Mini Profile
Austin Dirks, BE’08: A ‘GreenLight’ to help health care
Nov. 3, 2020—GreenLight Medical CEO Austin Dirks bills his company as a smarter way to evaluate new medical technology, using a cloud-based system that pulls together quality and value-based data to streamline collaborative purchasing decisions in hospital and health care systems.
Chris Murdock, BA’99, and Tom Milic, BA’99
Nov. 3, 2020—Class of 1999 alumni Chris Murdock and Tom Milic started a recruiting company with a new way of doing business that has grown into a firm with international reach.
Monique Nelson-Nwachuku, BS’96: A Different Path
Nov. 3, 2020—A profile of Monique Nelson-Nwachuku, winner of Vanderbilt’s 2020 Alumni Professional Achievement Award, who is chairman and CEO of UniWorld Group, the country’s longest-standing multicultural marketing agency.
Ben Schecter, BS’18, and Allie Golden, BS’18
Nov. 3, 2020—Last spring, as thousands of health care employees worked tirelessly to do good in the wake of COVID-19, Houston native Ben Schecter and several Vanderbilt friends, including fellow Class of '18 alumna Allie Golden, decided on a model that would help struggling local restaurants and serve health care workers at the same time.
‘Know Better, Do Better’: Charlane Oliver, BS’05, focuses on educating and energizing the Black electorate
Jul. 23, 2020—Oliver is a co-founder of the Equity Alliance, an organization dedicated to educating and energizing the Black electorate.
Amanda Iovino, BA’08: Pushing for Positive Change
Nov. 7, 2019—Congress passed the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in June 1919, and the amendment became law Aug. 26, 1920, giving American women the right to vote after a decades-long fight. This year, the centennial of women gaining the right to vote, a record number of women are serving in the U.S. Congress, many elected...
Tom Mulder, BMus’12: Musician and Mentor
Nov. 7, 2019—Look no further than Tom Mulder to sing the praises of ArtSmart, a nonprofit begun three years ago in which classical musicians provide free individualized music lessons to high school students in underserved communities. “There’s a power in that one-on-one relationship between a teacher and a student,” says Mulder, a tenor who currently is performing—in...
Dorothy Gunther Pugh, BA’72: Dance with a different P.O.V.
Jun. 8, 2018—It’s been a long journey for CEO and founding artistic director Dorothy Gunther Pugh, the former junior-high schoolteacher whose dream was to bring a premier ballet company to her native city. For her vision she was named Memphian of the Year last December by Memphis, the City Magazine.
Lisa Abramson, BA’05: Empowering Mama
Jun. 8, 2018—After Lisa Abramson gave birth to her first daughter in 2014, she descended into a dark period of postpartum depression and psychosis, a mood disorder that is estimated to affect more than 3 million women—roughly one in seven new moms—every year. The experience influenced her to write The Wise Mama Guide to Maternity Leave (2017,...
Ben Edquist, BMus’13: Singin’ in the Rain
Jun. 8, 2018—When Hurricane Harvey struck Houston in August 2017, one of the hardest-hit areas was downtown, home to the Houston Grand Opera. The company was flooded out of its Wortham Theater Center home, but the show would go on. The company’s season-opening production of Verdi’s La Traviata moved to Exhibit Hall A3—dubbed the Resilience Theater—in the...
Theo Morrison, BS’92: Community Lobbyist
Jun. 8, 2018—Theo Morrison developed his civic acumen as a kid watching televised Nashville Metro Council meetings with his parents. “They instilled in me a love for my community and a commitment to making sure that I was engaged,” he says. “It was fascinating to me to hear my mother have conversations with Metro Council members, to...
Caleb Feiring, BA’15: Pedaling tales of the American farm
Feb. 26, 2018— For Caleb Feiring, riding his bike across the country on a quest to tell the stories of America’s family farmers isn’t without its hazards. Consider the night he bedded down in a Midwestern barn with a nocturnal rooster. “He was pretty unpopular among the whole barn,” Feirig recalls. “He would start going at 3...