Famous Montessorians

Famous Montessori Students

Is it a coincidence that so many people on the leading edge of innovation and creativity in our culture attended Montessori schools as children? Perhaps it’s because Montessori offers an education for life and develops the skills children need more than ever before to succeed in today’s dynamic global society.

Notable Montessori graduates include:

Sergey Brin and Larry Page ~ co-Founders of Google

Prince William and Prince Harry ~ English royal family

George Clooney ~ Academy Award-winning actor, director,

                                      producer and humanitarian

Helen Hunt ~ Academy Award-winning actress

Jeff Bezos ~ founder of Amazon.com and owner of The Washington Post

Anne Frank ~ famous diarist from World War II

Jimmy Wales ~ founder of Wikipedia

Will Wright ~ video game pioneer and designer of The Sims

HM Queen Noor of Jordan ~ U.N. advisor, humanitarian activist,

                                      memoirist and wife of the late King Hussein of Jordan

Taylor Swift ~ Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter

Beyonce Knowles ~ singer, songwriter, actress,

                                          and 16-time Grammy Award winner

Katherine Graham ~ former owner-editor of The Washington Post

Julia Child ~ star of TV cooking shows

                            and author of numerous cookbooks

Gabriel Garcia Marquez ~ Nobel Prize-winning author for literature

Joshua Bell ~ American violinist

T. Berry Brazelton ~ noted pediatrician, child psychiatrist, and author

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis ~ former editor and former

                                                                                   first lady (John F. Kennedy)

Dakota Fanning ~ actor and youngest-ever

                                       Screen Actors Award nominee

Peter Drucker ~ author, management consultant, and “social ecologist”

                                   awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Helen Keller ~ political activist, author, lecturer and awarded the

                                Presidential Medal of Freedom

Yo Yo Ma ~ United Nations Peace Ambassador, winner of 15 Grammy

                         awards and child prodigy cellist

Melissa Gilbert ~ child actress in “Little House on the Prairie”

John and Joan Cusack ~ actor/screenwriter and

                                                     Academy Award-nominated actress

Sarah Gilbert ~ actress and daytime show co-host and creator

David Blaine ~ illusionist and magician

Sean “P Diddy” Combs ~ Grammy Award-winning musician

Notable parents who chose Montessori schools for their children:

Bill and Hillary Clinton ~ former President and Secretary of State

Yul Brynner ~ former actor

Michael Douglas ~ actor

Yo Yo Ma ~ cellist

Others with a Montessori connection:

Thomas Edison ~ noted scientist and inventor,

                                      helped found a Montessori school.

President Woodrow Wilson’s daughter trained as a Montessori teacher. There was a Montessori classroom in the basement of the White House during Wilson’s presidency.

Erik Erikson ~ anthropologist/author, had a Montessori teaching certificate.

Jean Piaget ~ noted Swiss psychologist, made his first observations of children in a Montessori school. He was also head of the Swiss Montessori Society for many years.

Alexander Graham Bell (inventor) and his wife, Mabel, founded the Montessori Education Association in 1913. They also provided financial support directly to Dr. Maria Montessori and helped establish the first Montessori class in Canada and one of the first in the United States.