Alexander, Elizabeth, 1962-

Elizabeth Alexander born May 30, 1962, Harlem, NYC; grew up in Washington, D.C.; daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairman Clifford Alexander, Jr.[5] and Adele Logan Alexander, a professor; educated at Sidwell Friends School, and graduated in 1980. From there she went to Yale University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1984. She studied poetry at Boston University under Derek Walcott and got her Master's in 1987; 1992, she received her PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania; taught at nearby Haverford College from 1990 to 1991. At this time, she would publish her first work, The Venus Hottentot; alumna of the Ragdale Foundation; reporter for the Washington Post from 1984 to 1985; teaching at University of Chicago in 1991 as an assistant professor of English; 2000, she returned to Yale University, where she would teach African American studies and English; Since 2008, Alexander has chaired the African American Studies department at Yale University; 2015, Alexander was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets; 2016, she became the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University; president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018; recited poem during President Obama's first innaguration;