Alumni-feature

Meg Bryson Pirkle, BE’89, is the first female chief engineer for Georgia’s transportation department. In the following Q&A, she explains her role in implementing a task force’s recommendations after the January 2014 Atlanta “Snowpocalypse,” her time at Vanderbilt, and being a woman in a male-dominated profession. Read More

The 2014 MOGUL 35 under 35 includes an impressive list of women in a variety of fields. Among them is Liz McDaniel, BA’03, director of brand communications at Diane von Furstenberg. The list honors “women worldwide under the age of 35 who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and innovation within the… Read More

When traveling, Taylor Bruce, BA’04, often brings a book that deepens his understanding of his destination, but never a travel guide. Eager to share the stories of cities rather than popular tourist attractions, Bruce started his own series of field guides, called Wildsam. Read More

Duncan McDougall, BA’83, spent part of his twenties 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

These four School of Medicine alumni forged new paths—hedge funds, pharmaceuticals, management consulting, and health care entrepreneurship—to find success in business. Read More

Andrew Maraniss, BA’92, first wrote about SEC pioneer Perry Wallace, BE’72, as a sophomore history major. Nearly 25 years later, Vanderbilt University Press will release Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South in December. Popdose.com profiles Maraniss and his passion to tell Wallace’s… Read More

Samar Ali, BS’03, JD’06, a member of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board of Directors, has joined Nashville law firm Bone McAllester Norton to practice international law and continue private diplomatic work in the Middle East and elsewhere. She previously advised Gov. Bill Haslam on economic issues and was a counterterrorism… Read More

During the next 15 years, as the baby boomer generation ages, the number of people affected by Alzheimer’s disease is expected to double. But there is new hope if promising research by Robert Mahley bears fruit. Mahley is senior investigator and founder of the Gladstone Institutes, a nonprofit biomedical-research organization… Read More