Geographic location and real-world learning attracted Joe Cashia, then the CEO of dialysis provider National Renal Alliance, to Vanderbilt’s Executive MBA program. “I was entrenched in middle and senior management, and there was a lot of consolidation in my industry,” he says. “I wanted some day to run my own show but realized that my clinical background would limit my ability to do that, both from a practical and an objective standpoint.”

Joe credits his success in large part to his Owen experience. “It really gave me an overall view of business, and not so much the myopic day-to-day view that you get in on-the-job training,” he explains. “The EMBA experience helped me germinate the idea of how to start a company and what it would take to go through the funding and so forth. It really had a huge impact on me.”

For Joe, having access to real-world health care expertise through Owen’s faculty also has proven invaluable. “You can make the most of your Owen experience, and it can be the best thing in your life,” he says. “No one can sit here and say, ‘Well, I never had the opportunity.’ Not in Nashville, not in health care, not at Owen—not with everything that is available to you.”

In 2016, Joe took advantage of those opportunities and put the skills he honed at Vanderbilt to work again. He founded and became CEO of Ascend Health Care Services, which provides HIM products and documentation and revenue recovery services to health providers.

“I wanted some day to run my own show but realized that my clinical background would limit my ability to do that.”