Flown Philologists: Humanities Scholars Beyond the Fold

A.G. Lafley, CEO, Procter and Gamble

BA, history, Hamilton College.

Gordon Brown Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom

PhD, history, Edinburgh University.

Hank Paulson, US Treasury Secretary

BA, English literature, Dartmouth. Like the British, the US knows it makes sense to put humanities scholars in the nation's economic crows nest. Longtime chairman of Goldman Sachs and now the US Treasury Secretary, Paulson is also a conservationist who serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Nature Conservancy.

Joshua Marshall, founder and owner, Talking Points Memo and TPMMuckracker

PhD, American History, Brown. Read how this colonial history scholar broke big political scandals.

John J. Mack, Chairman and CEO, Morgan Stanley.

BA, History, Duke University.

George Soros, founder, Open Society Institute

BA, Philosophy, London School of Economics. Philanthropist and one of the world's most successful investors. His latest book is The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power.

Geoffrey Moore, Managing Director, tcg Advisors

PhD in medieval and Renaissance literature, University of Washington. His books include Living On The Fault Line. Business Week writes about how this ex lit professor turned a sweeping curiosity into $15,000-a-day corporate teaching gigs.

Judith Ann McGrath, Chairman and CEO, MTV Networks

BA, English literature, Cedar Crest College. Her mom read Catcher in the Rye to her when she was seven. Read more about McGrath in Business Week.

Jason Taylor, Director of Consumer Insights, The Gap

BA, English, Carleton College and MA, Theatre, University of Wisconsin Madison. How Mr. Taylor turned dim teaching opportunities into a bright career at The Gap. Wall Street Journal.

Lisa Drakeman, President and CEO, Genmab AS

MA, American History and PhD, Religion, Princeton. Read about Mrs. Drakeman's transition from religion professor to biotech CEO in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Maria Cirion, CEO, Guardent

BA, English, Mount Holyoke College.

Steve Sanger, CEO, General Mills

BA, history, DePauw University. Read profile in Business Week.

Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO, Hewlett-Packard

Stanford BA in medieval history and philosophy. The ol' humanities background didn't serve Carly in her last gig at HP.

Anne Mulcahy, President and COO, Xerox

Mulcahy is something of a legend for inheriting and reviving a troubled Xerox. BA, journalism, Marymount College.

Tim O'Reilly, Founder and President, O'Reilly & Associates

O'Reilly's Harvard College Classics BA is the foundation of a publishing house that produces no-nonsense, animal-adorned computer books. Read O'Reilly's bio.

Patrick Byrne, CEO, Overstock.com

PhD in Philosophy, Stanford.

Larissa Herda, President and CEO, Time Warner Telecom

BS, political science, University of Colorado.

Pat Sueltz, President of Operations, Salesforce.com

BA, political science, Occidental College. Sueltz has also received a Rockefeller fellowship in theology.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi, The Car Talk Guys

Ray admits to an MIT degree in humanities and science. "MIT is known for its humanities program. After all, with a name like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you know they must have a splendid humanities department."

Tom earned a PhD in chemical engineering at Boston University and writes that "I put on the robes, they called me 'Doctor' (for one day), and I got a job as a real college professor. It was good. For about eight years. But suddenly (actually it happened gradually, but I didn't know it) it was over. I reached (through deep thought, meditation and prayer) a miraculous epiphany: Teaching sucks."

Dorothy Terell, Sr, VP, Natural Microsystems

BA, English, Florida A&M.

Jo Hoppe, CIO, Pega

BA, Political Science, Fairleigh Dickinson University. MS, photography, Goddard College.

Tracey Esherick, Managing Director for the Banking and Investing Products, Fleet Financial Group (now Bank of America)

BA, English, University of South Carolina. MA, Boston University.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

PhD, Theology, Boston University. Live cam of Marsh Plaza and MLK memorial. Fittingly, BU was the first university in America to award PhDs to women (1877).

Henry Blodget, ex-Market Analyst, Merrill Lynch

Now barred from the securities industry, Blodget is a symbol of internet stock bubble excess. BA in History, Yale.

George Bell, Director, Upromise

Bell has a BA in English from Harvard. Before taking the helm of cable and media company Excite@Home and then moving to Upromise, Bell won four Emmys for his independent documentary film work, was a writer and producer for ABC television, and was a senior V.P. with Times Mirror Magazines. Read more about Bell in Business Week.

Evan Rudowski, Founder, Atlantic Leap

Rudowski's career has taken him from newspaper journalism to Excite@Home to his own consulting company. BA in Communications Arts from Hoftstra.

John Muller, VP Legal, PayPal

BA in English, University of Virginia

Bill Harris

Bill Harris spent a number of years in the New York publishing industry before becoming CEO of Intuit. He then become the captain of online payment services company, X.com, which merged with eBay's PayPal. BA, American Studies, Middlebury College, Vermont.

Ernst Malmsten, cofounder and CEO, boo.com

Before founding a publishing company, a Swedish internet bookstore (bokus.com), and the crashed-and-burned boo.com, Malmsten studied history at the University of Lund, Sweden. He also coordinated a Nordic poetry festival in the United States and spent three years as literary critic for one of Sweden's morning papers.

Brent Hoberman, Cofounder and Managing Director, LastMinute.com

Hoberman has an MA from Oxford in French and German literature

Genevieve Bell, Corporate Anthropologist, Intel

Bell's Stanford Anthropology PhD equips her to study the ethnography of consumer spaces. Her research helps Intel invent technology that solves problems.

Roland Honekamp, Cofounder, zooplus.com

The founder of this German pet site has a BA in philosophy, politics, and economics from Balliol College, Oxford, and an MS in international relations from the London School of Economics.

Others?