Alumni Profiles

Combining consulting with a passion for sports Abbi Hills arrived at Cornell in 2004, not for graduate school but for her first job: assistant coach of the women’s lacrosse team. A veteran lacrosse player who had played in high school and college, Hills helped lead the team to earn its first Ivy League title. “It […]

Hernan Mendez, MBA ’83, President of Procafecol When Hernan Mendez took over as head of Colombia’s Juan Valdez coffee business in 2010, the retailer was in sad straits. Parent company Procafecol was on the verge of bankruptcy and its misguided expansion plans for its chain of coffee shops had been deep-sixed. The executive corps was […]

Bringing transparency to the fashion supply chain Take a look at the clothes you’re wearing today. Where were they made? Under what conditions? If you’re wearing natural fiber, where was it grown? Who harvested it? And were those workers treated fairly? Ever thought about it? Natalie Grillon thinks about it – a lot. That’s why […]

Building Emerging Securities Markets The perfect segue to Bob Strahota’s career trajectory came shortly after the Berlin Wall fell. It was 1991 and he had just returned, after 19 years of private law practice, to the US Securities and Exchange Commission as an attorney fellow in its Office of General Counsel. Newly independent nations across […]

Taking the pain out of giving by Irene Kim Ever wonder how much of your charitable donation ends up paying for all those dinnertime solicitation calls and mailers with “free” address labels? Launched this spring by Daniel Mansoor, GiveNext is a website that centralizes donors’ giving and charities’ solicitation efforts. Donors enter the names of […]

Kids’ surgeons get a lucky break by Irene Kim They look like something that might have been used to build RoboCop or the Six Million Dollar Man, but the E-Fix and E-Thotic are actually medical devices to fix kids’ broken elbows. A supracondylar humerus fracture is the most common fracture in preteen children, annually occurring […]

Leading Innovation at Pfizer How do you encourage innovation in a global pharmaceutical corporation with nearly 80,000 employees? That was the challenge Wendy Mishkin Mayer faced when she became vice president for worldwide innovation at Pfizer two years ago. The initiative she leads, Dare to Try, is aimed at improving the company’s operations and services […]

Turning Around Roper’s Scientific Imaging When Ben Wood became vice president of Scientific and Industrial Imaging at Roper Industries in 2002, the division was underperforming. Sales were in decline, manufacturing costs were too high, and the research and development cycle had stretched to nearly three years. Roper’s researchers wanted to “make great products and great […]

Making a mark in health care It’s a scene that unfolds every day in a hospital somewhere in the United States: A patient arrives in the emergency room, unable to speak English and pounding on his chest. The medical staff doesn’t know whether to treat him for chest pain or a bad case of indigestion. […]