The Class of 2009

The Class of 2009 boasts a cross-section of students from around the world with an array of experiences and interests that run from acting to sports to community service to painting to the banjo. There’s even the former #1 ranked youth Scrabble player in the United States, not to mention two patent holders, a winner of the bronze star, a recipient of the purple heart and the former Harvard mascot.

This year’s class comprises 179 students, more than a third of whom are women, with 22 percent coming from abroad. The most common undergraduate universities for the new class are Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell. Their previous work experience spans all sectors, including the U.S. Army and Navy, JP Morgan, General Electric, KPMG, Lehman Brothers, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Proctor & Gamble, and the White House. They speak nearly 25 languages, including Mandarin, Swahili, Polish, Thai, Haitian Creole, Arabic, and Hebrew.

More than a list of occupations and achievements, the new class is a collection of people with wide interests and passions. Students are deeply involved in the political process on both sides of the partisan divide. They’ve launched nonprofits to help inner-city children, urban environments, even spear-headed the restoration of the Mattole River watershed in northern California. They’re scientists and entrepreneurs, financiers and intelligence officers. Several possess some of the highest government security clearances. One student has written a novel about a year in the life of an investment banker; another founded an environmental magazine; a third covered the television industry and wrote a computer technology column for the largest daily paper in India.