Alumni

"Vanderbilt University stands with its Association of American Universities colleagues in opposing a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as proposed by the American Studies Association," said Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos in a Dec. 31 statement. Read More

I’m leaving Africa with a heavy heart and a monumental task before me. When saying goodbyes at the Center for the Rehabilitation of Child Soldiers, Edna [not her real name]—an 18-year-old who was abducted by Ugandan rebels at the age of 12—asked me to promise her two things. First, not to forget the experiences and lives of the women I had been working with for the past year. Second, that I would use my voice to create positive change. Read More

Lift Ev’ry Voice “First-generation students who don’t have cultural capital, who don’t come to the table with college-educated parents or economic resources—for those kids to walk across the stage at graduation makes every single day worthwhile,” says Roslyn Clark Artis of her work in higher education. Read More

Ava Foster Sellers, who in her nearly 50 years at Vanderbilt helped transform the university’s job placement office into a full-scale career planning service with a holistic approach for preparing students for the working world, died Nov. 25 in Nashville. Read More

The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee has recognized Francis S. Guess, MBM’74,  for his commitment to equality, justice and the advancement of Middle Tennessee with the Kraft Humanitarian Award. He served six years on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and an additional 32 years on the Tennessee Human Rights… Read More

Emily White, BA’00, is the director of business operations at Facebook’s Instagram—a job she has held since April of this year. She recently accepted a job at Snapchat, where she will be second in command to CEO Evan Spiegel. Read More

For CEO and Vanderbilt mechanical engineering graduate Krista Donaldson, BE’95, revolutionary engineering is about changing the world, one life at a time. Read More

Sabre Rucker grew up just a few miles from the Vanderbilt campus in East Nashville. Despite her successes in high school, her dreams of “black and gold” seemed out of reach. But Opportunity Vanderbilt made her dreams real. Her story is featured in a new video on Opportunity Vanderbilt, the… Read More

Keith Caldwell came to study at the Vanderbilt Divinity School because he wants to help reimagine a better version of this world. “People here are not just doing God talk,” Keith says. “They are pulling it down and putting it in action.” As a community organizer in… Read More

Muhammad Yunus, Phd‘71, and the 1996 Vanderbilt Distinguished Alumnus, was an inspiring keynote speaker during the fifth annual Global Social Business Summit. After Vanderbilt, Yunus began his active work to fight poverty in Bangladesh by issuing microcredit loans to the poor, eventually creating the Grameen Bank. Yunus and the bank… Read More

The Class of 2012 is accustomed to leading the way. As freshmen, they became the first class to live at The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons. As seniors, they broke a Vanderbilt record at the time by giving back to Vanderbilt at a rate of 48 percent through the… Read More

After finding the original mugshots of the Freedom Riders, Eric Etheridge, BA’79, took on a unique project; he tracked down 328 of the original activists, photographing them again and displaying their current portraits alongside their mugshots. The portraits are collected in Etheridge’s book, “Breach of Peace.” Etheridge recently visited the Freedom… Read More

Vanderbilt’s Office of Alumni Relations and the Association of Vanderbilt Black Alumni are excited to announce the AVBA’s newest leadership team. William Wyatt, BE’95, is president, Damien Charley, BS’99, is vice president and Charity Hemphill-Frierson, BA’10, will serve as secretary. The AVBA made great strides under its previous leadership… Read More

A video resume lets your personality and speaking skills set you apart from your competition. Vanderbilt is here to help you with Optimal Resume, now available through the Alumni Career Services program. The process could not be easier. Optimal Resume gives you the tools to create your script, an… Read More

Middle school students are experiencing the joy of reading thanks to best-selling author and Vanderbilt alumnus James Patterson, who recognized the need for engaging literature for the younger set. Read More

Matt Rubinger, BA’10, learned to authenticate designer handbags as a teenager. Today he is in charge of the luxury accessories division at Heritage Auctions. Read More

A team of computer engineers from Vanderbilt University’s Institute of Software Integrated Systems (ISIS), including Associate Professor of Computer Engineering Akos Ledeczi, PhD’95, has developed inexpensive hardware and software that can transform an Android smartphone into a simple shooter location system. Read More

"Popular Mechanics" named Vanderbilt mechanical engineer Michael Goldfarb one of this year's “Ten Innovators Who Changed The World” for an exoskeleton he developed that helps people with paralysis to stand. Read More

This year, more than 3,000 alumni and guests gathered on campus Oct. 3­–5 for Reunion 2013. Read More

Lauren Parker Jackson learned the difficult and demanding art of X-ray crystallography in the Cambridge University lab where it was invented. She brings her expertise to Vanderbilt, where she will continue her research in protein trafficking. Read More