The Most Successful Wharton Grads
When people think of Wharton, two images often come to mind: blue bloods and bean counters. Just the name – Wharton – conveys a hallowed sense of establishment tradition and elite company. Harvard may graduate big names, but Wharton seemingly produces the behind-the-scenes players who really pull the strings.
If you buy into the image, Whartonites are quants exemplar, the doubting Thomases and icy technicians whose calm demeanors mask a deep competitive streak. Call them the Billy Beanes of B-school, who boil chaos down to uniform models of probability.
Of course, the popular image and reality are far apart according to Adam Grant, a Wharton professor and author of Give and Take. In a 2013 Linkedin essay, he set the record straight. Stodgy and corporate? Then why did entrepreneurship grown from 1.5% to nearly 8% from 2008-2013? A training ground for investment bankers? Don’t tell Wall Street: with the Goldmans and JP Morgans only garnering 13% of their 2013 class (half of what it was before the economic collapse). While nearly a third of graduates head to consulting, 11% are venturing into the tech sector. In other words, Wharton is as diverse as any business school, an equal to Harvard and Stanford.
With student interests evolving at Wharton, don’t expect them to gravitate to the traditional firms that have dominated American business in the past 50 years. That was the destiny of past Wharton grads, who dominated the leadership ranks of the banking, airlines, and publishing industries. As part of their recent series on top MBA programs, Business Insider recently compiled a list of the most successful Wharton grads. Who made the cut and how did they earn their fortune and fame? Check out the list below:
Laurence Tisch (’43): Former President of CBS
Edmund Pratt (’47): Former CEO of Pfizer
Yotaro Kobayashi (’58): Former CEO of Fuji Xerox
J.D. Power (’59): Founder of J.D. Power & Associates
Robert Crandall (’60): Former President and Chairman of American Airlines
Mortimer Zuckerman (’61): Owner of U.S. News & World Report and the New York Daily News
John Sculley (’63): Former President of Pepsi and Former CEO of Apple
Edward E. Crutchfield (’65): Former CEO of First Union Bank
Ron Perelman (’66): Billionaire Philanthropist
Lewis Platt (’66): Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Alfred R. Berkeley III (’68): Former President of NASDAQ
Peter Lynch (’68): Former Head of the Magellan Fund
Peter Nicholas (’68): Co-founder of Boston Scientific
Terry J. McGraw (’76): Former CEO of McGraw-Hill
Rakesh Gangwal (’79): Former CEO and Chairman of U.S. Airways
Laura Lang (’80): Former CEO of Time, Inc.
Bill DeLaney (’82): CEO of Sysco
Nassim Taleb (’83): Author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan
Ruth Porat (’87): CFO of Morgan Stanley
Fred Wilson (’87): Co-Founder of Union Square Ventures
Ann McLaughlin Korologos (’88): Former U.S. Labor Secretary and Former Chair of the Aspen Institute
Gerald Kleisterlee (’91): Chair of Vodafone and former CEO of Philips
William Wrigley Jr. III (’94): Chairman of Wrigley’s
Alfred Liggins III (’95): CEO of Radio One
Alex Gorsky (’96): CEO of Johnson & Johnson
Talk about some heavy hitters: Power, Crandall, Zuckerman, and Sculley all in a five year period! Alas, there were many distinguished Wharton alums who also deserve mention. Here is Poets&Quants’ list of other notable alumni:
William Trent Jr. (’32): Founder of the United Negro College Fund
Alfred P. West Jr. (’66): Founder of SEI Investments
Bob Castellini (’67): CEO of the Cincinnati Reds
Michael Milken (’70): Philanthropist and Former Head of Drexel Burnham Lambert ‘s High-Yield Department (Convicted of insider trading)
Ken Moelis (’71): Founder of CEO of Moelis & Company
Geoffrey T. Borsi (’71): Chairman and CEO of Roundtable Investment Partners LLC
Jeffrey Katz (’71): CEO of Sherwood Equities
Alain Levy (’72): Former CEO of PolyGram Records
David S. Pottruck (’72): Former CEO of Charles Schwab
Arthur D. Collins Jr. (’73): CEO of Medtronic
Anil Ambani (’83): Chairman of Anil Dhirubai Ambani Group
Ray Rajaratnam (’83): Former Head of the Galleon Group (Convicted of insider trading)
Ruthann Quindlen (’83): Director of Rovi Corporation
David Vise (’83): Pulitzer Prize Winning Business Journalist
Risa Lavizzo-Mourey (’86): President of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Ruth Porat (’87): CFO of Morgan Stanley
Suzanne Shank (’87): President and CEO of Siebert, Brandford & Shank
David Gilboa (’10) and Neil Blumenthal (’10): Co-founders of Warby Parker
Source: Business Insider
DON’T MISS: THE MOST SUCCESSFUL HARVARD B-SCHOOL GRADUATES or THE MOST SUCCESSFUL STANFORD B-SCHOOL GRADUATES
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