100 Notable alumni of Wellesley College

Abigail A. Thompson is an American mathematician. She works as a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis, where she specializes in knot theory and low-dimensional topology.

Ruth Rowland Nichols was an American aviation pioneer. She is the only woman yet to hold simultaneous world records for speed, altitude, and distance for a female pilot.

Marjorie Glicksman Grene was an American philosopher. She wrote on existentialism and the philosophy of science, especially the philosophy of biology. She taught at the University of California at Davis from 1965 to 1978. From 1988 until her death, she was Honorary University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Tech.

Mary Jo Duffy is an American comic book editor and writer, known for her work for Marvel Comics in the 1980s and DC Comics and Image Comics in the 1990s.

Colette Flesch was a Luxembourgish politician and fencer who most notably served as Mayor of Luxembourg City from 1969 to 1980 and as Deputy Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1980 to 1984, becoming the first woman to hold either position.

Ellen Judith Huvelle is an inactive Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She has overseen several significant cases. In a case decided in May 2001, Huvelle "upheld federal regulations that restrict the sale of consumers' names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers." Later that year, Huvelle...

Wilma Chan was an American politician in California serving on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. A Democrat, she served in the California State Assembly from 2000 to 2006 before being termed out, representing the 16th District, which at the time included Oakland, Alameda, and Piedmont. She served as Assembly Majority Whip from 2001 to 2002 and from 2002 to...

Heather Richardson Higgins is an American businesswoman, political commentator, and non-profit sector executive. She is the CEO of Independent Women's Voice and chairman of its sister organization, Independent Women's Forum, organizations that are designed to promote traditional, conservative values.

Sheila Connolly was a mystery writer and author of three mystery series published by Berkley Prime Crime.

Mavie Marcos is an American singer and songwriter. As part of Andain, Mavie has written songs in partnership with Josh Gabriel since 2001, better known for their early singles "Summer Calling" (2002) and "Beautiful Things" (2003), and the 2012 debut album You Once Told Me. As of July 10, 2014, Mavie has also signed with Black Hole to start off...

Jane Jebb Mansbridge is an American political scientist. She is the Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Mary Elizabeth Haskell, later Minis, was an American educator, best known for having been the benefactress of Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist Kahlil Gibran.

Harriet Oettinger Parsons was an American film producer, actress, director, and magazine writer; one of the few female producers in the United States at the time. Her mother was famed gossip columnist Louella Parsons.

Shirley Young was an American businesswoman. She was an executive at Grey Advertising and later at General Motors (GM). She was also a cultural ambassador between the United States and China.

Mary Cunningham Agee is an American business executive and author. She served in the top management of two Fortune 100 companies in the 1980s, one of the first women to do so, and was voted one of the "25 Most Influential Women in America" by World Almanac in 1981 and 1982. Agee is a managing partner of the Semper Charitable...

Monica Byrne is an American playwright and science fiction author. She is best known for her drama What Every Girl Should Know and her debut novel The Girl in the Road, which won the 2015 James Tiptree, Jr. Award and was nominated for the Locus and Kitschies awards.

Wendy Lee Gramm is an American economist who led the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Reagan administration. She is also the wife of former United States Senator Phil Gramm. Gramm has gained notoriety for her role in the Enron scandal.

Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge was an American activist, Progressive Era social reformer, social scientist and innovator in higher education. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science and economics then the J.D. at the University of Chicago, and to pass the Kentucky bar. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent her as a delegate to the 7th...

Lorraine O'Grady was an American artist, writer, translator, and critic. Working in conceptual art and performance art that integrates photo and video installation, she explored the cultural construction of identity – particularly that of Black female subjectivity – as shaped by the experience of diaspora and hybridity. O'Grady studied at Wellesley College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop before...

Lynn Sherr is an American broadcast journalist and author, best known as a correspondent for the ABC news magazine 20/20.

Katherine B. Johnson served as the personal secretary to United States President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011.

Nannerl "Nan" Overholser Keohane is an American political theorist and former president of Wellesley College and Duke University. Until September 2014, Keohane was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. She is now a professor in social sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, where she...

Susan Pia Graber is an American attorney and jurist. She is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A native of Oklahoma, she was the 90th justice of the Oregon Supreme Court from 1990 to 1998. She served on the Oregon Court of Appeals from 1988 to 1990.

Mary Allen Wilkes is a lawyer, former computer programmer and logic designer. She is known for her work with the LINC computer, now recognised by many as the world's first personal computer (PC).

Malinda Lo is an American writer of young adult novels including Ash, Huntress, Adaptation, Inheritance, A Line in the Dark, and Last Night at the Telegraph Club. She also does research on diversity in young adult literature and publishing.

Emily Wei Rales is a Canadian-American art curator and historian. She is the director of Glenstone, an art museum in Potomac, Maryland, which she founded along with her husband, the American businessman Mitchell Rales.

Barbara Goldsmith was an American author, journalist, and philanthropist. She received critical and popular acclaim for her best-selling books, essays, articles, and her philanthropic work. She was awarded four honoris causa doctorates, and numerous awards; been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, two Presidential Commissions, and the New York State Council on the Arts; and honored by...

Elizabeth Drew is an American political journalist and author.

Nell Bryden is an American singer-songwriter.

Hillary Jordan is an American novelist. She grew up in Dallas and Muskogee, Oklahoma and now lives in Brooklyn. She received a BA from Wellesley College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. and has written two novels: Mudbound and When She Woke (2011), and a short story called "Aftermirth". She is currently working on a sequel to...

Abigail Harrison, also known as Astronaut Abby, is an American internet personality and science communicator, particularly in the area of the United States space program. Harrison is the founder and current leader of The Mars Generation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. She is not an astronaut.

Rebecca Craighill Lancefield was a prominent American microbiologist. She joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) in New York in 1918, and was associated with that institute throughout her long and outstanding career. Her bibliography comprises more than 50 publications published over 60 years.

Diana DiZoglio is an American politician who is the current Massachusetts State Auditor. A member of the Democratic Party, DiZoglio had previously represented the 1st Essex District in the Massachusetts Senate from 2019 to 2023. The district included her home city of Methuen as well as Newburyport, Haverhill, Merrimac, Amesbury, Salisbury, and four of eight precincts in North Andover.

María Carolina Barco Isakson is a Colombian-American diplomat, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia from 2002 to 2007, and then as Ambassador of Colombia to the United States from 2006 to 2010.

Reena Andrea Raggi is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and maintains her chambers in Brooklyn, New York. She was formerly a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Isabel Ingram Mayer was an American tutor to Wanrong, the empress consort of China of Puyi, the last emperor of China.

Jean Kilbourne is an American educator, former model, filmmaker, author and activist, who is known as a pioneer of feminist advertising criticism and advocacy of media literacy. In the 1970s she was one of the top three requested speakers at college campuses in Northern America.

Ernestine Wiedenbach was a nursing theorist. Her family emigrated to New York in 1909, where she later received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1922, an R.N. from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1925, an M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1934, and a certificate in nurse-midwifery from the Maternity Center Association School for Nurse-Midwives in New York...

Rita Crocker Clements was an American Republican Party organizer, an activist in historic preservation, and a First Lady of the U.S. state of Texas.

Persis Sydney Drell is an American physicist who is the provost emerita and the James and Anna Marie Spilker Professor in the Stanford University School of Engineering, where she is also a professor of materials science and engineering, and a professor of physics. Prior to her appointment as provost, she was dean of the Stanford School of Engineering from 2014...

Sarah Hrdy is an American anthropologist and primatologist who has made major contributions to evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. She is considered "a highly recognized pioneer in modernizing our understanding of the evolutionary basis of female behavior in both nonhuman and human primates". In 2013, Hrdy received a Lifetime Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution from the Human Behavior and Evolution...

Linda Wertheimer is a former American radio journalist for NPR. She's considered one of NPR's "Founding Mothers" along with the late Susan Stamberg, Nina Totenberg and late Cokie Roberts.

Farahnaz Ispahani is a Pakistani-American writer and former politician who served as member of the National Assembly of Pakistan between 2008 and 2012. She is a senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute and a member of the Anti-Defamation League Task Force on Middle East Minorities in Washington, D.C.

Janet Graham Travell was an American physician and medical researcher.

Anne Woods Patterson is an American diplomat and career Foreign Service Officer. She served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2013 to 2017. She previously served as United States Ambassador to Egypt until 2013 and as United States Ambassador to Pakistan from July 2007 to October 2010.

Robin Chase is an American transportation entrepreneur. She is co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar. She is also the founder and former CEO of Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer car-sharing service, acquired by Drivy. She also started the defunct GoLoco.org, a vehicle for hire company. She is co-founder and executive chairman of Veniam, a vehicle network communications company. She authored the book,...

Kimberly Dozier is a contributor to CNN. She was previously a contributor to Time magazine, contributing writer for The Daily Beast and covered intelligence and counterterrorism for the Associated Press. Prior to that, she was a CBS News correspondent for 17 years, based mostly overseas. She was stationed in Baghdad as the chief reporter in Iraq for CBS News for...

Emily J. Yoffe is an American journalist and contributing writer for The Atlantic. From 1998 to 2016 she was a regular contributor to Slate magazine, notably as Dear Prudence. She has also written for The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; The Washington Post; Esquire; the Los Angeles Times; Texas Monthly; and many other publications. Yoffe began her career...

Betsey Ayer Stevenson is an economist and a professor of economics and public policy at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Additionally, she is a fellow of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the board of the American Economic Association....

Desirée Glapion Rogers is an American corporate executive, former White House Social Secretary for President Barack Obama's office and former chief executive officer of Johnson Publishing Company (JPC). As of 2019, Rogers is the CEO of Black Opal, a cosmetics company.

Patricia J. Williams is an American legal scholar and a proponent of critical race theory, a school of legal thought that emphasizes race as a fundamental determinant of the American legal system.

Hilda Keenan was an American actress and vaudeville performer, part of a family of actors including her father Frank Keenan, her husband Ed Wynn, and her son Keenan Wynn.

Grace Marion Frick was an American translator and researcher for her lifelong partner, Belgian-French writer Marguerite Yourcenar. Grace Frick taught languages at US colleges and was the second academic dean to be appointed to Hartford Junior College.

Angelina Weld Grimké was an African-American journalist, teacher, playwright, and poet.

Wendy Liebman is an American stand-up comedian. Her standup style involves the use of gently paced, subtle wordplay.

Henrietta Holsman Fore is an American government official and business executive who was the executive director of UNICEF from 2018 until 2022. Fore is chairman and CEO of Holsman International, a management, investment, and advisory services company. She served in three presidential appointments under President George W. Bush: Fore was the first woman Administrator of the United States Agency for...

Michele Jeanne Sison is an American diplomat and career member of the Senior Foreign Service who had served as the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs. She has previously served in various other diplomatic posts around the world on behalf of the United States, including ambassador to Haiti. Sison holds the personal rank of career ambassador.

Jane Matilda Bolin was an American attorney and judge. She was the first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the first to join the New York City Bar Association, and the first to join the New York City Law Department. Bolin became the first black woman to serve as a judge in the United States when she was...

Judith Martin, better known by the pen name Miss Manners, is an American columnist, author, and etiquette authority.

Lizzie Borden is an American filmmaker, best known for her early independent films Born in Flames (1983) and Working Girls (1986).

Barbara Bluestein Simons is an American computer scientist and the former president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She is a Ph.D. graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and spent her early career working as an IBM researcher. She is the founder and former co-chair of USACM, the ACM U.S. Public Policy Council. Her main areas of research...

Mary Joanne Rogers Macy, known as Joanna Macy, was an American environmental activist, author and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology. She was married to Francis Underhill Macy, the activist and Russian scholar who founded the Center for Safe Energy.

Nergis Mavalvala is a Pakistani-American astrophysicist. She is the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she is also the dean of the university's school of science. She was previously the Associate Head of the university's Department of Physics. Mavalvala is best known for her work on the detection of gravitational waves...

Liz Peek is an American commentator and business analyst on the finance industry and government.

Onyeka Onwenu MFR // was a Nigerian singer-songwriter, actress, human rights and social activist, journalist, politician, and X Factor series judge. Dubbed the "Elegant Stallion" due to her significant impact on African culture and entertainment, Onwenu was a chairperson of the Imo State Council for Arts and Culture. In 2013, she was appointed the Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of the...

Pamela Ann Melroy is an American retired United States Air Force officer and NASA astronaut who also served as the deputy administrator of NASA. She served as pilot on Space Shuttle missions STS-92 and STS-112 and commanded mission STS-120 before leaving the agency in August 2009. After serving as deputy program manager of Space Exploration Initiatives with Lockheed Martin, Melroy...

Caroline Elizabeth Rose is a Grammy-nominated American singer, songwriter, musician and producer. After releasing two records of folk and country-inspired music, they released a pop-rock album Loner in 2018. Superstar was released on March 6, 2020. The Art of Forgetting, was released on March 24, 2023, and their most recent album year of the slug was released on February 7,...

Anne Revere was an American actress and a member of the board of the Screen Actors' Guild. She was best known for her work on Broadway and her portrayals of mothers in a series of critically acclaimed films. An outspoken critic of the House Un-American Activities Committee, her name appeared in Red Channels: The Report on Communist Influence in Radio...

Katharine Lee Bates was an American author and poet, chiefly remembered for her anthem "America the Beautiful", but also for her many books and articles on social reform, on which she was a noted speaker.

Ayesha Jalal is a Pakistani-American historian known for her work documenting the biography and career of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder and first Governor-General of Pakistan. She is currently the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University. Earlier in her career, Jalal taught at Harvard University and Columbia University. She was the recipient of the 1998 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Ira Trivedi is an Indian author, columnist, and yoga teacher. She writes both fiction and nonfiction, often on issues related to women and gender in India. Her works include India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century, What Would You Do to Save the World?, The Great Indian Love Story, and There's No Love on Wall Street.

Suzanne Ciani is an American musician, sound designer, composer, and record label executive who found early success in the 1970s, with her electronic music and sound effects for films and television commercials. Her career has included works with quadraphonic sound. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album five times. Her success with electronic music...

Rini Mariani Soemarno is an Indonesian economist and was the Minister of State-Owned Enterprises in President Joko Widodo's Working Cabinet. She graduated from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, in 1981. She served as Minister of Industry and Trade in Megawati Sukarnoputri's Mutual Assistance Cabinet from 2001 to 2004.

Annie Jump Cannon was an American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures and spectral types. She was nearly deaf throughout her career after...

Xie Wanying, better known by her pen name Bing Xin (Chinese: 冰心) or Xie Bingxin, was one of the most prolific Chinese women writers of the 20th century. Many of her works were written for young readers. She was the chairperson of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. Her pen name Bing Xin (literally "Ice Heart") carries the...

Michelle Caruso-Cabrera is an American journalist, board member and former politician. She was CNBC's first Latina anchor at and first Chief International Correspondent regular and is now a CNBC contributor, where she has worked for more than twenty years.

Nayantara Sahgal is an Indian writer who writes in English. She is a member of the Nehru–Gandhi family, the second of the three daughters born to Jawaharlal Nehru's sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.

Mira Sethi is a Pakistani actor and writer. The daughter of journalists Najam Sethi and Jugnu Mohsin, Sethi attended Lahore Grammar School and Cheltenham Ladies' College. She graduated from Wellesley College 2010 and spent her junior year at the University of Oxford. At Wellesley, she studied English and South Asian studies, and she was the student speaker at her commencement...

Jocelyn Michelle Benson is an American politician and attorney who has served as the 43rd Secretary of State of Michigan since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as dean of Wayne State University Law School from 2012 to 2016.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas was an American journalist, author, women's suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Moving to Miami as a young woman to work for The Miami Herald, she became a freelance writer, producing over one hundred short stories that were published in popular...

Michelle Ye or Ye Xuan is a Chinese actress and producer. She is best known for her roles in Eternal Happiness, Triumph in the Skies, and Lost in the Chamber of Love. Her most notable role was in the 2009 film Accident, in which she won the 2010 Hong Kong Film Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Blanche Baker is an American actress. She won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by a Supporting Actress for her work in the television miniseries Holocaust. Baker is known for her role as Ginny Baker in Sixteen Candles; she also starred in the title role of Lolita on Broadway. In 2012, she produced and starred in a film...

Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne "Cokie" Roberts was an American journalist and author. Her career included decades as a political reporter and analyst for National Public Radio, PBS, and ABC News, with prominent positions on Morning Edition, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, World News Tonight, and This Week. She was considered one of NPR's "Founding Mothers" along with the late Susan Stamberg,...

Barbara Babcock is an American actress. She began her career on television in mid-1950s with guest-starring appearances in more than 60 television series through her career. She made several appearances on Star Trek: The Original Series, Mannix and Murder, She Wrote and had a recurring role in the CBS prime time soap opera, Dallas from 1978 to 1982.

Chirlane Irene McCray is an American writer, editor, and activist. She was married to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and had been described as de Blasio's "closest advisor." She chaired the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City and was appointed by her husband to lead a billion-dollar initiative called ThriveNYC. She has also published poetry and...

Nora Ephron was an American writer, playwright, journalist, and filmmaker. Known for writing and directing romantic comedy films, she received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three Writers Guild of America Awards.

Soong Mei-ling, also known as Madame Chiang (Chinese: 蔣夫人), was a Chinese politician and socialite. The youngest of the Soong sisters, she married Chiang Kai-shek and played a prominent role in Chinese politics and foreign relations in the first half of the 20th century.

Lila Diane Sawyer is an American television broadcast journalist known for anchoring major programs on two networks including ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, 20/20, and Primetime newsmagazine while at ABC News. During her tenure at CBS News, she hosted CBS Morning and was the first woman correspondent on 60 Minutes. Prior to her journalism career, she was a...

Elisabeth Shue is an American actress. She has starred in films such as The Karate Kid (1984), Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Cocktail (1988), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Soapdish (1991), Leaving Las Vegas (1995), The Saint (1997), Hollow Man (2000), Piranha 3D (2010), Battle of the Sexes (2017), Death Wish (2018),...

Elizabeth Alice MacGraw is an American actress. For her role in Goodbye, Columbus (1969) she won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. She then starred in Love Story (1970), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. In 1972,...

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician, lawyer, and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, and the first lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001 as the wife of Bill Clinton. A member...

Phyllis Curtin was an American soprano and academic teacher who had an active career in operas and concerts from the early 1950s through the 1980s. She is known for her creation of roles in operas by Carlisle Floyd, such as the title role in Susannah and Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights. She was a dedicated song recitalist, who retired from...

Katherine Kennicott Davis was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher, whose best-known composition is the Christmas song "Carol of the Drum", later known as "The Little Drummer Boy".

Edith Abbott was an American economist, statistician, social worker, educator, and author. Abbott was born in Grand Island, Nebraska. Abbott was a pioneer in the profession of social work with an educational background in economics. She was a leading activist in social reform with the ideals that humanitarianism needed to be embedded in education. Abbott was also in charge of...

Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright was a Czech-born American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 64th United States secretary of state under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first woman to hold the position.

Amanda Jay Mortimer Burden is an American urban planner who is a Principal at Bloomberg Associates, an international consulting service founded by Michael Bloomberg as a philanthropic venture to help city governments improve the quality of lives of their citizens. She was the Director of the New York City Department of City Planning and Chair of the City Planning Commission...

Diane Silvers Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. In 2010, she became "an activist on behalf of public schools." Her blog at DianeRavitch.net has received more than 36 million page views...

Emily Greene Balch was an American economist, sociologist and pacifist. Balch combined an academic career at Wellesley College with a long-standing interest in social issues such as poverty, child labor, and immigration, as well as settlement work to uplift poor immigrants and reduce juvenile delinquency.

Ana Alicia Ortiz Torres is a Mexican-American retired actress who performed in theatre and on television. After getting her television start by spending a year on the daytime soap-opera Ryan's Hope, she gained international recognition for her role as scheming vineyard heiress Melissa Agretti on the long-running primetime soap opera Falcon Crest which she portrayed for seven seasons from 1982...