From the Broadway stage to the political stage; biotech startups to the Baseball Hall of Fame; Nobel Prize ceremonies, big city newsrooms and the halls of academia—a Columbia education empowers graduates to pursue great things and world-changing impact.
Where will Columbia Blue take you? We can’t wait to find out.
100+
Pulitzer Prize winners
5
Founding Fathers of the United States
34
Presidents and Prime Ministers
87
Nobel Laureates
Isaac Asimov, author
Emanuel Ax, Grammy-winning classical pianist
Chris Baio, Rostam Batmanglij
Ezra Koenig, Chris Tomson, founding members of indie rock band Vampire Weekend
Béla Bartók, Grammy-winning composer
Kathryn Bigelow, film director, first woman to win Best Director Academy Award
Wendy Carlos, Grammy-winning classical composer
Brian Dennehy, Tony- and Emmy-winning actor
Peter Farrelly, filmmaker
Erik Feig, producer
Dede Gardner, Oscar- and Emmy-winning film producer
Allen Ginsberg, Beat poet
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Golden Globe-winning actress
Katori Hall, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
Oscar Hammerstein II, lyricist
Lorenz Hart, lyricist
Utada Hikaru, musician
Langston Hughes, poet
Zora Neale Hurston, author
Jim Jarmusch, filmmaker
Jack Kerouac, Beat poet
Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
Ursula K. Le Guin, Nebula- and Hugo-winning author
Federico García Lorca, poet
Terrence McNally, Tony Award-winning playwright
Thomas Merton, essayist and poet
Nico Muhly, composer
Sharon Olds, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
Richard Rodgers, EGOT and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer
Ricardo Scofidio, architect
Upton Sinclair, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer
Jenny Slate, actress
Robert A. M. Stern, architect
Twyla Tharp, choreographer
Christine Wang, architect
William Theodore de Bary, East Asian literary scholar
Jacques Barzun, historian
Joseph Campbell, scholar of mythology
John Dewey, philosopher, educator
Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics
Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History
Jane Jacobs, urban theorist
Edward Kasner, mathematician who coined the term googol
Donald Keene, renowned Japanese scholar
Jelena Kovacevic, Dean of NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Robert Merton, Nobel Laureate in Economics
Alvin E. Roth, 2012 Nobel Laureate in Economics
William Schuman, former President of Juilliard School of Music, first President of Lincoln Center
Judith Shapiro, former President of Barnard College, professor of anthropology
Howard Zinn, historian
Armen Avanessians, CIO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management's (GSAM) Quantitative Investment Strategies team
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway CEO
William Campbell, Intuit CEO
Philippe Dauman, Chairman of Viacom
James P. Gorman, Morgan Stanley CEO
Ben Horowitz, Co-Founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz LLC
John Kluge, entrepreneur
Randy Lerner, former Cleveland Browns owner, CEO of MBNA Bank
Jon Oringer, Founder & CEO of Shutterstock
Eric Poirier, CEO of Addepar
Louis Rossetto, Founder of Wired Magazine
Robert J. Stevens, former Lockheed Martin CEO
S. Robson Walton, Chairman of Walmart Board of Directors
Marco Zappacosta, Founder of Thumbtack
Daniel Alarcón, writer
Roone Arledge Jr., sports broadcasting pioneer, former Chairman of ABC News
Jennifer Ashton, Chief Health and Medical Editor, and Chief Medical Correspondent for ABC News and Good Morning America
Bob Bakish, President and CEO of CBS/Viacom
Dean Baquet, Executive Editor, The New York Times Company
Marcus Brauchli, Managing Partner, North Base Media and former Executive Editor of The Washington Post
Rocco Commisso, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Mediacom Communications Corporations
Jamal Dajani, producer
Poppy Harlow, Journalist with CNN
Sara Just, Executive Producer and Senior Vice President, PBS NewsHour
Jodi Kantor, Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author
Patrick Radden Keefe, Award-winning journalist and author
Christopher Kimball, Chef, publisher and TV personality
Joseph Lelyveld, former Executive Editor of The New York Times
Anita Lo, Celebrity chef and author
Andrés Martinez, former Editorial Page Editor of The Los Angeles Times
Janice Min, former Chief Creative Officer, Co-president of entertainment group Guggenheim Media (The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard)
Joseph Pulitzer, publisher
Claire Shipman, Journalist, NYT best-selling author, and public speaker
George Stephanopoulos, Chief Anchor and Chief Political Correspondent for ABC News
Elizabeth Trotta, former NY Bureau Chief of The Washington Times, contributor for Fox News
Bella Abzug, Congresswoman, leader of the women’s movement
Shirley Chisholm, first African American woman elected to Congress
Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles
Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of Federal Reserve System
Judd Gregg, former Senator and Governor
Eric Holder Jr., first African American Attorney General
Ben Jealous, former President and CEO of the NAACP
Li Lu, leader of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
James Meredith, Civil Rights Movement figure
Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General
Jerrold Nadler, Congressman and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
David Paterson, former Governor of New York
Paul Robeson, civil and human rights activist, writer
Pixley ka Isaka Seme, founder of the African National Congress
Faye Wattleton, former President of the Center for the Advancement of Women
James F. Albaugh, Boeing Commercial Airplanes former President and CEO
Edwin Armstrong, inventor of FM radio
Arthur Ashkin, Scientist and 2018 Nobel Laureate
Jamey Barbas, Chief Engineer of Mario Cuomo Bridge
Peter DiMaggio, lead engineer for construction on US Embassies in Moscow, Berlin, and Baghdad
Amelia Earhart, aviator
Shawn Edwards, CTO Bloomberg
Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist, evolutionary biologist
Herman Hollerith, founder of IBM
Gregory H. Johnson, Air Force
Robert Millikan, Nobel physicist
James Scapa, Chairman and CEO of Altair Engineering, Inc
Harvey Seeley Mudd, engineer, founder of Harvey Mudd College
William Barclay Parsons, chief engineer of the first line of the NYC subway
Michael Pupin, inventor of the Pupin coil
Hyman Rickover, inventor of the nuclear submarine
Eugene H. Trinh, first Chinese-Vietnamese American astronaut in Space
George Yancopoulos, President & Chief Scientific Officer Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Lou Gehrig, baseball Hall of Famer
Vitas Gerulaitis, tennis champion
Sandy Koufax, baseball Hall of Famer
Nzingha Prescod, Olympic fencer
William Milligan Sloane, founded US Olympic Committee
Erinn Smart, Olympic fencer
Cristina Teuscher, Olympic gold-medal swimmer
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Barack Obama
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
A Columbia education can lead to astonishing places—including taking your own place on this distinguished list. But you don’t have to be Amelia Earhart or Alan Greenspan to find yourself among the greats. More recent Columbia grads are out there shaping the world of tomorrow right now.