From Pine Bluff to the Podium: Scott Barbour, MBA’89, Named Owen’s 2026 Commencement Speaker

By Maria Misbach

Lessons from an unlikely move 

Scott Barbour grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and didn’t travel much. In fact, he’d never been north of St. Louis. When his father’s career moved the family to Hanover, New Hampshire, Barbour was 12 years old and suddenly very far from everything familiar. His accent alone was enough to announce that he didn’t quite belong.

But the displacement turned out to be formative. A new environment. A different culture. A different circle of people. It set something in motion that would repeat itself throughout Barbour’s career: Detroit after college, Nashville for business school, St. Louis, western Ohio, Hong Kong, Columbus. Each move built on the last, and the confidence to take each step, he says, came from having navigated the first. 

This May, Barbour returns to Nashville as the featured speaker for the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management Class of 2026 Commencement ceremony. 

Building something that lasts 

Barbour is president and CEO of Advanced Drainage Systems (ADS), a publicly traded company and one of the largest manufacturers of water management infrastructure in North America. When he arrived at ADS in 2017, the company’s market capitalization was under $2 billion. Today, it exceeds $10 billion.  

That trajectory wasn’t handed to him. Barbour spent 27 years climbing the ranks at Emerson Electric before a challenging final chapter, one that culminated with a divestiture he had to execute himself. The experience proved to be defining, ultimately giving him the footing to step into the top role somewhere else. 

“I went through the experience of running into problems and then was able to execute the sale of a company,” Barbour said. “I had gained a lot of experience, and that gave me confidence to walk into the job of CEO.” 

What surprised him once he got there was how much there was to the company beneath the surface. ADS makes the products that manage stormwater — the infrastructure that keeps neighborhoods, streets, and basements from flooding during severe weather. But it’s also one of the two largest plastic recyclers in North America, processing roughly 500 million pounds of recycled plastic each year. Every shampoo bottle and detergent container that’s recycled could be used to make ADS pipe. 

“We’re quite proud of that,” Barbour beamed.  

A bespoke MBA education 

At Owen, where he earned his MBA in 1989, Barbour found something he hadn’t anticipated: exposure. He was an engineer who had spent his early career in rooms full of other engineers. Business school put him next to people from entirely different backgrounds, industries, and parts of the country. It would have taken him years, perhaps decades, to get that kind of breadth on his own. 

He also found the freedom to build toward something specific. At a time when most of his classmates were chasing consulting offers, Barbour wanted to take his engineering background into product and manufacturing. Owen let him shape a curriculum around that goal. He calls the experience a “bespoke product,” entirely unlike the high-volume, standardized manufacturing he went on to lead.  

Barbour draws on his Owen education daily. Interestingly, some of the most useful background he gained was in accounting. “Nothing gives me greater pleasure,” he said, “than getting into the details with my controller and holding my own.” 

What he remembers just as clearly is a moment from his final semester.  

Peter Veruki, then director of career planning and placement at Owen, approached Barbour and asked if he’d be willing to help tutor Cami, a first-year MBA student who was struggling. She had a science background, and economics and finance were, as Barbour put it, a foreign language to her, just as biology would have been for him. He worked with her throughout the semester. Cami finished strong. When they met afterward and she told him how her exams had gone, the two ended up in tears. Veruki, too.  

“That was a good day,” Barbour said. It’s the kind of moment, he’ll tell you, that Owen has a way of creating. Not just the education, but the expectation that you turn around and extend it.

Have a plan 

Barbour wasn’t immediately enthusiastic about accepting the invitation to speak at Commencement. He sat with the email for three or four days before responding. It was his daughter who convinced him. “She said, ‘People might actually be interested in what you have to say, as long as you don’t talk too long,'” he recalled.  

Barbour’s Commencement address will center on something he considers foundational: the importance of having a plan. 

“Coming out of business school is an inflection point in your career,” he said. “You have to have an idea of where you want to go, what you want to accomplish, and then execute against that plan.”  

He also intends to talk about what a plan looks like decades later, when original ambitions have either been met or outgrown, and new ones, shaped less by achievement and more by contribution, take their place. 

Owen’s Spring 2026 Commencement ceremony will be held on Friday, May 8 at the David Williams II Recreation and Wellness Center at Vanderbilt University.