A Cabinet secretary, an Olympic gold medalist, and the woman who runs the Monterey Bay Aquarium all started on the same Palo Alto block.
In This Guide
Quick Answer for Busy Parents
Castilleja alumnae include former United States Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Monterey Bay Aquarium executive director Julie Packard, Olympic gymnast Amy Chow, Harvard systems biologist Pamela Silver, and Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick. The list skews toward science, public service, conservation, and the arts rather than any single field, which reflects a school that has spent more than a century pushing girls toward leadership in whatever domain they chose.
Public Service and Business
Penny Pritzker, class of 1977, became the 38th United States Secretary of Commerce after being confirmed by a Senate vote of 97 to 1. A businesswoman, entrepreneur, and civic leader before entering government, she remains among the most prominent figures the school has produced. Castilleja named her a distinguished alumna in 2002, more than a decade before the Cabinet appointment.
Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, class of 1988, has spent her career on the architecture of giving rather than the giving itself. She teaches strategic philanthropy at Stanford and has written on how donors can make decisions with the same rigor they would apply to an investment. Pansy Ho, born in Macau, went on to lead major hospitality and transport businesses in Asia.
Science, Conservation, and Medicine
Pamela Silver holds the Elliot T. and Onie H. Adams Professorship of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and is a founding Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Her work sits at the origin of modern synthetic biology. She attended Menlo-Atherton High School before graduating from Castilleja, then took a chemistry degree at UC Santa Cruz and a doctorate at UCLA.
Julie Packard, class of 1970, has led the Monterey Bay Aquarium as executive director for decades and is among the most consequential voices in American ocean conservation. She received the Audubon Medal for her work, and Castilleja named her a distinguished alumna in 2020.
Sport at the Olympic Level
Amy Chow competed at the 1996 Atlanta and 2000 Sydney Olympic Games as a member of the Magnificent Seven, the first United States women’s team to win Olympic gymnastics gold. She was also the first Asian American woman to win an Olympic medal in gymnastics. What happened afterward is the part worth telling your daughter: she went to medical school and became a pediatrician.
Nancy Ditz, class of 1972, ran the marathon for the United States at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and was among the leading American distance runners of her era. Castilleja recognized her as a distinguished alumna in 1987.
Arts and Culture
Grace Slick became one of the defining voices of the 1960s San Francisco music scene as a member of Jefferson Airplane, and later worked as a visual artist. Helen Katharine Forbes, class of 1908, painted landscapes of Mexico, Mono Lake, and the Sierra Nevada and worked as a muralist during the interwar period. Beatrice Judd Ryan, an Australian-born gallerist, founded Galerie Beaux Arts in San Francisco and helped organize the Art in Action program at the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition. Phoebe Gloeckner is a graphic novelist and illustrator, and Josie Maran built a career as a model, actress, and founder of a cosmetics company.
| Alumna | Field | Known For |
| Penny Pritzker ’77 | Public service | 38th U.S. Secretary of Commerce |
| Julie Packard ’70 | Conservation | Executive Director, Monterey Bay Aquarium |
| Amy Chow | Olympic sport, medicine | 1996 team gold; pediatrician |
| Pamela Silver | Science | Harvard Medical School; Wyss Institute founding faculty |
| Nancy Ditz ’72 | Olympic sport | 1988 Seoul Olympic marathon |
| Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen ’88 | Philanthropy | Stanford lecturer on strategic philanthropy |
| Grace Slick | Music | Jefferson Airplane |
| Helen Katharine Forbes ’08 | Visual art | Landscape painter and muralist |
Outcomes like these start with fit, not strategy.
The alumnae above did not follow a template. They found something they cared about and went further into it than anyone expected. That is what a strong application shows, and it is what we help families build toward.
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What the Alumnae List Tells You About the School
Read the list closely and one thing stands out: there is no dominant industry. A Cabinet secretary, an aquarium director, a synthetic biologist, two Olympians, and a rock singer do not share a career pipeline. They share an education that treated ambition as a personal question rather than a prescribed track.
That has a practical implication for your application. Castilleja is not looking for a type. Its committee names five values it wants to see, conscience, courtesy, character, courage, and charity, and it is markedly less interested in whether a twelve-year-old has already picked a lane. Families who try to present their daughter as a finished product are solving a problem the school did not pose.
A Final Thought
Alumni lists are useful for one thing: they show you what a school believes is possible for its graduates. Castilleja’s suggests a school that has never told a student which direction to run.
Ready to talk about your daughter specifically?
We will give you an honest read on fit, timing, and what a competitive Castilleja application would actually require this year.