63 Notable alumni of
Mills College
Updated:
Mills College is 894th in the world, 328th in North America, and 306th in the United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 63 notable alumni from Mills College sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff.
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Olivia de Havilland
- Enrolled in Mills College
- Studied in 1934
- Occupations
- stage actortelevision actorscreenwriteractor
- Biography
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Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland was a British and American actress. The major works of her cinematic career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films and was one of the leading actresses of her time. At the time of her death in 2020 at age 104, she was the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award winner and was widely considered as being the last surviving major star from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Her younger sister was Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine.
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Sofia Coppola
- Occupations
- film actorwriterdirectorscreenwriteractor
- Biography
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Sofia Carmina Coppola is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and former actress. She has received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Golden Lion, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, as well as nominations for three BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award.
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Joanna Newsom
- Occupations
- musicianfilm actoractorcomposerpianist
- Biography
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Joanna Caroline Newsom is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisco-based indie band the Pleased.
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Daniella Pineda
- Occupations
- television actorwriterfilm actorcomedian
- Biography
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Daniella Pineda is an American actress. She has had major roles in several films and TV series, including The Originals, Netflix's live-action Cowboy Bebop, and two films in the Jurassic Park franchise. She began her career through online comedy and fashion videos, with her first movie role in 2011. She later appeared in the backdoor pilot of The Originals and several episodes of the show's first season. Her first role in a movie produced by a major studio was in 2018, with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. As a Mexican American, she has spoken out about the difficulties Mexican actors face.
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Dave Brubeck
- Occupations
- music arrangercomposerpianistbandleadersongwriter
- Biography
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David Warren Brubeck was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck's work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
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Laurie Anderson
- Occupations
- choreographerdirectortelevision producerinventorpoet
- Biography
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Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American avant-garde artist, musician and filmmaker whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting, Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery. She achieved unexpected commercial success when her song "O Superman" reached number two on the UK singles chart in 1981.
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Steve Reich
- Enrolled in Mills College
- Studied in 1961-1963
- Occupations
- musiciancomposervideographer
- Biography
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Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer who is known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go "out of phase." This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow.
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Dasha Nekrasova
- Occupations
- film actorscreenwritertelevision actorfilm directorvoice actor
- Biography
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Daria Dmitrievna "Dasha" Nekrasova is a Belarusian-American actress, filmmaker, and co-host of the Red Scare podcast with Anna Khachiyan, based in New York City.
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Barbara Lee
- Enrolled in Mills College
- In 1973 graduated with Bachelor of Arts
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Barbara Jean Lee is an American politician and social worker who has served as a U.S. representative from California since 1998. A member of the Democratic Party, Lee represents California's 12th congressional district (numbered as the 9th district from 1998 to 2013 and as the 13th district from 2013 to 2023), which is based in Oakland and covers most of the northern part of Alameda County. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, it is one of the nation's most Democratic districts, with a rating of D+40.
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Snatam Kaur
- Occupations
- singer-songwritersongwritermusiciansinger
- Biography
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Snatam Kaur Khalsa /səˈnɑːtəm ˈkɔːr/, is an American singer, songwriter and author. Kaur performs new age Indian devotional music, kirtan, and tours the world as a peace activist. The surname "Kaur", meaning "princess", is shared by all female Sikhs.
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Chiang Hsiao-chang
- Biography
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Chiang Hsiao-chang is the only daughter of Chiang Ching-kuo, the President of the Republic of China in Taiwan from 1978 to 1988. Her mother was Chiang Fang-liang. She had one older brother, Hsiao-wen, and two younger brothers, Hsiao-wu and Hsiao-yung. She is the only living member of Chiang Ching-kuo's legitimate children, and was the only one among the siblings who could converse in Russian with their mother. She also has twin half-brothers, Winston Chang and John Chiang, with whom she shares the same father. She attended Mills College and was featured in LIFE during her college years. She was married to Yu Yang-ho (俞揚和; Yú Yánghé) until his death in 2010; he was the son of former Taiwan defense minister Yu Ta-wei (俞大維; Yú Dàwéi). She and Yu have one son, Theodore Yu Tsu-sheng (俞祖聲; Yú Zǔshēng).
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April Glaspie
- Occupations
- politiciandiplomat
- Biography
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April Catherine Glaspie is an American former diplomat and senior member of the Foreign Service, best known for her role in the events leading up to the Gulf War.
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Beate Sirota Gordon
- Occupations
- human rights activistartist
- Biography
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Beate Sirota Gordon was an Austrian-American performing arts presenter and women's rights advocate. She was the former Performing Arts Director of the Japan Society and the Asia Society and was one of the last surviving members of the team that worked under Douglas MacArthur to write the Constitution of Japan after World War II.
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Charmian London
- Occupations
- biographerwriter
- Biography
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Charmian London was an American writer and the second wife of Jack London.
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Holly Herndon
- Years
- 1980-.. (age 44)
- Occupations
- singer-songwritercomposerrecord producer
- Biography
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Holly Herndon is an American artist and composer based in Berlin, Germany. After studying composition at Stanford University and completing her Ph.D. at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, she pursued a music career internationally. Herndon's music often includes human singing voices (including her own), is primarily computer-based, and regularly uses the visual programming language Max/MSP to create custom instruments and vocal processes. She has released music on the labels RVNG Intl. and 4AD. Her third full-length album, Proto, was released on May 10, 2019.
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Dixy Lee Ray
- Enrolled in Mills College
- Studied in 1937
- Occupations
- researchermarine biologistpolitician
- Biography
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Dixy Lee Ray was an American academic, scientist, and politician who served as the 17th governor of Washington from 1977 to 1981. Variously described as idiosyncratic and "ridiculously smart," she was the state's first female governor and was in office during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. She was a supporter of atomic energy.
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William Bolcom
- Occupations
- music teacherpianistcomposer
- Biography
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William Elden Bolcom is an American composer and pianist. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, the Detroit Music Award and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America. He taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 until 2008. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.
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Elizabeth Murray
- Enrolled in Mills College
- Studied in 1964
- Occupations
- artistprofessorpainterphotographerillustrator
- Biography
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Elizabeth Murray was an American painter, printmaker and draughtsman. Her works are in many major public collections, including those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Wadsworth Atheneum. Murray was known for her use of shaped canvases.
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March Fong Eu
- Occupations
- politiciandiplomat
- Biography
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March Fong Eu was an American diplomat and politician who served as the 24th secretary of state of California for five terms from 1975 to 1994. A member of the Democratic Party, she served in the California State Assembly from 1967 to 1974 and later as the United States ambassador to Micronesia under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1996.
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Diana L. Paxson
- Occupations
- journalistnovelistwritercomposer
- Biography
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Diana Lucile Paxson is an American author, primarily in the fields of Paganism and Heathenism. Her published works include fantasy and historical fiction novels, as well as numerous short stories. More recently she has also published books about Pagan and Heathen religions and practices. She is a founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism, where she is known as Countess Diana Listmaker.
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Phillipe Cunningham
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Phillipe M. Cunningham is a former city council member for Minneapolis Ward 4 and the first transgender man of color to be elected to public office in the United States. Cunningham won the council position in the 2017 Minneapolis City Council election and lost it in the 2021 election.
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Dina Kawar
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Dina Kawar is a Jordanian diplomat who since June 2016 has served as Ambassador of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the United States.
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Hormoz Farhat
- Occupations
- musicologistprofessorcomposerethnomusicologist
- Biography
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Hormoz Farhat was a Persian-American composer and ethnomusicologist who spent much of his career in Dublin, Ireland. An emeritus professor of music, he was a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. Described by the Irish Times as a "a gifted and distinctive composer of contemporary classical music," his compositions include orchestral, concertante, piano and choral music, as well string quartets and chamber works. He also wrote numerous film scores, including that of Dariush Mehrjui's 1969 film The Cow. However, his musicological research dominates his legacy; his writings on the music of Iran—a country which he insisted be called 'Persia'—were pivotal in ethnomusicology, particularly his acclaimed 1990 study The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music.
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Ananya Roy
- Occupations
- landscape architectacademicurban planneruniversity teacher
- Biography
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Ananya Roy is a scholar of international development and global urbanism. Born in Calcutta, India, Roy is Professor and Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She has been a professor of City and Regional Planning and Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a Bachelor of Comparative Urban Studies (1992) degree from Mills College, and Master of City Planning (1994) and Doctor of Philosophy (1999) degrees from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley.
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Renel Brooks-Moon
- Occupations
- announcerradio personality
- Biography
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Renel Brooks-Moon, known on-air simply as Renel, is the public address announcer for the San Francisco Giants since 2000, and a former radio personality, having hosted shows on KMEL, KISQ, and KBLX.
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Nathan Oliveira
- Occupations
- paintersculptordrawer
- Biography
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Nathan Oliveira was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California to immigrant Portuguese parents. Since the late 1950s, Oliveira has been the subject of nearly one hundred solo exhibitions, in addition to having been included in hundreds of group exhibitions in important museums and galleries worldwide. He taught studio art for several decades in California, beginning in the early 1950s, when he taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in Oakland. After serving as a Visiting Artist at several universities, he became a Professor of Studio Art at Stanford University.
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Claire Giannini Hoffman
- Years
- 1904-1997 (aged 93)
- Occupations
- businessperson
- Biography
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Claire Giannini Hoffman was the first woman to serve on the boards of Bank of America and Sears, Roebuck & Company. She also was the only woman guest invited at international bank conference events for some two decades.
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Denise McCluggage
- Occupations
- journalistracing driverphotographerracing automobile driver
- Biography
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Denise McCluggage was an American auto racing driver, journalist, author and photographer. McCluggage was a pioneer of equality for women in the U.S., both in motorsports and in journalism. She was born in El Dorado, Kansas, and spent her childhood in that state. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Mills College in Oakland, California. She began her career as a journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Jade Snow Wong
- Occupations
- autobiographerceramicistwriter
- Biography
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Jade Snow Wong was a Chinese American ceramic artist and author of two memoirs. She was given the English name of Constance, also being known as Connie Wong Ong.
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Claire Ptak
- Occupations
- pastry chef
- Biography
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Claire Ptak is an American baker, food writer, and food stylist. She owns and runs a bakery-café, Violet Cakes, in London's East End. Alongside running her own business, Ptak has also published an array of cookbooks and written a food column for the Guardian and the Observer Food Monthly. She is widely known for having baked the royal wedding cake for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – a layered sponge filled and covered with a lemon and elderflower buttercream icing.
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Dorianne Laux
- Occupations
- writerpoet
- Biography
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Dorianne Laux is an American poet.
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Mary Brooks
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Mary Elizabeth Thomas Peavey Brooks was an American politician. She directed the United States Mint from September 1969 to February 1977.
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Connie Young Yu
- Occupations
- historian
- Biography
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Connie Young Yu is a Chinese American writer, activist, historian, and lecturer.
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Ben Goldberg
- Occupations
- jazz musiciancomposerclarinetist
- Biography
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Ben Goldberg is an American clarinet player and composer.
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Emma Nevada
- Occupations
- actoropera singerstage actor
- Biography
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Emma Nevada was an American operatic coloratura soprano particularly known for her performances in operas by Bellini and Donizetti and the French composers Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod, and Léo Delibes. Considered one of the finest coloratura sopranos of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, her most famous roles were Amina in La sonnambula, and the title roles in Lakmé, Mignon, Mireille, and Lucia di Lammermoor.
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Martha Fuller Clark
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Martha Fuller Clark is a former Democratic member of the New Hampshire Senate, representing the 21st district from 2012 until 2020 and the 24th district from 2004 until 2010. Prior to her Senate service she was a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1990 through 2002.
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Connie Champagne
- Years
- 1959-.. (age 65)
- Occupations
- stage actorsinger-songwritervoice actoractor
- Biography
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Connie Champagne, née Kelly Kay Brock, born November 23, 1959, is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She won the SF Weekly Wammie Award for Outstanding Cabaret Performer. She is known for performing the character of actress, Judy Garland including Christmas With the Crawfords in 2001 and Imagine Judy Garland: An Evening With Connie Champagne in 2003. She won a 2007 San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award for her role in Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Despite fierce competition by acclaimed Broadway actors including Phylicia Rashad, Champagne also earned Los Angeles' Ovation Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in A Musical, "Judy's Scary Little Christmas," directed by Kay Cole. Specializing in numerous styles of music and theater including cabaret, swing, jazz, rock and roll, and musical theater, Champagne performed in numerous venues throughout the US and Europe.
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Kevin Blechdom
- Occupations
- electronic musician
- Biography
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Kevin Blechdom is an American experimental electronic musician and performance artist. She is based in Santa Cruz, California.
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Stanley Silverman
- Occupations
- guitaristcomposer
- Biography
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Stanley Silverman is an American composer, arranger, conductor and guitarist.
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Eleanor Hadley
- Years
- 1916-2007 (aged 91)
- Occupations
- economist
- Biography
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Eleanor Martha Hadley was an American economist and policymaker. Because of her relatively rare research specialization in Japanese economics, during World War II Hadley was recruited first into OSS and then the State Department to support the United States' war effort while she was a doctoral candidate in economics at Radcliffe College. Hadley helped draft the United States' plans for dissolving zaibatsu business conglomerates as part of a planned effort to democratize Japan after the war, and she participated in implementing this economic deconcentration program when the postwar occupation brought her to Japan to work for SCAP as an economist.
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Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner
- Years
- 1989-.. (age 35)
- Occupations
- writerclimate activistpoet
- Biography
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Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner is a poet and climate change activist from the Marshall Islands.
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Blevin Blectum
- Years
- 1971-.. (age 53)
- Occupations
- musician
- Biography
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Blevin Blectum is an American electronic musician and multimedia composer. She is celebrated as an "icon of deviant and cerebral electronic music".
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Mary Oliver
- Occupations
- violinistuniversity teacherjazz musician
- Biography
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Mary Oliver is an American performer on violin, viola, and Hardanger fiddle, in the areas of New Music, free improvisation, and avant-garde jazz.
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Mabelle Gilman Corey
- Occupations
- singeractorstage actor
- Biography
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Mabelle Gilman Corey was an American actress. She had an affair with William Ellis Corey which led to the dissolution of his marriage, and they later married.
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Todd Boekelheide
- Occupations
- audio engineerfilm score composer
- Biography
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Todd Boekelheide is an American composer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, best known for his work scoring documentary films. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound (Amadeus, 1984) and was nominated for another in the same category (Never Cry Wolf, 1983).
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Gregory T.S. Walker
- Years
- 1961-.. (age 63)
- Occupations
- composer
- Biography
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Gregory T.S. Walker is an American composer, violinist, and guitarist. He was the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellowship in 2000, and has performed with major orchestras around the world.
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Emma Kaili Metcalf Beckley Nakuina
- Years
- 1847-1929 (aged 82)
- Occupations
- historianpoliticiancuratorarchivist
- Biography
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Emma Kailikapuolono Metcalf Beckley Nakuina was an early Hawaiian female judge, curator and cultural writer. Descended from an American sugar planter and a Hawaiian high chiefess, she was educated in Hawaii and California. She served as curator of the Hawaiian National Museum from 1882 to 1887 and as Commissioner of Private Ways and Water Rights from 1892 to 1907. In her role as a government commissioner, she is often regarded as Hawaii's first female judge. During the early 1900s, she became a supporter of the women's suffrage movement in the Territory of Hawaii. Nakuina was also a prolific writer on the topic of Hawaiian culture and folklore and her many literary works include Hawaii, Its People, Their Legends (1904).
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Manuel Rocha Iturbide
- Occupations
- paintercomposersound artist
- Biography
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Manuel Rocha Iturbide is a Mexican composer and sound artist.
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Mia Satya
- Occupations
- LGBTQI+ rights activistcommunity organizeractivist
- Biography
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Mia Satya, also known as Mia Tu Mutch, is an American community organizer and activist for social justice, youth, LGBT and transgender rights. Satya was named a California Woman of the Year by the California State Senate.
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Laleh Khadivi
- Occupations
- novelistfilmmaker
- Biography
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Laleh Khadivi is an Iranian American novelist, and filmmaker.
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Dorothy Warenskjold
- Years
- 1921-2010 (aged 89)
- Occupations
- opera singer
- Biography
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Dorothy Lorayne Warenskjold was an American lyric soprano who had an active career in operas, concerts, Radio and Television, and recitals from the mid-1940s through the early 1970s. She made several recordings for Capitol Records.
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Robert S. Neuman
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Robert Sterling Neuman was an American abstract painter, printmaker, and an art teacher.
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Mabel Bert
- Occupations
- actorfilm actorstage actor
- Biography
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Mabel Bert was an Australian-born American actress.
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Marc Anthony Richardson
- Occupations
- novelist
- Biography
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Marc Anthony Richardson is an American novelist and artist. He won an American Book Award and a Creative Capital Award.
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Isabel Burgess
- Occupations
- politician
- Biography
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Isabel Andrews Burgess was an American politician and public official from Phoenix, Arizona, who is known for her contributions to transportation safety at the federal level, including her tenure on the National Transportation Safety Board.
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Mark Trayle
- Occupations
- composer
- Biography
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Mark Trayle, born Mark Evan Garrabrant was a California-based musician and sound artist working in a variety of media including live electronic music, improvisation, installations, and compositions for chamber ensembles. His work has been noted for its use of re-engineered consumer products and cultural artifacts as interfaces for electronic music performances and networked media installations.
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Susan M. Dray
- Occupations
- interaction designer
- Biography
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Susan M. Dray is an American human-computer interaction and user experience (UX) professional who is a member of the CHI academy and the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA). Dray is known for her work in the field of UX design and is also a founding member of SIGCHI, the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest group for human-computer interaction.
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Roddy Schrock
- Occupations
- sound artistartist
- Biography
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Roderick Schrock is an arts executive and curator. He has been the Executive Director at Eyebeam since July, 2015.
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Ethel Ronzoni Bishop
- Years
- 1890-1975 (aged 85)
- Occupations
- biochemistphysiologist
- Biography
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Ethel Ronzoni Bishop was an American biochemist and physiologist.
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Thalia Gouma-Peterson
- Occupations
- academichistorianwriterart historian
- Biography
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Thalia Gouma-Peterson was Professor Emerita of Art History and museum curator at the College of Wooster in Ohio. Born in Athens, Greece she came to the U.S. as a Fulbright student in 1952.
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Idah Meacham Strobridge
- Occupations
- writer
- Biography
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Idah Meacham Strobridge was an American writer and bookbinder. Known primarily for a trio of works about the Great Basin which mix folktales, fiction, sketches, and nature writing: In Miners' Mirage-Land (1904), The Loom of the Desert (1907) and The Land of Purple Shadows (1909).
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Flora Belle Ludington
- Occupations
- librarian
- Biography
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Flora Belle Ludington was an American librarian and author. Ludington served as the head librarian for Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, from 1938 until 1964.
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Susannah Hays
- Occupations
- photographer
- Biography
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Susannah Hays is an American artist and educator practicing in the fields of philosophy, ecology, technical processes in historical and contemporary photography and the book as art. She first gained recognition for her work in 2000 when she joined Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions there as well as at Seager/Gray Gallery in Marin, California and Photo-Eye Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. While she is especially known for cameraless and 19th Century processes, her creative work expands to realms of experimentation in all visual media. Her seminar courses focus on the practice of art and ecology, embodied mind cognition, space constructions, topologies and visual autobiography.
