Home > About Smith > Notable Alumnae

NOTABLE ALUMNAE

You may have heard of our famous graduates, such as Julia Child, Gloria Steinem and Sylvia Plath. But there are many more stories of leadership and success that demonstrate where the Smith experience can take you.

      Learn more about Smith's notable alumnae >

Shelly Lazarus '68

The rise to power of Shelly Lazarus in the male-dominated field of advertising is legendary in the corporate world. Three years after graduating from Smith in 1968 with a degree in psychology, she earned a master of business administration from Columbia University. She went on to join Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, the world’s sixth-largest advertising agency network, and was named its CEO in 1996. Not long afterward, Fortune magazine named her the “fourth most powerful woman in American business.”

She helped launch Praxis, Smith’s successful internship program that guarantees every student access to funding for at least one summer internship. Like other Smith alumnae, Shelly eagerly stepped forward to sign on to Praxis by guaranteeing two internships a year at Ogilvy & Mather “for as long as I am in charge -- and that’s going to be a long time!”

In her address to the graduating class at Smith’s 127th commencement ceremony Shelly noted, “I know that had I not gone to Smith, I would not be who I am or where I am today. Smith taught me to think. Smith opened my mind to ideas and made me hungry to experience everything new and unexplored. Smith taught me that women could do anything because I had seen the ‘live demo’ -- that’s what we call it in my business -- watching my classmates during my four years here. My commitment and my gratitude are unending.”

Pearl Yau Toy '69

When Pearl Yau Toy ’69 graduated from the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1973, she had little idea how important her specialization in hematology would become. As a hematologist dedicated to blood banking and transfusion medicine in the San Francisco area, Pearl found herself at the center of the AIDS crisis. She became a national leader in educating physicians on the appropriate use of transfusions.

She has worked with the American Red Cross Blood Services and has been at the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of Laboratory Medicine since 1980. Today Pearl is a professor in the department as well as chief of the Blood Bank and the National Institutes for Health’s Specialized Center of Research in Transfusion Medicine and Biology, which is one of only three in the country. Since her undergraduate days as a biochemistry major -- when, she says, Smith “overwhelmed me with a wealth of opportunities” -- Pearl has fulfilled her definition of success: “being one of the best in one’s field and making a contribution.”

Marilynn Davis '73

“You have to be willing to take chances when opportunities are presented to you,” says Marilynn Davis ’73. After graduating from Smith, she completed two master’s degrees in economics and a master of business administration from Harvard and was recruited by General Motors. She served GM in various corporate treasury positions, then moved to American Express, where she became vice president for risk financing. In 1993 she took a leap into the public sector on Capitol Hill as assistant secretary for administration at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a position she left in 1997.

Although proud of what she accomplished as a public servant, she wanted to get back to the private sector. She took a senior management position as executive vice president, director of product and profitability management at FleetBoston Financial Corporation. But when longtime friend Ann Marie Wilkins invited Marilynn to join the company she had founded -- the Cambridge-based Wilkins Management, Inc., which represents notable jazz musicians -- Marilynn made another career move, from finance to the music industry. “The consistent theme for me,” says Marilynn, “is that a liberal arts background is extremely helpful in business today. You’ve been trained to think in a very broad and independent way. We are in an economy that calls for being able to think globally, to synthesize all the information out there, to look at potential opportunities in a given area and envision possible outcomes. That’s much harder to do if you haven’t been trained to think broadly.”

Margaret Edson '83

Between the time she graduated from Smith in 1983 with a degree in Renaissance history and wrote her Pulitzer Prize–winning play Wit in 1991, Margaret (Maggie) Edson worked at an assortment of jobs -- both odd and meaningful. “Waitress and bartender,” she writes in an e-mail, “painter of walls in an Dominican convent in Rome; unit clerk in a hospital; fund-raiser for a community-based AIDS organization; elementary school teacher, now in my 14th year: what but the humanities could prepare me for that?”

Meanwhile, she received a master’s degree in English literature from Georgetown University in 1992. But it was her stint as a clerk in the cancer and AIDS in-patient unit of a Washington hospital that informed the creation of her first and only play Wit, the story of a professor of 17th-century English poetry who is battling advanced ovarian cancer. The play premiered in 1995 and won several playwriting awards in addition to the 1999 Pulitzer for drama. In 2001, an HBO production of the play, with Mike Nichols directing and Emma Thompson portraying the main character, won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Made-for-Television Movie. Today, Maggie remains fully dedicated to her career as an elementary education teacher in Atlanta, Georgia. “How could a degree in Renaissance history possibly prepare me for a career? Only in this: to train the brain,” she writes with a characteristic bent of dry humor. She adds, “I will never stop being grateful for the human in the humanities -- and also the hum.”

Want to know more? If you're still not sure where a Smith education can take you, consider our outstanding record of alumnae achievement. Among our accomplished alumnae are: Margaret Mitchell '22, author of Gone With the Wind Julia Child '34, star of TV's The French Chef Madeleine L'Engle '41, award-winning author of A Wrinkle in Time Betty Friedan '42, author of The Feminine Mystique Nancy Reagan '43, former First Lady of the United States Barbara Bush '47, former First Lady of the United States Xie Xide '49, physicist and former president of Fudan University in China Sylvia Plath '55, acclaimed poet; author of The Bell Jar and Ariel Gloria Steinem '56, founder of Ms. magazine and noted feminist writer Jane Yolen '60, award-winning children's book author Marilyn Carlson Nelson '61, chairman and chief executive officer of the Carlson Companies and chair of the National Women’s Business Council Sally Quinn '63, author and commentator Olivia Buehl '65, vice president of McCall Publishing and editor of Working Mother magazine Victoria Chan Palay '65, a neurobiologist and former Olympic athlete Molly Ivins '66, political columnist and commentator Jane Harman '66, U.S. Representative from California Juliet Taylor '67, casting director for more than 60 movies, including Woody Allen's films Laura Tyson '69, professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley; former head of the National Economic Council Shelley Hack '70, actress (Annie Hall, Charlie's Angels) Julie Nixon Eisenhower '70, author of Special People and Pat Nixon: The Untold Story Yolanda King '76, actress, producer, lecturer Pamela Craig '79, partner in Accenture, the world's largest management information consulting firm Lauren Lazin '82, award-winning independent filmmaker (Tupac: Resurrection) and vice president for news and specials at MTV Tammy Baldwin '84, U.S. Representative from Wisconsin Kathleen Marshall '85, Tony Award-winning Broadway choreographer and director Thelma Golden '87, deputy director for the Studio Museum in Harlem

Mission of Smith
College

Sophia Smith: Smith College's Founder

Smith College
Presidents

Honorary Degrees

Smith College
Medalists

John M. Greene
Awards

Sherrerd Prizes for Distinguished
Teaching

Sophia Smith
Awards

Commencement
Speakers

Some Special
Traditions

Notable Alumnae