DAR

YP, the largest local search and advertising company in the U.S., announced that Allison Checchi, BS’99, has been appointed chief marketing officer. In this role, Checchi will be responsible for leading YP’s marketing, advertising, branding and communications efforts to improve the way the company connects consumers with local businesses. Read More

Over the past 28 years with the parent company of the Grand Ole Opry and Ryman Auditorium, Steve Buchanan, BS’80, MBA’85, the president of Opry Entertainment Group, has resurrected the Ryman into a beloved performance space. Buchanan used his rebranding and rebuilding skills to lead the Grand Ole Opry into… Read More

Former AmeriCares president and CEO Curt Welling, JD’75, has joined Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business as a senior fellow in its Center for Global Business and Government and the Center for Business and Society. Welling assumed the joint appointments Jan. 1, following his 11-year tenure at the nonprofit global health… Read More

Robert T. Means Jr., MD’83, has been named dean of the James H. Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University, effective March 1. He comes to ETSU from the University of Kentucky where he currently serves as executive dean and professor of internal medicine and is a member… Read More

Hannah Stahl, BA’12, received Vanderbilt’s Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award, allowing the means for travel and independent art activity for one year. She visited Italy, Amsterdam and Poland—where her trip to Auschwitz inspired 10 paintings of the faces of female prisoners, shortly before execution. The display is currently on view… Read More

Following a nationwide search, Dr. Christine Benz Smith, BSN’76, has been selected as the Director of the UTC School of Nursing.   She has served in several capacities at the university since she joined the UTC School of Nursing faculty in 1997. Read More

Kristin Lemkau, BA’89, will become Chief Marketing Officer for JPMorgan Chase. In this role, she will oversee brand strategy and advertising, sponsorships, market research and event marketing across the firm. She will work closely with each of the businesses on their product strategies and marketing approaches, and work to build… Read More

Combining their love of college football and knowledge of the New York Stock Exchange – and some savvy and sophisticated technological skills – Will Schreiber (BA ‘13, economics) and McArthur Gill (BE ’13, mechanical engineering) developed Stadium Stock Exchange during their final semester. In one year, the venture has… Read More

Vanderbilt alumna Leslie Labruto’s early career trajectory illustrates just how many ways a young civil environmental engineer can accommodate both her heart’s leaning and her tangible talents – in as many places as possible. Before she graduated from the School of Engineering in 2011, Leslie’s studies and service work had… Read More

“The truth is this: We have allowed a human-rights nightmare to occur on our watch,” she told a packed house at Langford Auditorium back in January while delivering the keynote address for Vanderbilt’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration. “In the years since Dr. King’s death, a vast new system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and Jim Crow.” Read More

Todd Jackson, BA’96, EMBA’08, is the recipient of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board of Director’s new Alumni Volunteer Award. As founders and co-chairs of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center Young Ambassadors, Jackson and his wife, EB, have helped raise $250,000 and award seven Discovery Grants to innovative cancer… Read More

Evan Mack, B.Mus’03, is the recipient of one of the newest awards presented by the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board of Directors — the Young Alumni Professional Achievement Award. Read More

Long before there was a Student Recreation Center or any of the adjacent outdoor facilities, Sam Hirt was doing what he could to promote sports activities on campus, initially as Vanderbilt’s first full-time intramural director and then as head of the physical education department. In short, Hirt was Campus Recreation before there was even such a thing. Read More

What would you do if you were out with your family one day and suddenly you found yourself in the middle of a personal horror and an international news story? Where would you be, physically and reflectively, nine months later? Kevin White, MBA’10, can tell you. Read More

Andre L. Churchwell, M.D., associate dean for Diversity at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, has been promoted to the new position of senior associate dean for Diversity Affairs. Read More

As Lolita Olivo carefully feeds the Vanderbilt T-shirt through her sewing machine, she dreams about building a decent house for her elderly father and three small children. Her dream soon may come true, thanks to the efforts of Joseph “Joe” Bozich. Read More

Kasey M. Folk, BA’02, is one of eight attorneys at Ulmer & Berne elected to partnership. Kasey also serves on the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board of Directors and is co-president of the Chicago chapter. Read More

Rep. Brenda Gilmore, MEd.’88, has been elected as state director for Women in Government, a group that advocates for women serving in state legislatures. She was elected to the position by her female colleagues in the state General Assembly. 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