Category:Famous UCLA Alumni
The University of California, Los Angeles is the second campus of the University of California and the only one inside a major entertainment capital, and its roster here splits along that geography. One half is Los Angeles itself: screen actors, a film composer, the mayors and members of Congress of the surrounding county. The other half is a run of chief executives at companies with no California connection at all, from BlackRock to AT&T to Target. Between them sits a small group of Nobel laureates who took UCLA degrees and then did their prize-winning work somewhere else.
Background
UCLA began in 1919 as the Southern Branch of the University of California and became a full campus of the system in 1927. It is a public university in Westwood, on the west side of Los Angeles, and like Berkeley it draws its undergraduates predominantly from within the state. Unlike Berkeley it sits inside the industry that defines its city, which is the single clearest influence on who appears in this category.
The roster is also notably late-forming. Most members here built their careers after 1970, and the largest identifiable block by profession is corporate leadership rather than academia, law or the sciences.
Los Angeles on screen and in office
John Williams is the composer of record for the modern orchestral film score, with credits including Jaws, Star Wars and E.T. across a career of more than seven decades. Jack Black has worked across studio comedies, family features, dramatic roles and rock music for four decades. Tim Robbins moved from Bull Durham into directing and producing. Corbin Bernsen became known as the divorce attorney Arnold Becker on L.A. Law. Barry Diller ran Paramount Pictures in the 1970s and 1980s before building IAC and Expedia Group.
Local and state office is the other half of the Los Angeles story. Henry Waxman represented western Los Angeles in the House for forty years. Jimmy Gomez, Linda Sanchez, Lou Correa, Brad Sherman and Tom McClintock carry the California delegation. Darrell Steinberg was mayor of Sacramento and Tom Butt mayor of Richmond. Kirsten Gillibrand and Andrea Campbell extend the political membership to New York and Massachusetts.
The category also holds a specific piece of Washington history. H. R. Haldeman was White House Chief of Staff to Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973, and John Ehrlichman served as White House Counsel and then Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs. The two most senior domestic figures in the Nixon White House, and the two whose careers ended with Watergate, were both UCLA graduates.
The Nobel laureates and the laboratories
The laureates in this roster took UCLA degrees and then did the prize-winning work elsewhere. Ardem Patapoutian was born in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, immigrated to the United States as a young man, and shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with David Julius for work on temperature and touch receptors. His laboratory at Scripps Research identified the PIEZO1 and PIEZO2 ion channels that let cells detect pressure and stretch. He has credited UCLA as the place that set him on that path.
Elinor Ostrom was born in Los Angeles during the Great Depression and received the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her analysis of how communities govern shared resources, becoming the first woman to receive that prize. Randy Schekman identified the genes behind vesicle trafficking using yeast and shared the 2013 prize in physiology or medicine. Richard Heck developed the palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction that carries his name and shared the 2010 prize in chemistry. John Junkins extends the technical membership into spacecraft navigation and control at Texas A&M.
The chief executives
The corporate block is the least regionally bound part of this roster. Larry Fink co-founded BlackRock in 1988 and has chaired it since. John Stankey spent his whole career inside AT&T and its predecessors before becoming chief executive in 2020. Brian Cornell led Target from 2014 to 2026. Jim Lanzone has run Yahoo since 2021. Susan Wojcicki rented her Menlo Park garage to Google's founders in 1998 and went on to lead YouTube from 2014 to 2023.
The venture and startup side is equally represented. Ben Horowitz co-founded Andreessen Horowitz in 2009 after running Opsware. Travis Kalanick co-founded Uber in 2009. Vlad Tenev co-founded Robinhood in 2013. Fidji Simo led the Facebook app and Instacart before becoming CEO of Applications at OpenAI. Michael Burry founded Scion Capital after training as a physician. Ezra Klein carries the same cohort into policy journalism at the New York Times.
See also
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