The ribbon cutting for a revitalized park delighted children and mayor alike.

It was 1972. I had completed my freshman year at Emory in Atlanta. My father had passed away that September and I’d transferred to Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green to help with our family construction business, James N. Gray Co.

In October, I applied to Vanderbilt. I offer everlasting thanks to my mother for insisting I fill out that application in the fall of ’72. After being accepted to the College of Arts and Science, I transferred to Nashville and began to spend a lot of time on the road back and forth to my hometown of Glasgow, Ky., which lies just across the Kentucky line from Tennessee.

Gray’s favorite campus study spot.

But Vanderbilt provided a sanctuary and taught me a lot about discipline, persistence and determination.

I got some extraordinary instruction too … especially in an English composition course, where a full grade point was the penalty for any one (yes, just one!) grammatical error. That’s when I learned to write … and the difference between a colon and a semicolon, and how to identify split infinitives and dangling participles. I learned who Kate Turabian was, too, and about her legendary guidebook, A Manual for Writers.

The campus itself was like a private park. I discovered something remarkably inviting, uplifting and motivating about the walk leading to the library. I remember that walk down the hill, then into the building and to my favorite study hall, the Fugitive Poets room in the basement. The building itself, with its Gothic Revival architecture, represented a touchstone, an inspirational bricks-and-mortar dimension of Vanderbilt’s mission and purpose.

Philosophy classes taught by John Lachs and Charles Scott aided my grieving and deepened my curiosity for studying the puzzles in life, whether personal or business ones, or those I work on today: political and policy puzzles.

So, in shorthand, what did Vanderbilt give a kid from a small town in Kentucky?

It gave me what education at a great institution is supposed to do: the tools, discipline and fascination for lifelong learning and—I like to think—a little courage as well.

When I made other transitions later in life—through financial adversity in a family business, through coming out and into public service, first as vice mayor of the city of Lexington and later as mayor—I would often go back to papers I wrote at Vanderbilt, papers I kept in a file at my office, and just read those papers for meaning and for value and encouragement that I needed at the time.

Lexington skyline.

Years after I graduated, I was happy when my niece, Rebekah Hinson Gray, BA’03, chose Vanderbilt and studied art history, the same major her grandmother—my late mother, Lois Howard Gray, MA’42—studied almost 70 years ago at Peabody. That niece has joined our family business today. Rebekah got the full four years in at Vanderbilt and gained friends and relationships that will help her throughout life.

My college experience was different. But even though I didn’t gain the host of lifelong friendships others may in a Vanderbilt experience, I thrived in other ways. Vanderbilt offered a cloister for reflection at a time I needed it. It helped me build strength. It helped me build the fortitude and capacity to recognize that the human spirit triumphs during times of adversity—it doesn’t fail us.

That’s a big lesson. And Vanderbilt helped in a big way.

I didn’t finish the race. Forty hours into the Death Race and a mere five hours from the end, I quit. In my four years as a Vanderbilt athlete, I had never failed to make it to the finish line. I had faced disappointment, failed to meet goals, even finished last, but I had never simply stopped. Now that the haze of physical and mental exhaustion has worn off, I’m left to question what happened that Sunday morning and to somehow reconcile everything leading up to those last few moments.

The Spartan Death Race is a 48-hour endurance competition that takes place each year in Pittsfield, Vt. The organizers are notorious for keeping the race details secret until the last minute and challenging competitors with unexpected and extreme physical and mental feats. They boast that only a miniscule number of competitors complete the event. Its website is www.youmaydie.com.

I have always enjoyed pushing myself. I majored in economics in the College of Arts and Science while also running track and cross-country at Vanderbilt. I learned to balance the high-pressure demands of being an SEC athlete while thriving academically, challenged by interesting professors and subjects while competing as both an individual and team member. I now know how to defend my thoughts on a case (thanks, Professor Damon) as well as how to surge in the final lap (thanks, Coach Keith).

That mindset did not disappear upon graduating. So one day in June, I left work without explaining why I was disappearing for the weekend. Using precious vacation days to suffer would be seemingly illogical to my peers.

Tangle of Mind Games and Physical Pain

After a wood splitting exercise (bottom photo), Matena (No. 44) and her race teammate hauled logs up and down the mountain.

The Death Race began on a rainy Friday night in Pittsfield. I was one of 155 participants who filed into the town church for a race debriefing. No one knew what we were about to endure. There was no course map, no set distance and no defined finish line. Tasks were given as the race progressed and everything would soon become a tangle of mind games and physical pain. The possibilities of what might lie ahead were limitless and the anxiety of those in the Pittsfield church tangible; I found myself excited and eager for the race to begin.

After the debriefing, racers were divided into groups and given a circle of large rocks to lift. One clean lift was getting the rock up to your chest and lowering it to the ground. Once around the circle, or 13 clean lifts, was one lap. I was to complete 150 laps, repeating the lift hundreds and hundreds of times for nearly six hours.

The rocks were only the beginning. Sometime during the early morning hours, I was sent walking miles upstream in a cold river, pitch-black except for the headlamps of racers dotting the darkness like fireflies, and silent but for the rush of the current and the occasional splash of a racer losing his footing.

Pushing Through

Sunrise found me swimming seven laps across a freezing pond, carrying a lit candle around an open field between laps, silently praying that my body’s violent shivering wouldn’t extinguish the flame and force me to add a penalty lap.

After splitting a stack of wood, I was sent up a trail carrying a log so heavy I could barely hoist it onto my shoulder…only to carry it back down again after committing a Bible verse to memory. After other tasks, including an eight-hour hike carrying my full pack plus a small log, night set in again.

I was 24 hours into the race. Fatigue, both mental and physical, began to take its toll. A sudden storm rolled in. I faced another mountain hike, marked only by small orange flags hanging in the woods. I plodded along, focusing only on moving forward one step at a time. Then I reached the barbed wire. I remember shining my light ahead and seeing the barbs strung across the path for probably 400 meters. I remember sitting down to rest for a minute before having to maneuver through the spikes.

And then I don’t remember much. My friend and teammate for the race later told me that I stopped responding to him, barely speaking and only inching forward as he coaxed me under the wire. I was somewhere in the early stages of hypothermia. Crawling along the dark trail, face inches from pools of mud, I had no choice but to keep moving forward.

I eventually struggled to the top, and after some time warming up at the checkpoint, made it back to the base of the mountain just as the sun rose for the second time. I pressed onward, tasked with cutting down trees, moving more rocks and slowly trudging forward. Fewer than 50 racers, strewn across miles of trail and hours of competition, remained on the course.

Ending with Integrity

Then late Sunday morning, I stopped. I had been competing for over 40 straight hours and was in 12th place. The race officials told me I had more than 15 hours left of the competition. I knew I’d have to sleep before continuing for that long. Monday’s workday loomed in front of me. Enough. I shared a congratulatory hug with my teammate and we headed home, confident in our decision and proud of our accomplishment. It was not the finish, but for us it was the end.

I got the call that night.

Competitors and organizers talk about the 2011 Death Race experience.

The race had ended at 45 hours wherever you were on the course, and those remaining 35 racers were told they finished. The finish line was yet another trick.

I was devastated, and for weeks wished I had slept in the rest tent for five hours, essentially tricking the race directors instead of letting them trick me. But that’s not the philosophy with which I toed the start line when I wore a gold V on my chest. Nor would it represent the values instilled in me over my Vanderbilt years, during the Arts and Science classes that were my academic barbed wire, when I didn’t think I would pass or the easy way out seemed tempting.

I didn’t finish the Death Race, but I competed with integrity for 40 hours and pushed my body harder than I thought possible, and I can say that with my head held high.

Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you’ve resisted the urge to throw yet another alumni mailing directly into the nearest trash or recycling bin. I don’t blame you. Reading that opening sentence was the longest either of us has ever gone without Vanderbilt asking for money. How many more student centers and nude marble carvings of Jay Cutler can the campus possibly hold?

I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t given Vanderbilt a dime post-graduation. Sure, they’ve asked for money, even angrily at times. I was mailed a picture of Cornelius Vanderbilt holding a chainsaw with the words “See you at Homecoming” scrawled across the top in pheasant blood. But for whatever reason (crippling student loan debt), I still haven’t managed to send that generous check the university so rightfully deserves. I feel bad about it. Truth is, my Vanderbilt education has served me well. It’s helped me navigate the viper’s nest of show business, and ultimately, land a job writing for Conan O’Brien (no relation).

How I got to Conan is another story in itself, and I won’t bore you with the details. No, on second thought, I will. They want this article to be around 1,000 words. I need filler. Sorry.

Above left: Comic geniuses (i.e., writers) toil over the script for that day’s Conan show. Matt O’Brien is far right. Host Conan O’Brien is at far left. Above right: For some reason, Conan O’Brien (right) loves punching Matt O’Brien (no relation. No, really.).

Shortly after graduating from the College of Arts and Science in 2001 with a degree that combined communication studies and computer science (plug), I moved to New York City to pursue comedy. Through a bit of luck and timing, I was hired as an entry-level assistant at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The position was the bottom rung on the ladder, the pay was Falkland Islands bad (plug), but it was a chance to see how smart, irreverent comedy was distilled from the inside. I was a doe-eyed fool watching Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell perform and write comedy better than I could ever hope to. It was equally intimidating and inspiring.

For five years, I churned slowly in New York and developed a sense of what it took to be a writer—lofty intelligence and an untreated serotonin deficiency. Like every other comedian in the city, I was looking for a break. Then through happenstance I met Robert Smigel, the godfather of comedy writing (Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O’Brien). Maybe he was drunk, maybe his Jewish guilt was inflamed, or maybe he didn’t understand the question, but when I asked if I could pitch him some jokes for his popular character Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, he said yes. Even better, he ended up using some of my jokes on television. It was a small break, but a break nonetheless, and it would continue to grow.

I left The Daily Show and was hired to write on several short-lived shows you’ve never heard of. Some jobs would last six months, others six hours. All that really mattered was gaining experience as a writer and getting laid (not true). Then in late 2007, a much bigger break came my way. Conan.

I had watched Late Night with Conan O’Brien almost every night of my life since ninth grade. It was a sad reflection of my social life, and my parents agreed. I carried the habit to college, and in my Lupton Hall freshman dorm room, above my desk, sat a poster of Conan. I idolized the guy. His show had set the pace for an entire generation of comedy writers. Working deep in the Roker-haunted bowels of 30 Rockefeller Plaza and writing for Conan—it just doesn’t get more exciting than that.

I’ve been writing for Conan for four years now and still consider it a privilege. I slink into work, sift through the news, whittle out a funny idea (add fart sounds to Karzai interview), and sometimes it’s broadcast on national television 12 hours later. Letters pour in expressing outrage over the controversial Karzai fart interview. My life is threatened. Then Charlie Sheen buys and snorts the ashes of Bea Arthur, and everyone moves on. Still, it’s a lot of fun. Getting paid to do it is surreal.

In 2009, I moved with Conan to Los Angeles when he took over The Tonight Show. Yes, that Tonight Show, the Mount Olympus of comedy. An untouchable institution. Who better to take the reins than Conan, one of the smartest and acclaimed funnymen of our time? As a writer, The Tonight Show was the job that would never go away.

Then it did. Jay Leno’s primetime show dragged in the ratings, NBC executives retreated to the fetal position, and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien lasted only nine months. We all lost our jobs.

Luckily, the whole ordeal yielded new opportunities. I toured the country with Conan for two months on his Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television tour. Thirty-three cities in 60 days. My job was to write local jokes at each stop, usually about an ugly statue or the local stripper who crushes beer cans between her breasts (plug). Then TBS gave Conan a new show and we got our jobs back. Life returned to normal. End of scene.

Finally comes the part of the article where I shoehorn in specific examples of how a Vanderbilt education played an instrumental part in my success. It did. The most important skill for any comedian or comedy writer is a vast frame of reference, and the only way to get it is through a thorough and well-rounded education. I got that in the College of Arts and Science. Turns out liberal arts, the disheveled, right-brained uncle of curriculum theory, holds its weight outside the shadow of Cornelius. The majority of classes I dismissed as teaching me “crap I’ll never use,” have turned out to be an exceptionally valuable asset.

When I need to write a joke about gully erosion (Geology 100) or Plessy vs. Ferguson (Communication Studies 222) on the same day, I’ll be ready. Thanks Vandy, check’s in the mail.

I live in Sussex, England, though most of my work takes me to poorer parts of the world in Africa, Asia or Latin America. The College of Arts and Science, from which I graduated almost 40 years ago, often seems a long way away. But when I learned last year of the death of Chancellor Alexander Heard, I began to reflect on the connections between my years at Vanderbilt and my work in international development today.

The late ’60s and early ’70s were turbulent times on American campuses, and Vanderbilt was no different. In April 1968 during my freshman year, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis. Within hours, National Guard troops rolled down West End Avenue to set up camp in Centennial Park. With other Vanderbilt students, I joined Fisk University students in a peaceful vigil in downtown Nashville. In June, Robert Kennedy was assassinated, 74 days after he had spoken to a packed Memorial Gym.

Robert Kennedy at Vanderbilt (1968)

These were life-changing events, which caused me to rethink my studies. The College of Arts and Science offered an interdisciplinary major, and with the encouragement of my advisers, I linked courses in philosophy, political science and sociology under a broad theme of the philosophy and politics of social change. I had vague thoughts that this would prepare me to work on issues of social justice, poverty and human rights. I was taught by wonderful professors with whom I stayed in touch after graduation, including John Compton, Lester Salamon and John McCarthy.

In 1970, at the end of my junior year, I was elected student body president. The U.S. invaded Cambodia, and campuses across the country, including Vanderbilt, erupted in protest. Students were killed at Kent State, Jackson State and in Lawrence, Kansas. Chancellor Heard was recruited by other university presidents to lead an independent mission to the White House to sensitize the Oval Office on campus unrest. The chancellor asked me along as his special assistant.

Chancellor Heard and Gaventa in Washington, D.C. (1970). Their offices were in the Executive Office Building near the White House.

That summer in Washington was quite an education. One of the best parts was working closely with the chancellor and learning from his incredible work discipline, attention to detail, and belief in the importance of deliberation and listening to different points of view before reaching decisions. He was a man of greatness, with an unwavering commitment to fairness and tolerance, a man who was willing to take stands based on what he believed was best for the university, nation and world. I was privileged to witness his courage and leadership firsthand.

But working in the White House during what was later known as the Watergate era also exposed me to the uses and abuses of power. I returned to campus a bit disillusioned with what I had seen. I researched international scholarships, which led to a Rhodes scholarship. Before I left for England, I was elected a young alumni trustee on the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust. I spent the summer with the Student Health Coalition, which worked with poor communities in rural Tennessee and Appalachia. I thought that maybe grass-roots change, rather than Washington politics, was where the hope might be for the future—well, for my future at least.

Little did I know how these various steps would later come together. Residents of a poor East Tennessee mining community whose lives and land had been adversely affected by a British-owned mining company asked me if I could find the London owners of the company and “tell them how bad things were.” I tried to respond to that request—a process which led to a documentary on their situation, aired nationally in Britain, as well as to my Ph.D. thesis. Later the thesis became a book, Power and Powerlessness in an Appalachian Valley. It continues to be a text for students worldwide and has sold over 35,000 copies. This wouldn’t have happened without the Vanderbilt connections.

In the midst of this work, I discovered the Highlander Research and Education Center, a small nonprofit in East Tennessee. Since the 1930s, it had served as a training ground for social action and played a key role in the civil rights movement. When I finished my degree, I was asked to start a research program there. For almost the next 20 years, my wife (whom I met in Oxford) and I worked to link our research to grass-roots social action on poverty, environmental and social justice issues across Appalachia and the rural South.

While at Highlander, I was awarded one of the first MacArthur Prize Fellowships, which provided five years of much-needed funding. The fellowship allowed my family and me to travel to Scandinavia, India, Nicaragua and other countries to study how grass-roots, participatory approaches were used to tackle social issues and what we could learn for rural America.

Campus protest over Heard’s role as an independent adviser to President Nixon (1970)

I have been with the Institute of Development Studies, based at the University of Sussex, since 1989, first as a visiting fellow and now as a professor. My work takes me to many countries, still linking research and writing to action, training and consulting with nonprofit/non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and teaching graduate students, many of whom are community development workers and social activists internationally.

In 2006 I was invited to become chair of the board of Oxfam GB, Britain’s largest overseas NGO, which provides humanitarian relief, supports grass-roots development programs, and advocates on issues like climate change, poverty and social justice in more than 70 countries. When interviewed for this post, and asked about my previous board experience, I thought back to my years as a young Vanderbilt trustee, and all I had learned from that opportunity.

In my writing and teaching, I find myself still referring back to the work of the wonderfully stimulating professors who encouraged me to structure an interdisciplinary major on social change and who supported my career even when I had left campus. In leadership roles, I draw on my experiences with Chancellor Heard. He was not only a leader, but also a mentor and teacher, representing the best tradition of what a liberal arts education ought to be. 

On reflection, maybe the College of Arts and Science is not so far away from my life and work these days in Sussex.

I’m pretty sure I had never uttered the word “Guantanamo” before the summer of 2004. I had never even seen A Few Good Men, the movie famously set on the U.S. Navy’s base there. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base first crossed my mind in early 2002, when the U.S. began transferring suspected al-Qaida and Taliban members captured in the war in Afghanistan to the prison located there. I saw photographs of shackled men in orange jumpsuits being corralled into a makeshift prison. News reports said human rights organizations were concerned about how these men were being treated and whether the U.S. was holding them illegally. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the men were responsible for September 11 and Guantanamo was the best place to hold and question them.

I didn’t give it much thought and wasn’t terribly concerned about these men. The country was at war, and capturing and holding prisoners of war has always been part of battle. And I happened to live in lower Manhattan, not far from the World Trade Center. September 11 had taken an emotional toll on me and my neighbors. To say the least, the well-being of men allegedly responsible for that tragedy was not front of mind.

Plus I was busy and not exactly a human rights lawyer. At that time—and for the last 15 years—I’ve been a corporate litigator in New York, defending payment card networks, investment advisors, private equity firms and other companies in large antitrust and securities lawsuits. I really enjoy what I do. I am lucky to have great clients. I get to work with smart people on complicated cases involving cutting-edge legal and economic issues. I love to read, write and speak in front of people, and one of my favorite challenges is to explain complicated issues in simple terms. In other words, I put the skills I developed as an English and history major in the College of Arts and Science to work every single day. The hours can be long and the work stressful, but I definitely found the right job for me.

I’ve also combined my paid legal work with pro bono service, which is hugely important to me. Since earning my law degree, I’ve never been without a pro bono case and have handled matters ranging from criminal appeals to First Amendment cases. I guess that is why, in July 2004, I got what I now refer to as the Guantanamo call. Life hasn’t been the same since.

On June 28, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Rasul v. Bush, holding that men imprisoned at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had a right under U.S. law to challenge their detention through a habeas corpus action in federal court. Habeas corpus—Latin for “you shall have the body”—is a legal tool dating back to at least the 12th century and enables a prisoner to petition for a writ commanding his jailer to deliver him to court and defend the legal and factual basis for his detention. If the jailer’s explanation is inadequate, the court must order the prisoner released. Habeas has always been part of U.S. law and is protected by the Constitution.

After the Rasul decision, my firm, along with many other large law firms in New York, D.C. and elsewhere, agreed to represent Guantanamo prisoners in their habeas challenges. The partner in charge of pro bono work at my firm called to ask if I would lend a hand. After some hesitation, I said yes. A few hours later, a file landed on my desk and I was anointed lead counsel to three French citizens who had been held in Guantanamo since early 2002.

All three are now home in France. I have since represented four more men—three Yemenis and one Libyan—with two cases still active today. After five and a half years, thousands of work hours, dozens of court filings, 15-plus visits to Guantanamo, a trip to Yemen, and upwards of 50 trips to D.C., I think “lending a hand” may have understated my assignment. But I don’t regret a minute of it. No other professional experience has been as challenging, and I’ve grown enormously as a person and lawyer because of it.

I’m often asked by friends and colleagues of all political stripes why I said yes when I got the Guantanamo call. Some assume that, as a confirmed Democrat, it must have been a shot at the Bush administration. But in all honesty, I wasn’t motivated by politics. In fact, I supported the decisions to enter both Afghanistan and Iraq. For me, it boiled down to first principles. In my view, this nation’s greatest gift to the world is its founding commitment to due process and the rule of law. Day to day, most of us take those principles for granted. We never doubt if we are arrested and put in prison, we can challenge that imprisonment before an impartial judge and jury. We will have our day in court.

But as I learned from studying the U.S. civil rights movement at Vanderbilt, due process, the rule of law and other constitutional principles are always at risk of erosion at the margin—when they are invoked by the poor, the disenfranchised or the despised. If those principles are compromised in the most controversial of cases, they are at risk of dilution for all of us.

For many reasons, the rule of law has been in serious jeopardy in Guantanamo. It’s now well known that not everyone detained at the base was a member of al-Qaida or the Taliban. The U.S. government has now admitted that errors were made, safeguards against mistaken detention were not implemented, and men who played no role in hostilities toward the U.S. ended up in Guantanamo. On the other hand, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others who have claimed credit for September 11 are also there. This is why we need a fair process—due process—to determine who has or has not been lawfully detained. This is when we most need lawyers—particularly at large, well-funded law firms—to step in to defend the rule of law in the most controversial of cases.

And this is why I said yes to Guantanamo.

I feel like I work in the trauma unit. Not in a hospital as you might imagine, but at the heart of the global financial crisis. And for some weird reason I really enjoy it.

At Vanderbilt I shifted from premed to economics as I concluded that passing out at the sight of blood might not be good in a medical career. Now I tie tourniquets to stem the hemorrhaging of capital in the credit markets.

I am a managing director at BlackRock Inc., one of the world’s largest publicly traded investment management firms, responsible for overseeing more than $1.3 trillion of assets. My division is in BlackRock Solutions, where I have responsibility for the financial markets advisory business started in 2008 when I joined the firm. As the name implies, we provide solutions and services to clients with complex financial risk situations. We assess and value their investment portfolios, assist them in developing strategies to deal with financial challenges, and can even provide asset disposition services.

Right now, lots of organizations are having trouble making sense of what their credit portfolios are worth and if they are financially solid. That’s when they call someone like us. We have been very busy.

My career has spanned more than 30 years at major investment banks. I moved to New York City a week after graduation from the College of Arts and Science in 1976. My first job was focused on what was very new at the time—packaging mortgages for sale as bonds. Mortgage-backed securities boomed and created a new market called “securitization.” I was an early entrant to that market and due to my longevity, could be considered a founding father. Securitization grew to package almost every type of credit risk imaginable.

What went wrong? Securitization and its cousin, credit derivatives, were the means by which overly aggressive credit dominated the financial landscape. Think of securitization as a conduit, a means of spreading credit exposure. The easy credit and permissive standards prevailing after 2005 became a big chocolate malt that everyone enjoyed through one big straw. Once tainted, all were infected. I mean everybody. Everywhere.

When Bear Stearns, then the fifth-largest U.S. investment bank, was failing last year, we were called in to advise the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (the Fed) during the crucial Thursday-through-Sunday-night period in mid-March. After Bear merged with JP Morgan Chase, BlackRock took over management of $30 billion of toxic mortgage and other exposures on behalf of the Fed.

By summer 2008, the U.S. government was concerned about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and we were hired to assess whether they had adequate capital. They didn’t. Those two behemoths of the global capital markets were put into conservatorship. That was when the crisis metastasized. If they failed, wouldn’t every financial institution be at risk? If the government had not stepped in, what would have happened?

We got an answer on September 15, 2008, when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. On that fateful weekend, I was in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, visiting with clients. When word of Lehman’s failure spread on Sunday night, I flew back to New York after being on the ground less than 24 hours. Concern over counterparty exposure erupted globally and without prejudice. No financial institution was deemed sound.

Monday night, I joined my team at the corporate headquarters of AIG in lower Manhattan. For weeks, we had been analyzing their complex financial situation. An effort to privately recapitalize the company failed that evening. Senior AIG management adjourned with representatives of the N.Y. State Insurance Commissioner to the Fed’s offices. By morning AIG had $85 billion in credit from the Fed, and its life as a public, independent company was no more. In December the Fed and AIG had BlackRock assume management of nearly $100 billion face value of cash and derivative instruments held by AIG, removing them from the company’s balance sheet in an effort to “derisk” the company and stabilize its ratings.

Hard to believe, but BlackRock has analyzed and valued over $4 trillion of assets since the summer of 2007. Our work has spread from the U.S. to other countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium. We have been entrusted with management and disposition responsibility on more than $170 billion (face value) of exposures since we started—an accomplishment of which our whole team is quite proud.

My liberal arts degree has served me well throughout my career, and particularly during this crisis. Problem solving, communication and the ability to navigate cultural differences all are key life skills enhanced by my general education at the College of Arts and Science.

What have I learned? I have seen a lot of scared people and how they behave. All told, panic brings out the best and worst in people, although I have seen more good than bad with people trying to do the right thing. I have been particularly impressed by the tireless and dedicated commitment of financial regulators around the world to step in when needed and do whatever it takes.

Markets and the economy are driven by the psychology of its participants—I learned that at Vanderbilt. We have seen giddiness over market highs, accompanied by wild speculative behavior, replaced by extreme caution and a very low interest in risk taking. Markets and the economy are driven by momentum, and right now, the momentum is universally negative. That will take some time to reverse.

In an effort to stabilize the economy, government funding has effectively replaced the private capital markets. The nexus of financial power and control has shifted to the political realm, away from Wall Street and other money centers around the world. The implications of this shift will be far-reaching into the next generation and possibly beyond.

I am confident that there will be growth, opportunities and new products for that next generation. Just as my first job at Lehman Brothers was in an emerging market, my children and the next generation of Vanderbilt students will work in new fields with new challenges and opportunities. I don’t know what the future will hold for them, but I do know that the College of Arts and Science is preparing them for it. Whether the students study economics, political science, Spanish, math or interdisciplinary studies, they will have the tools, the curiosity and the ability to cope with—no, to manage—the world’s latest financial crisis and whatever crisis comes up.

I had almost forgotten Furman Hall. Almost. And I had almost forgotten the painful experience of earning a D in Econ 100 in that very building. As a Vanderbilt freshman 26 years ago, I hated Furman Hall. Yet there I was, walking past Furman to go speak to undergraduates about my career since graduation.

As a student, I was the poster child for mediocrity. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life, but it didn’t matter much at the time. As I saw it, my poor grade point average would likely prevent me from doing it anyway. 

One thing I was good at was daydreaming—I had always been a creative person. I searched out creative outlets on campus such as WRVU, where I hosted a radio show for a few semesters. I was also a hopeless car enthusiast. Much of my creative output appeared as sketches of cars on classroom desks or in the margins of my Econ notebook.

As I progressed through the College of Arts and Science, I figured out the whole college thing. My grades improved, and I graduated with a major in psychology and a minor in business administration. I felt that a good, well-rounded liberal arts degree from Vanderbilt might open doors my otherwise lackluster GPA could not. I moved to Boston where I landed an entry-level position in a mutual funds company. I loved Boston, but this was not a step toward a satisfying career.

Still, I could afford to buy a few things. One of my first purchases was a drafting table so that I could pursue sketching. That was when I finally figured out what I wanted to do … and it had nothing to do with mutual funds. 

I wanted to be a car designer. It took me six months to assemble a portfolio of original automotive designs to send to Detroit’s College for Creative Studies (CCS), one of the world’s premier industrial design schools. To my surprise, I was accepted.

Since I had never taken an art class, CCS was a unique experience for me. It was an absolute pressure cooker. My freshman class had 75 students who would compete for 20 transportation design positions available for sophomore year. Eventually, only six got jobs with automobile manufacturers. 

After my second year, I was hired as a design intern with ASC Inc., the industry leader in convertible top and sunroof design and noted builder of specialty vehicles and concept cars. There I was exposed to manufacturing techniques and experienced how a real design studio worked. Combined with my Vanderbilt degree, this gave me a critical advantage over my classmates as we entered our third year, when auto manufacturers begin to scout the latest wave of car designers.

In 1992 Chrysler was the hottest design studio in the industry. The automaker had introduced a series of fantastic concept cars beginning with the Dodge Viper, and the production lineup on the horizon was incredibly fresh. I was fortunate to be picked up by Chrysler as a summer intern. Because I already had a bachelor’s from Vanderbilt, I was offered a full-time position at the end of the internship. I accepted it and worked with CCS to complete my design degree at night.

I was now competing with some of the finest automotive designers in the world—and the competition was stiff. All designers want their designs to be chosen for production, but many spend entire careers designing little more than door handles or wheels. In late 1993, I worked on my first production car, the 1998 Dodge Intrepid. I also worked on the Dodge Intrepid ESX concept vehicle (car talk for prototype). The ESX was a diesel-electric hybrid developed but never produced in conjunction with the government-sponsored Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. It was engineered to deliver fuel economy of 80 miles per gallon. 

In 1997 I became lead designer for the 2002 Jeep Liberty. A year later, I received the Automotive Hall of Fame’s prestigious Young Leadership and Excellence Award. During this time I was promoted to manager, and later, chief of Chrysler’s Advanced Product Design Studio, the birthplace of all Chrysler’s future projects. Two notable initiatives to come out of our studio were the rear-wheel drive Chrysler 300C and the industry’s first minivan Sto-N-Go seating system. I loved working at Chrysler, but by 2003, I felt at odds with the company’s design direction. General Motors offered me a position as director of advanced design, so in January 2004, I joined GM.

The size of General Motors and its global product range were remarkable. I was immediately thrown into the deep end and tasked with designing the GM Sequel, a concept vehicle powered by fuel cells. Fuel-cell vehicles are essentially electric cars that use hydrogen to create electricity for propulsion. The project was a success and became the first vehicle to demonstrate a driving range of 300 miles with zero emissions. Our studio was also charged with bringing the Camaro back to life. As a car enthusiast, I consider developing the new Camaro one of the highlights of my career. (Fellow Vanderbilt graduate Mark Reuss, BE’86, also worked on the Camaro project.)

Proposed production version, Chevrolet Volt, 2011

Three years ago, I began design on what could very well be one of the most important vehicles in General Motors’ history, the Chevrolet Volt. Unveiled at the North American International Auto Show in January 2007, the Volt concept was the hit of the event. The Volt has a sports car stance and a groundbreaking electric powertrain, which allows drivers to travel up to 40 miles on a single electric charge. If driven beyond 40 miles, the Volt also has a small onboard gas engine that continually generates electricity and extends the range by several hundred miles. The Volt is to go on sale in late 2010.

Walking around the Vanderbilt campus recently gave me time to reflect upon the years since graduation. My Vanderbilt degree provided opportunities that I could not have imagined as an undergrad—it opened doors, made me stand out from the crowd, and gave me the tools to compete in design school and corporate America. I use it when I manage a team of designers and engineers, oversee budgets and integrate scientific principles in my designs. My background in psychology helps me understand why consumers love their cars—and how to incorporate that knowledge into designing cars they’ll love. I know now that my liberal arts education wasn’t about a GPA.

Now I even like Furman Hall.

My first year out of the College of Arts and Science was an exciting, amazing and scary time in my life. It was 2000–2001. My personal play-by-play: First, with the NASDAQ at 5,000 and headed to 10,000, I moved back home to the Bay Area with the hope of joining an Internet company and becoming a participant in the “Technology Revolution.” There I joined a 20-person online payment start-up that—we thought—was destined to revolutionize commerce (this company was not PayPal). I began dating my now husband, Bryan Kelly, BA’00. The NASDAQ dropped below 2,000, my start-up cratered, and I found myself jobless. I was advised to seek employment with a real company. (I took this to mean a company entirely unrelated to the Internet.) I shied away from the advice and joined another young Internet company, one named Google.

When I joined Google as employee no. 230 in early 2001, the online search engine had great technology and highly talented people, but a nascent business strategy. Google had just launched AdWords, its advertising program that pairs an advertiser’s online ad next to appropriate search results, with me as the second employee in AdWords’ Online Sales and Operations (OSO) division. Initially my job entailed supporting and growing the program and advertiser base. Success meant trying, failing, learning, iterating, failing again and trying again. Oscar Wilde said, “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” By that standard I was gaining experience rapidly, and I loved it. The lack of benchmarking and guideposts in Google’s new business was daunting, but I thrived in that environment. I found that I loved working with and leading others, and creating business strategies and practices. 

I was a fine arts major in the College of Arts and Science—not the first major most people think of when they think of Google—and it provided a great foundation for me. I have always been passionate about art, both creating my own work and appreciating the work of others. My liberal arts studies taught me how to think, analyze problems, brainstorm about solutions and articulate a perspective. They also taught me the importance of working hard to achieve good results. Finally, my experience as an art major rewarded and reinforced my instinct to pursue what I am passionate about.

The Vanderbilt campus, as seen from Google Earth™ mapping service. Image U.S. Geological Survey © 2008 Goggle

 Great professors such as Leonard Folgarait and Helmut Smith created a wonderful environment in which I learned to overlay attention to detail and an analytical approach to my natural creativity. Professor Folgarait brought a depth and vibrancy to his work and our conversations. Encouraging mental flexibility, he taught how art is usually the byproduct of several different influencing factors and often there is no right answer in determining the relative importance of these influences. 

Professor Smith demonstrated the importance of seeking out and being open to differing viewpoints and ideas. In one instance I recall he sought student critiques of his book, The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town. I remember how impressed I was with his receptiveness to our critiques. Professor Smith also introduced me to Google in spring 1999 when, on the lawn outside the library, he walked our class through a handout detailing how to use Google for primary research.’

The past seven years at Google have been amazing for both the company and me personally. Google has become the worldwide leader in online advertising, and we now have 19,000 employees, with more than 3,000 in the Online Sales and Operations division alone. I have been fortunate to grow with Google, each year taking on more responsibility and enjoying my job more with every new challenge. 

I am currently a director of OSO, heading Google’s online sales and operations for the Asia, Pacific and Latin America regions. I find immense gratification working with others to build what I believe is a truly great organization of innovative people, from whom I learn every day. 

Four key things keep me motivated. First, I’m passionate about Google’s mission—to organize the world’s information—and this makes me eager to help out any way possible. Second, I have had, and I continue to have, wonderful mentors and colleagues, from whom I have learned so much and with whom it is a joy to work. Third, I really believe that our AdWords product is a great solution for our advertiser customers. Finally, I realized from my first start-up experience that having lots of customers is a very good sign.

I travel internationally a lot, which has provided an amazing opportunity not merely to read about but actually to participate in globalization. The jet lag is tough, but the experience of working with smart, hard-working, creative people from different cultures and countries, all dedicated to a common goal, is a wonderful opportunity. Without a doubt, being at the right place at the right time has been a huge factor in my career thus far. As they say, “Timing has a lot to do with the success of a rain dance.” Along with the luck has come a lot of hard work and determination. Just as I learned to work hard as a Vanderbilt student, I have worked hard, in particular, to become a domain expert in online advertising, a very exciting space in today’s business world. I have also learned much from my colleagues about being an effective leader, and I work very hard at that, trying to help bring out the very best that our talented, creative team has to offer. My time at Vanderbilt was critical to the success I’ve been fortunate to achieve up to this point.

As daunting as our world’s challenges are today, I am optimistic about the future because I truly believe that the more people from different backgrounds around the world work together, and the more inter-connected our economies become, the more we will find common solutions for the benefit of all.

It’s been a long time since that day on the lawn in Professor Smith’s class. I never imagined I would be where I am today. Since then I have traveled around the world, worked with extraordinary colleagues, interviewed thousands of people, and learned to relish forging my own path. My ability to do these things was buttressed by the foundation that the College of Arts and Science and amazing professors and classmates helped me build. For that, and the opportunities that I have experienced since then, I’m feeling very lucky.

It’s 8:30 on an October morning on the trading floor in New York City. Fifteen people share a conference call to decide whether to announce a $1 billion bond deal for Brazil’s largest oil and gas company, Petrobras. The markets have been turbulent since July, but as I look at my computer screens, I see Asian and European stocks are “flashing green” (meaning stocks are up) and U.S. Treasuries are stable. I advise my Brazilian client to go forward with the launch…and fast. Three hours later, we have almost $3 billion in orders from investors—a major success! It’s exhilarating…I never imagined in college that I would work on Wall Street—in New York City—for almost 20 years!

With a major in history and a minor in English from Vanderbilt, I did not necessarily have the background one would expect for a career in finance. I was born in Brazil and lived there until the age of five, when my father got an offer to teach at the University of Texas and later at Vanderbilt. I grew up most of my life in Nashville. As my father was a professor of Portuguese and comparative literature at the university, it was a foregone conclusion that I would go to Vanderbilt (although there weren’t many Vandy-bound students from my public high school, Hillwood, at that time). 

I had always enjoyed history, and the quality of the professors in the department made it an easy choice for a major. The overall liberal arts discipline allowed me to take a variety of courses and explore options. During my four years at Vanderbilt, I studied history, English, philosophy, languages and economics. I learned from enthusiastic professors and developed the ability to reason and analyze. One of the best things I did at Vanderbilt to prepare for a financial career was to take several accounting and economics classes. I developed an interest in the building blocks of finance and gained confidence that I could succeed in a quantitative environment. 

Upon graduation, I took at job in undergraduate admissions at Vanderbilt, which was one of the best times of my life. I traveled the country extolling the virtues of a liberal arts education, meeting new people and making hundreds of presentations. I became skilled at speaking to large audiences, thinking quickly, and dealing with a variety of people. I then got an MBA at Duke University, and in 1988, received an offer to work with Citibank in New York, a dream job for someone who had always wanted to work in an international environment.

Although my three siblings and I grew up in Nashville as a fairly American family, having a Brazilian mother and Portuguese father always made me feel different. Our summer vacations were often spent visiting family in Brazil, Portugal or Germany, or hosting assorted relatives and friends from these far-off places. What I did not appreciate at the time was the benefit of speaking another language. By the time I got to college, I’d forgotten most of my Portuguese. At Vanderbilt, I took Portuguese classes to improve my language skills, which have come in very handy during the last 12 years working with Brazil and other Latin American countries.

During my first few years with the bank, Citibank afforded me the opportunity to live and work in the great financial cities in the world—New York, London and Hong Kong. After my father passed away, however, I wanted to be closer to home. In 1994, I returned from Hong Kong to work on the Brazil capital markets desk in New York. This experience opened a whole new world to me. 

Three years later, I was hired by Lehman Brothers to help run their Brazil bond efforts in New York before moving to Deutsche Bank for a similar role in 1999. I returned to Citi in 2003.

Traveling overnight to Brazil about 20–25 times a year is thrilling and exhausting, but it rarely gets old. The flight attendants on American Airlines certainly know me by name. 

I visit clients such as the Brazilian National Treasury in Brasilia, and large and small companies and banks throughout Brazil. My job is to help my clients raise funding in the international debt markets, some of them for the first time. It is very rewarding seeing the CEO and chief financial officer of a company raise money overseas so their company can grow and create jobs in Brazil. I have visited my clients’ steel plants, breweries and petrochemical facilities; seen their vast green oceans of sugar cane and soybean fields; and surveyed their eucalyptus tree plantations in neatly formed rows extending for miles. 

I have accompanied my clients to Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. to tell their stories to once-skeptical investors who now flock to invest in Brazilian companies. I can be in Geneva for a breakfast meeting, London for a lunch, and back in Manhattan with my wife Sheri and two daughters, Isabel and Caroline, by the end of the day. I speak English to investors, then turn around and clarify a point in Portuguese to my Brazilian clients, putting them at ease that their story is being told correctly. 

As an undergraduate at Vanderbilt, I didn’t know what my future held, but already the seeds had been sown for an international business career. My liberal arts curriculum taught me to research, to write clearly, to question and to problem solve—all skills I utilize every day on Wall Street. Outside the classroom, I was exposed to vibrant, intelligent students, each with an equal desire to succeed personally and professionally. The overall Vanderbilt experience prepared me, ultimately, to set off on a journey to fulfill a life-long ambition of helping Brazil, long known as “the country of the future.”