Mini Profile

Kate Hendricks’ career in comedy started off slowly. In fact, she only realized she wanted to pursue comedy during an interview for a job at an ad agency. So she did what a lot of self-respecting comedians do: She moved to New York City and performed anywhere that would have her. Read More

Emison, a retired lawyer, is investigating an unsolved murder that took place more than 75 years ago. The murdered man, Elbert Williams, was a member of the NAACP who organized meetings of African Americans in West Tennessee’s Haywood County. He was found in a river and buried without autopsy in an unmarked grave. Read More

Vivé Griffith says her Vanderbilt years tie directly to her present leadership of the Austin, Texas-based Free Minds Project, which offers under-resourced adults a free, yearlong, college-level course in subjects ranging from history to Shakespeare, along with free books, child care and dinners. Read More

James Hill, an associate professor of computer and information science at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, is one of the youngest African Americans to become a tenured professor in computer science at a research university in the United States. Read More

Dr. Annabelle de St. Maurice rapidly is ascending to the cutting edge of addressing the practical problems of world-impacting diseases. After earning her master’s degree in public health at Vanderbilt, in July 2015 she began work in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officer. Read More

Runners are a group Graeflin knows well. He ran track at Vanderbilt, and is the longtime owner of The Athlete’s House in Nashville, the first store in Tennessee devoted to running apparel and gear. Read More

Romo and a group of like-minded friends formed Atlanta-based Cozzee (pronounced like “coffee”), which sells high-end, ethically produced coffee and donates 100 percent of its profits to charity. Read More

As a busy Nashville singer, songwriter, performing pianist and recording artist, Sarah Williams spends her days balancing creativity, efficient practice and time management. Read More

A simple quest for new sheets a few years ago led to the creation of an international luxury brand—Boll & Branch—a company as well-known for its ethical practices and philanthropy as it is for the quality of its products. Boll & Branch is the brainchild of Missy and Scott… Read More

Mohamed Abdel-Kader (PHOTO BY AARON CLAMAGE, PHOTOGRAPHER IN WASHINGTON, D.C.) Helping young Americans succeed in a global environment is both a vocation and a passion for Mohamed Abdel-Kader. “Students and business people need a global understanding and mindset to exist in the world today,” says Abdel-Kader, deputy assistant… Read More

Minardi, BE’12, is co-founder and software engineering lead for Voxel8, developer of a custom-electronics-producing 3-D printer that is a darling of tech media. Read More

Reif is the founder of Yumbutter, which turns organic peanuts, almonds and sunflowers into products like spicy Thai peanut butter and almond butter with chia, hemp seeds and goji. Read More

Dr. Rachel Idowu spent five weeks in Africa last summer assisting the Ebola outbreak response in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital and most populous city. Read More

High school science teacher Juliet Crupi has turned an inner-city after-school club into a nationally recognized program aimed at changing the relationships among her students, food and the community. Read More

Dan Stephenson, who earned a degree in economics, began selling his mac and cheese at farmers markets on weekends while working in corporate finance at Nashville’s Ingram Industries. Read More

On March 31, 1981, Secret Service agent Jerry W. Parr was head of the detail protecting President Ronald Reagan during a speech at the Washington Hilton. When would-be assassin John Hinkley Jr. opened fire, Parr shoved Reagan into a waiting car and ordered him taken to George Washington University Hospital—actions credited with saving the seriously wounded president’s life. Read More

Duncan McDougall spent part of his 20s guiding expeditions of the physical world—whitewater and backcountry trips in places like Alaska and New Zealand. Since 1998, however, he has been leading expeditions of another kind, guiding children on a journey to literacy. Read More

Bruce decided to start his own series of field guides, called Wildsam, in 2012. The books are “packed with local lore, interviews, memoir, hand-drawn maps, personal essays and more,” according to the Wildsam website. Read More

Recently, Amy Christine Ellis was named a master of wine by the Institute of Masters of Wine—one of only 312 people to hold that title worldwide, and one of only 10 women in the United States. Read More

Piper Hendricks is founder and president of p.h. balanced films, a nonprofit organization that makes awareness-raising documentary films. Read More