List of Virginia Tech alumni

This is a list of notable Virginia Tech alumni.

Military

Virginia Tech and its Corps of Cadets have a long tradition of providing service to the military. Seven Medal of Honor recipients are alumni or former cadets at Virginia Tech.

• LTG William G. Boykin, US Army (Class of 1971) – Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; Commanding General, John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School; Commanding General, U.S. Army Special Forces Command; Commander, 1st SFOD-D
• VADM Jody A. Breckenridge, USCG (Class of 1975) – Commander Coast Guard Pacific Area
• RADM J. Scott Burhoe, USCG (Class of 1976) – 39th Superintendent of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy; 10th President of Fork Union Military Academy
• GEN Carlton D. Everhart II, USAF (Class of 1983) – Commander, Air Mobility Command
• 2LT Robert E. Femoyer, USAAF (Class of 1944) – awarded the Medal of Honor for actions as an Army Air Force B-17 Flying Fortress navigator on a bombing mission over Germany
• COL Julien E. Gaujot, US Army (Class of 1893) – awarded the Medal of Honor for actions on the Mexican border in 1914, the only soldier ever awarded the Medal for actions of a peacekeeping nature; brother of Antoine Gaujot (did not graduate)
• LTC Antoine A.M. Gaujot, US Army (Class of 1900) – awarded the Medal of Honor for actions as an Army Corporal at the Battle of San Mateo during the Philippine–American War; brother of Julien Gaujot (did not graduate)
• SGT Earle D. Gregory, US Army (Class of 1923) – awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive during World War I; known as the "Sgt. York of Virginia"
• Nidal Malik Hasan, US Army (Class of 1997) – former MAJ and Army psychiatrist; convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, subsequently dishonorably discharged
• LTG Joseph R. Inge, US Army (Class of 1969) – Deputy Commander, United States Northern Command; Vice Commander, U.S. Element, North American Aerospace Defense Command
• 1LT Jimmie W. Monteith, Jr., US Army (Class of 1944) – awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Normandy landings on D-Day during World War II (did not graduate)
• LTG Lewis A. Pick, US Army (Class of 1914)
• GEN Thomas C. Richards, USAF (Class of 1956) – Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration; Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. European Command; Commandant of Cadets, U.S. Air Force Academy
• LTG Wallace H. Robinson, USMC (Class of 1940) – 20th Quartermaster General of the Marine Corps; Director of the Defense Supply Agency
• 1LT Richard Thomas Shea, US Army (Class of 1948) – awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Pork Chop Hill during the Korean War (did not graduate)
• GEN Lance L. Smith, USAF (Class of 1969) – Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation and Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command
• SGT Herbert J. Thomas, USMC (Class of 1944) – awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on Bougainville Island during World War II; member of Virginia Tech's Athletic Hall of Fame (did not graduate)
• CPT James F. Van Pelt Jr., USAAF (Class of 1940) – B-29 Superfortress navigator involved in both atomic bomb attacks against Japan, navigating the instrument ship in the first attack against Hiroshima, then navigating the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki
• MAJ Lloyd W. Williams, USMC (Class of 1907) – attributed with one of the more famous quotes of World War I: "Retreat? Hell! We just got here!"

Business, government, and academia

• Phil Agcaoili (attended in 1989) – business leader and information security expert
• James K. Asselstine (Class of 1970) – Commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during Three Mile Island incident
• Richard Baker (Class of 1998) – game designer
• António Pinto Barbosa (Class of 1978) – Portuguese economist and government official
• Andrew S. Boutros, (2001), Attorney best known for prosecuting Silk Road (marketplace).
• Donaldson Brown (Class of 1902) – financial executive and corporate director with DuPont and General Motors
• Markus Breitschmid (Class of 1994, MS) – internationally active Swiss architectural theoretician, historian, and author
• Jim Buckmaster – CEO of craigslist.org
• Julian Ashby Burruss (Class of 1898) – first president of Normal and Industrial School for Women (now James Madison University); eighth President of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• Dave Calhoun – Global Head of Private Equity, Blackstone Group; former CEO and Chairman of the Board, The Nielsen Company
• Charles J. Camarda (Class of 1983, PhD) – astronaut on board the space shuttle Discovery for the STS-114 mission
• Denis G. Clem (Class of 1973) – Chief Information Officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense
• Jess Cliffe – game designer; co-creator of Counter-Strike
• Roger K. Crouch (1968 MS; 1971 PhD) – NASA astronaut
• Chet Culver – former Governor of Iowa (2007–2011); former Iowa Secretary of State (1999–2007)
• Thomas DiLorenzo - Noted Austrian School economist and author; Professor at Loyola University in Baltimore (Ph.D. in Economics)
• William Dodd (1895 BS; 1897 MS) – Ambassador to Germany, 1933–1937, under President Roosevelt; subject of Erik Larson's book In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
• Frank Dunham, Jr. – lead lawyer for Zacarias Moussaoui
• Regina E. Dugan (1984 BS, Class of 1985 MS) – Vice President of Engineering, Advanced Technology and Projects at Google; 19th Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; the first woman to lead the agency
• James Dunsmuir (attended VAMC in 1874) – British Columbia coal magnate and politician
• Mark Embree (Class of 1996) – Rhodes Scholar; Associate Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University
• Curt Finch (Class of 1987) – CEO of Journyx; author of All Your Money Won't Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business
• Clifton C. Garvin (1943 BS; 1947 MS) – Chairman and CEO of Exxon Corp.
• Henry C. Groseclose – considered to be the father of the Future Farmers of America organization
• Edwin D. Harrison (1948 MS) – sixth president of the Georgia Institute of Technology
• Deborah Hersman – Chairman, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board
• Duff Holbrook – wildlife biologist and forester (United States Forest Service); reintroduced wild turkeys to much of South Carolina
• Lawrence L. Koontz, Jr. (Class of 1962) – Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia
• Chris Kraft (Class of 1944) – NASA architect of Mission Control and its first flight director; author of Flight: My Life in Mission Control
• Edward Hudson Lane (Class of 1910) – founded the Standard Red Cedar Chest Co., later known as Lane Furniture; namesake of Lane Stadium
• Newton Lee (1984 BS; 1985 MS) – computer scientist; co-author of Disney Stories: Getting to Digital; author of the Total Information Awareness series; co-author/editor of the Digital Da Vinci series; editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games; campaign adviser to Zoltan Istvan of the Transhumanist Party for the 2016 U.S. presidential election
• William Lewis – Rhodes Scholar; Founding Director of McKinsey Global Institute
• Matt Lohr (Class of 1995) – Delegate, Virginia House of Delegates
• Letitia Long (Class of 1982) – Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (2010–2014); first woman in charge of a major U.S. intelligence agency
• Lillian M. Lowery (Class of 2004) – Superintendent, Maryland State Department of Education
• Tony McNulty – Minister for Police and Security in the UK government
• Mike Michalowicz (Class of 1993) – author of business books The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, The Pumpkin Plan, Profit First, and Surge; entrepreneur; lecturer; former columnist for The Wall Street Journal; MSNBC television personality
• Robert C. Michelson (Class of 1973) – roboticist; progenitor of the field of aerial robotics; recipient of the 2001 Pirelli Award; recipient of 2001 Top Pirelli Prize; inventor of the Entomopter; Principal Research Engineer Emeritus (GTRI) and Adj. Assoc. Professor (AE)
• Steven Mollenkopf (BS in Electrical Engineering) – CEO, Qualcomm Inc.
• Elsa Murano – 23rd President of Texas A&M University; former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety
• George Nolen (Class of 1978) – President and CEO of Siemens Corp.
• Robert B. Pamplin, Sr. (Class of 1933) – CEO of Georgia Pacific Corp.
• Robert B. Pamplin, Jr. (attended in the 1960s) – President and CEO of R.B. Pamplin Corporation
• Cordel L. Faulk (Class of 1998) – member of the Board of Visitors of Virginia Tech; Director of Admissions of the University of Virginia School of Law
• Thomas M. Price (Class of 1938) – architect
• Robert Coleman Richardson (1958 BS; 1960 MS) – physicist at Cornell University; shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996 for the discovery of superfluidity in He-3
• Linwood H. Rose – fifth President of James Madison University
• Charles W. Steger – 15th president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• Frank Sturgis, born Frank Angelo Fiorini (attended in the 1940s) – convicted for the Watergate burglaries that ultimately led to the resignation of US President Richard M. Nixon; served in the US Marines, Navy, and Army and as a covert operative in Latin America
• John H. Thompson (1973, BS; 1975 MS) – Director of the United States Census Bureau
• Harrison Ruffin Tyler (Class of 1951) – co-founder and former Chairman of ChemTreat, Inc. (now a subsidiary of Danaher Corporation); grandson of US President John Tyler
• Rob Wittman – Congressman from the 1st District of Virginia
• Catherine Woteki (Class of 1971, MS, PhD) – Under Secretary for USDA's Research, Education, and Economics mission area, as well as the Department's Chief Scientist

Literature

• David Covucci (Class of 2007) -- author of several pieces of viral internet content for the men's website BroBible
• Homer Hickam (Class of 1964) – author of several works, including the New York Times best-selling memoir Rocket Boys, the basis for the film October Sky
• Vahan Janjigian (1982 MBA, 1985 PhD) – co-author of Even Buffett Isn't Perfect: What You Can – and Can't – Learn from the World's Greatest Investor and The Forbes/CFA Institute Investment Course: Timeless Principles for Building Wealth
• Sharyn McCrumb (Class of 1985) – New York Times bestselling author of the Elizabeth McPherson series, the Ballad series, and the St. Dale series
• Mike Michalowicz (Class of 1993) – author of business books The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, The Pumpkin Plan (Penguin Books), Profit First (Penguin Books), and Surge
• William Shea (Class of 2014) – New York Times bestselling author; Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
• Mala Kumar (Class of 2007) – author of The Paths of Marriage

Music

• Gerry Beckley – founding member of the rock band America
• Keith Buckley – singer for metalcore band Every Time I Die
• Charlie Byrd (Class of 1946) – jazz guitarist (did not graduate)

Movies and television

• Roger Craig (Class of 1999) – winner of the 2011 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions and Jeopardy! record holder for the highest 5-game total, highest single-game total, and largest true daily double bet
• Sara Erikson – TV actress, Two and a Half Men, Community, In Case of Emergency
• Azita Ghanizada – actress, Syfy Channel series Alphas
• Hoda Kotb (Class of 1986) – television news anchor and TV host on NBC's Today and Dateline NBC
• Molly Line (Class of 1999) – reporter for Fox News
• Tim Leaton (Class of 2007) – filmmaker, assistant editor, editor; 2006 Film Your Issue winner, Tropic Thunder, America's Got Talent
• Brian Sullivan (Class of 1993) – CNBC anchor
• Adam Ward – Photojournalist and camera operator for WDBJ who was murdered in 2015 on live television.
• Collette Wolfe – film actress, Semi-Pro, Four Christmases, 17 Again, Observe and Report, Hot Tub Time Machine

Sports

Auto racing

• Darian Grubb (Class of 1998) – NASCAR crew chief for Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin
• Brian Whitesell (Class of 1987) – NASCAR team manager for Hendrick Motorsports

Baseball

• Kevin Barker – first baseman, Toronto Blue Jays
• George Canale – former Milwaukee Brewers first baseman
• Brad Clontz – former Atlanta Braves pitcher
• Johnny Oates – catcher and later manager for the Baltimore Orioles; manager of the Texas Rangers
• Joe Saunders – pitcher, Baltimore Orioles
• Franklin Stubbs – former Major League first baseman-outfielder
• Mike Williams – former Major League pitcher

Basketball

• Paul Long (Class of 1967) – guard for the Detroit Pistons, Buffalo Braves, and Kentucky Colonels
• Allan Bristow (Class of 1974) – forward/guard for the Philadelphia 76ers, San Antonio Spurs, Utah Jazz, and Dallas Mavericks; coach of the Charlotte Hornets; executive for the New Orleans Hornets
• Vernell "Bimbo" Coles (Class of 1990) – point guard with the 1988 U.S. Olympic Basketball team, Miami Heat, Golden State Warriors, Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Boston Celtics
• Dell Curry (Class of 1986) – shooting guard for the Utah Jazz, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Charlotte Hornets
• Zabian Dowdell (Class of 2007) – point guard for Enisey Krasnoyarsk of the Russian Professional Basketball League and Phoenix Suns
• Deron Washington (Class of 2008) – small forward/shooting guard for the Barak Netanya of the Israeli Basketball Super League; selected 59th overall in the 2008 NBA Draft

Football

• James Anderson – linebacker for the Chicago Bears
• Bruce Arians – Head Football Coach, Arizona Cardinals
• Frank Beamer (Class of 1969) – head coach of the Virginia Tech football team 1986 to 2015
• C. Hunter Carpenter (Class of 1902) – first Virginia Tech player elected to the National Football Hall of Fame
• Rashad Carmichael – cornerback for the Houston Texans
• Kam Chancellor – safety for the Seattle Seahawks; Super Bowl XLVIII Champion
• David Clowney – wide receiver for the New York Jets
• Carroll Dale (Class of 1964) – former wide receiver, All-American, played for Vince Lombardi-era Green Bay Packers
• André Davis – wide receiver for the Houston Texans
• Jim Druckenmiller (Class of 1996) – former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers and Miami Dolphins; 26th pick in the 1997 NFL Draft
• Bill Ellenbogen – offensive lineman for the New York Giants
• John Engelberger – former defensive end for the Denver Broncos
• Antone Exum (Class of 2014) – cornerback for the Minnesota Vikings
• Michel Faulkner – All-American at Virginia Tech; played for New York Jets in 1981–1982
• Brandon Flowers – defensive back for the San Diego Chargers; selected by the Kansas City Chiefs with the 35th overall pick in the 2008 NFL Draft
• Antonio Freeman (Class of 1995) – former wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers; played in Super Bowl XXXI, Super Bowl XXXII, and 1998 Pro Bowl
• Kyle Fuller (Class of 2014) – cornerback for the Chicago Bears; 14th pick of the 2014 NFL Draft
• Vincent Fuller – safety for the Tennessee Titans; 108th pick in the 2005 NFL Draft
• Shayne Graham (Class of 2000) – NFL place-kicker
• Jake Grove (Class of 2004) – center for the Miami Dolphins, All-American 2nd round draft pick in 2004 NFL Draft
• DeAngelo Hall (Class of 2005) – defensive back for the Washington Redskins;, 8th overall pick at the 2004 NFL Draft and played in consecutive Pro-Bowls in 2006–2007 (did not graduate)
• Michael Hawkes – football player
• Vaughn Hebron – running back/kick returner for the Denver Broncos; played in Super Bowl XXXII Antonio Freeman), Super Bowl XXXIII; two-time Pro Bowler
• Jayron Hosley – cornerback for the New York Giants
• Kevin Jones – running back for the Chicago Bears; 1st Round, 30th overall pick at the 2004 NFL Draft
• Jeff King – tight end for the Carolina Panthers
• Jonathan Lewis (Class of 2006) – defensive tackle for the Jacksonville Jaguars; selected with the 177th overall pick in the 2006 NFL Draft
• Frank Loria – first Team All-American safety for VT (1967); first Team Academic All-American (1967); College Football Hall of Fame member (1999); was defensive backs coach for Marshall (age 23) when he and the team were killed in a plane crash (1970)
• Josh Morgan – wide receiver for the Chicago Bears; had stints with the San Francisco 49ers and the Washington Redskins
• Ken Oxendine – running back for the Atlanta Falcons
• Rick Razzano – linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals and Toronto Argonauts
• George Roberts – NFL punter
• Aaron Rouse (Class of 2007) – safety for the New York Giants
• Eddie Royal – current wide receiver for the Chicago Bears; drafted by the Denver Broncos with the 42nd overall pick in the 2008 NFL Draft
• Damien Russell – defensive back for the San Francisco 49ers
• Bruce Smith (Class of 1985) – defensive linesman for the Buffalo Bills and Washington Redskins; All-American and first overall pick at the 1985 NFL Draft; 2009 NFL Hall of Fame inductee
• Don Strock – quarterback for Miami Dolphins and Cleveland Browns; later a college head coach
• Darryl Tapp – defensive end for the Detroit Lions, selected by the Seattle Seahawks with the 63rd overall pick at the 2006 NFL Draft
• Tyrod Taylor (Class of 2011) – Starting quarterback for the Buffalo Bills; Super Bowl XLVII Champion
• Logan Thomas (Class of 2014) – quarterback for the Miami Dolphins
• Michael Vick (Class of 2002) – quarterback for the New York Jets, first overall pick at the 2001 NFL Draft by the Atlanta Falcons (did not graduate)
• Ernest Wilford – wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins, selected with the 24th pick of the 4th round in the 2004 NFL Draft
• Ryan Williams – running back for the Arizona Cardinals
• David Wilson (Class of 2012) – running back for the New York Giants; 1st Round pick at the 2012 NFL Draft (did not graduate)
• Jason Worilds (Class of 2010) – outside linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, selected with 52nd overall pick in the 2010 NFL Draft

Golf

• Brendon de Jonge – PGA Tour golfer, 2008 Nationwide Tour Player of the Year
• Johnson Wagner – PGA Tour golfer, three-time winner
• Drew Weaver (Class of 2009) – PGA Tour golfer, winner of the 2007 British Amateur

Wrestling

• Jim Miller – wrestled for Virginia Tech as a freshman walk-on during the 2002–2003 season; professional mixed martial artist, current UFC fighter (Lightweight Division)

Track & field

• Queen Harrison – three-time NCAA women's national champion in the 60 m, 100 m and 400 m hurdles; 2008 US Olympian in the 400 m hurdles; won the 2010 Bowerman, the "Heisman of Track and Field"
• Marcel Lomnicky – 2009 NCAA men's national champion in the hammer throw

Softball

• Angela Tincher – 2008 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year

Cheerleaders

• Kylene Barker – Miss America 1979
• Curtis Dvorak – Jacksonville Jaguars mascot, Jaxson de Ville

Other

• Ken Pomeroy, college basketball statistical specialist

See also

• Virginia Tech commencement speakers

References

Unless otherwise noted, references are contained in the Wiki articles on individuals.

External links

• Virginia Tech Alumni Association
• Virginia Tech Alumni Association | Notable Virginia Tech alumni