As a 22-year-old commercial property insurance broker for Marsh & McLennan in New York, Adam Lambert traveled the globe and met regularly with C-level executives of Fortune 500 companies. While he loved helping clients find solutions to meet their needs, he says, "I realized that what I was brokering was a cost to them." Instead, he wanted to create value.

So Adam, who earned his BBA from the University of Michigan, decided to go back to business school, seeking the skills to land a position in the finance industry and, ultimately, launch his own business.

On his visit to Vanderbilt, he knocked randomly on a professor's door, hoping for a chance "to discuss some of my business ideas and learn whether I could work on them here." The professor who answered Adam's knock, Germain Böer, dropped everything to talk for half an hour. "At that moment," Adam says, "I knew Owen was the right place. Professors make time for you and take an active interest in your education."

With help from what he calls a "powerful" alumni network, Adam secured an internship, and later a full-time position, with Goldman Sachs in Philadelphia. " I knew what I wanted to do," he says, "and Owen helped me figure out how to do it."

Fun Fact: Andrew is an Eagle Scout and a scratch golfer.