Lupita Nyong'o (Kenya and Mexico)

Born in Mexico, Lupita Nyong'o grew up in an artistic family in Kenya. She self identifies as Kenyan-Mexican with dual citizenship. She came to the U.S. for higher studies and received a BA from Hampshire College. She graduated with an MFA degree from Yale School of Drama in 2012. In her youth spent in Kenya, she was active in theater, starred in a TV series, and directed and produced the documentary In My Genes about the discriminatory treatment of Kenya's albino population in 2009.

Shina Inouye Kan ( Japan)

Shina Kan was born on the island of Honshu in 1899. She completed her undergraduate studies at Japan Women’s University and spent a year at the Punahou School in Hawaii. She attended Yale Divinity School courses and received her Ph.D in Philosophy from Yale Graduate School in 1927. Later in life, she took additional courses in social welfare at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York.

An-my Lê (Vietnam)

Born in Saigon, An-my Lê came to the US as a teenager fleeing Vietnam at the end of the war. After completing her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in biology from Stanford University, she received a Master of Fine Arts from Yale School of Art in 1993. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows at several prestigious venues including the NY MOMA and galleries abroad.

Eva Hesse (Germany)

Eva Hesse’s family fled Nazi Germany when she was a toddler and moved to the U.S. a year later. After attending many area schools in New York for Art, including Cooper Union, Hesse transferred to Yale and received her B.A. in 1959. At Yale, she was a student of the famous Josef Albers and was influenced by Abstract Expressionism.

Indra Krishnamoorthy Nooyi (India)

After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Madras and graduate studies from the Indian Institute of Management (Calcutta) in India, Nooyi traveled to the Yale School of Management (SOM). A member of only the third class to graduate from SOM, she received a master’s degree in public and private management in 1980. As a business executive, Nooyi had a long career at various companies before landing at Pepsi where she served as CEO for 12 years.

Margaret Marshall (South Africa)

After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Margaret Marshall moved to the U.S. and pursued a Master’s degree in Education at Harvard and a J.D at Yale Law School (1976). During the apartheid era, as a student activist, she led the National Union of South African Students dedicated to achieving equality for all South Africans. Her legal career in Boston included years of private practice and five years as General Counsel at Harvard University.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)

After completing secondary school and a year and a half of medical school at the University of Nigeria, Adichie came to the United States to study at Drexel University and then Eastern Connecticut State. Continuing the writing career she began in Nigeria, Adichie completed a master’s degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins and in 2008 received a master’s degree in African Studies from Yale.

Grace Evelyn Pickford (United Kingdom)

Born at the turn of the 20th century in England, Grace Evelyn Pickford received her PhD from Yale in 1931 for research based on studies of her South African oligochaete worm collections. Prior to coming to Yale, she completed her undergraduate studies at Cambridge University receiving the equivalent of a B.A. (Cambridge did not grant B.A. degrees to women at the time.)

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