by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and...