The Most Successful Wharton Grads

Wharton

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:

J.D. Power III

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

Bill DeLaney

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