Q & A

Hulu’s chief marketing officer looks for heart at the intersection of entertainment and tech DANIEL BAXTER   Campbell As the ways we consume media continue to change, viewers have more choices than ever before. In 2012, Disney, NBC Universal (now Comcast) and 21st Century Fox banded together to… Read More

George Matouk, BA'91, talks about his family's business, John Matouk & Co., which has emerged as one of the premier luxury brands in bed and bath linens. Read More

PHOTO BY AARON CLAMAGE, PHOTOGRAPHER IN WASHINGTON, D.C.   This year’s recipient of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association’s Young Alumni Professional Achievement Award, Zakiya Smith, BS’06, has dedicated her career to easing the complications and financial burden associated with paying for a college education—first as a senior… Read More

Professor of Law Ganesh Sitaraman believes the United States is facing a stark choice: Either continue along the current path of rising economic inequality and risk oligarchy, or rebuild the middle class and reclaim the republic that the Founding Fathers originally envisioned. Read More

Guided by little more than a desire to learn sign language and perhaps some divine intervention, longtime Atlanta television news personality Karen Graham, BA’87, has launched a digital news network for the deaf community. Read More

In April, when the fiscal separation of Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center was completed, Larry Marnett—the University Professor of Biochemistry, Chemistry and Pharmacology and Mary Geddes Stahlman Professor of Cancer Research—assumed a new role as the School of Medicine’s first dean of basic sciences, reporting directly to the provost. Read More

Sure, you’ve heard of the Cronut®. It’s the half-croissant, half-doughnut that took the world by storm a few years ago. But have you ever wondered why you’ve heard of it? It’s because of innovative attorneys like Candice Cook Simmons, who received her law degree from Vanderbilt in 2003. Read More

Hoping to ensure that the door to a Vanderbilt education is open to every talented student inspired Board of Trust member Dr. Robert Schiff Jr., BS’77, a Cincinnati pediatrician, to make a transformative $10,000,000 commitment to Opportunity Vanderbilt. Read More

Megan Barry was elected as Nashville’s first woman mayor this fall in a hotly contested race that drew national media attention. Vanderbilt Magazine sat down with the new mayor to talk about the election process, her connection with Vanderbilt, and what she hopes to accomplish. Read More

Vanderbilt physician Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve and a combat veteran, has made news more than once by advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) issues. Read More

Clay Hensley, BA’94. senior director of international strategy and outreach for the College Board, is helping American universities like Vanderbilt navigate the growing demand from students abroad. Read More

Previously director of GDOT’s Permits and Operations Division, Pirkle spent part of last year implementing task force recommendations after the January 2014 Atlanta “Snowpocalypse” that stranded thousands of commuters for eight hours or more on iced-over interstates—roads that are notorious for traffic snarls even in the best of times. Read More

Last April, Susan Wente, a cell biologist who most recently served as associate vice chancellor for research and senior associate dean for biomedical sciences at Vanderbilt, was named university provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. Read More

After the horrific mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2011, a conservative commentator claimed that “guns don’t kill people—the mentally ill do.” Metzl believes this attitude is based on misconceptions about mental illness and violence that obscure larger issues about gun violence in America. Read More

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the poem “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key, Steven Smartt, BME’71, MME’72, aims to play the national anthem 100 times at public events this year. Read More

Jon Meacham, executive editor and executive vice president at Random House and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, joined the Vanderbilt faculty last summer with a three-year appointment as Distinguished Visiting Professor. Read More

Credit: Daniel Dubois Divinity students, faculty and staff will welcome new leadership when the Rev. Emilie M. Townes is installed in August as the school’s 16th dean. She is also the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair and professor of womanist ethics and society. Read More

Credit: Joe Howell Few faculty lives intersect with as many Vanderbilt students as that of Fräncille Bergquist, associate professor of Spanish and associate dean of the College of Arts and Science. Bergquist, who helped establish McTyeire International House, retires this spring… Read More

Not long after he arrived at Vanderbilt nine years ago, Keivan Stassun, professor of astronomy, began building on a newly forged alliance with Fisk University, a historically black college just two miles from the Vanderbilt campus, in an effort to increase the number of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and other minorities earning Ph.D. degrees in science. Read More