The Vanderbilt Story

When George Matouk graduated from Vanderbilt in 1991, the forces of globalization were wreaking havoc on American manufacturing by replacing items once made domestically with a flood of low-cost imports. For Matouk, this was no mere point of curiosity. The table linens business run by his father—and founded… Read More

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,”… Read More

Nurturing a healthy diet has always been something of a gut check. For Charleston, S.C., gastroenterologist Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, the human gut, literally, is the key to health. The region, which includes the digestive tract, teems with up to 35,000 species of bacteria known to neutralize toxins and carcinogens… Read More

Jose Garrido’s influence can be found on grocery shelves throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States. As executive vice president of Walton & Post Inc., a privately owned Miami export/import business, Garrido sells products ranging from paper towels and canned sausages, to fruit and maple syrup. Read More

Katrina Markoff, BA’95, majored in chemistry with the intention of going to medical school. But she soon realized lab research wasn’t for her, and—after a stint working in the Vanderbilt emergency room—she discovered that she couldn’t stand the sight of blood. So Markoff returned to the love of baking… Read More

It will soon be the start of a new year. But before we enter 2018, let’s look back at the moments that shaped our university in 2017. Read More

When financial traders talk about buying low and selling high, what they really mean is that they’re looking for an edge, a profitable move that nobody else in the market has discovered. This is how Warren Buffett made his money. Starting in his mid-20s, Buffett plowed half his net worth… Read More

When Charles D. King, BA’91, first arrived in Los Angeles in 1997, his friends were shocked to hear that he had taken a job in a mailroom. After all, King held degrees from Vanderbilt and Howard University Law School. His résumé was bursting with experience at marquee companies, including AOL… Read More

The neighborhood where Jessica Mooney Holman grew up is barely 2 miles from the heart of the Vanderbilt campus. But in many ways it’s a world apart. “Yes, it was definitely a tough neighborhood,” says Holman, BS’10, MEd’12, who played on four NCAA Tournament basketball teams while at Vanderbilt from… Read More

As a freshly minted Vanderbilt graduate, Emily Motayed moved to New York City to work as a health care consultant. But the cost-conscious professional faced an immediate challenge in figuring out how to outfit her first “big-girl apartment.” “I had no idea how to go about buying furniture, and no… Read More

Harold Jordan, M.D., has had a distinguished medical career that includes many highlights, including being chair of Psychiatry at Meharry Medical College, his medical alma mater, and serving as acting dean of the School of Medicine at Meharry as well. Besides his academic career, Jordan was devoted to improving mental… Read More

When Adena Friedman, MBA’93, took over as CEO of Nasdaq at the start of 2017, making her the first woman to lead a global exchange company, she became the subject of numerous profiles in the financial press. Although each piece explored different aspects of her management style and future plans… 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. With plans to broadcast two online newscasts a day, the CNN-affiliated Sign1News will be the first… Read More

Tatum Hauck Allsep grew up in Mississippi with parents who bled black and gold. She knew all about the strong traditions, the beautiful campus, and the exceptional reputation of the academics. What she didn’t know was that attending Vanderbilt would be a life-changing experience. Allsep thought she would pursue a… Read More

When Michael Caruso walked across the Commencement stage and received his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt in 1972, pursuing a Ph.D. seemed unlikely. Despite falling in love with philosophy after taking an introductory course with Centennial Professor of Philosophy John Lachs his sophomore year and declaring it… Read More

Jacques Cousteau said we protect what we love. I have been in love with nature—and aware of how precious it is—since the first Earth Day in 1970 when a group of ecologists took my first-grade class on a nature walk in a nearby park. Escaping the classroom into the relative… Read More

Bridgette Brown came to Vanderbilt for a world-class education but, in addition to finding a new home, she also discovered herself. Read More

As a Vanderbilt undergraduate, Alex Taylor, BS’97, never thought he’d join the family business. He also had no desire to follow his friends into the world of financial services, even though he was studying what he calls the “psychology of business” as a human and organizational development major at… Read More

If you want to get a handle on the game of baseball, a good place to start is with the ball itself, specifically the seams that tie it all together. The 108 red stitches—used by pitchers to alter the trajectory of throws, depending on subtle changes in their grip—are the… Read More

In July 2004, Wes Powell received what he now refers to as “the Guantánamo call.” Life hasn’t been the same since. That same year the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that men imprisoned at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had a right to challenge their detention in… Read More