Spelman College is a private, historically Black, women's liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a founding member of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman awarded its first college degrees in 1901 and is the oldest private historically Black liberal arts institution for women.
Mount Saint Mary Academy is a four-year private high school for girls, located in Watchung, in Somerset County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Located in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Metuchen, the school operates financially independent of the Diocese.
Mary Schmidt Campbell, is an American academic and government administrator, and museum director. She was the 10th president of Spelman College, serving from 2015 to 2022. Prior to this position, she served as a director and curator for art museums, as the director of the Commission for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and for many years as the Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Tayari Jones is an American author and academic known for An American Marriage, which was a 2018 Oprah's Book Club Selection, and won the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is currently a member of the English faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences at Emory University, and recently returned to her hometown of Atlanta after a decade in New York City. Jones was Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-large at Cornell University before becoming Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was an American artist of African-American and Native American ancestry, known for her sculpture. She was the first African-American graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1918 and later studied at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris during the early 1920s. She became noted for her work in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1934, Prophet began teaching at Spelman College, expanding the curriculum to include modeling and history of art and architecture. Prophet died in 1960 at the age of 70.
Ayana V. Jackson is an American photographer and filmmaker. Born in Livingston, New Jersey, she received her B.A. in Sociology from Spelman College in 1999. In 2005, at the invitation of professor Katharina Sieverding, she studied critical theory and large format printing at the University of Arts Berlin. She is best known for her focus on Contemporary Africa and the African Diaspora, most notably the series African by Legacy, Mexican by Birth, Leapfrog Grand Matron Army, and Archival Impulse.
Ruth A. Davis is an American diplomat. Davis served as the 24th director general of the United States Foreign Service. She is the first woman of color to be appointed as Director General of the Foreign Service and the first African-American Director of the Foreign Service Institute. In 2002, she became a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and a Career Ambassador. She was the Chief of Staff of the Africa Bureau of the U.S. Department of State.
Beverly Guy-Sheftall is an American Black feminist scholar, writer and editor, who is the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies and English at Spelman College, in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the founding director of the Spelman College Women's Research and Resource Center, the first at a historically Black college or university.
Nick Chiles is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of 20 books. He writes primarily about African-American life and culture.
Nora A. Gordon was an African American missionary and teacher.
Ella Barksdale Brown was an American anti-lynching advocate, activist, educator, suffragette and journalist. She was a member of the first graduating class of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.
Tasha Rose Inniss is an American mathematician and the director of education and industry outreach for the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).
Lily McNair is an American academic administrator who served as the president of Tuskegee University, a historically black university in Tuskegee, Alabama, from 2018 to 2021.
Yewande Olubummo is a Nigerian-American mathematician whose research interests include functional analysis and dynamical systems. She is an associate professor of mathematics at Spelman College, where she served as chair of the mathematics department from 2006 to 2010. She is a member of the National Association of Mathematicians, as well as the Mathematical Association of America.
Herchelle Sullivan Challenor is a foreign policy expert, international civil servant, university administrator, and was one of the key activists in the Atlanta Student Movement, part of the Civil Rights Movement, of the early 1960s.
Priscilla Mbarumun Achakpa is a Nigerian environmental activist. She is the founder and Global President of the Women Environment Programme (WEP) that provides women with sustainable solutions to everyday problems. Just before that, she was the executive director of WEP.
Ethel Elizabeth McGhee Davis was an American educator, social worker, and college administrator. She served as the student adviser (1928–1931) and as the Dean of Women (1931–1932) for Spelman College in Atlanta.
Na'Taki Osborne Jelks is an American environmental scientist. She is an assistant professor of environmental and health sciences at Spelman College, and a visiting professor of public health at Agnes Scott College. She is known for her activism in environmental justice and urban sustainability, for which she was named a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014.
Leona Ann Harris is an American mathematician who is the Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) at the American Mathematical Society (AMS). She was the executive director of the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM) from 2019 to 2022.
Brittney Elizabeth Boykin, known professionally as B.E. Boykin, is a contemporary African American composer, conductor, and classically trained pianist.
