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Building a Platform for Leadership

Former Army captain turned consulting entrepreneur invests in added value for his client base

Reggie Crenshaw
President & CEO of Volunteer Memphis

Vanderbilt Executive MBA - Global Immersion Track 2016

After ending his military career as an Army captain, Reggie Crenshaw opened his own consulting business. In the four years before he joined the Americas MBA program, he had helped clients with projects ranging from due diligence efforts for private equity acquisitions to customer experience assessments for a multinational health care firm.

Even as his business grew, Reggie believed that his previous experience and his degree in systems engineering would take him only so far. “I have always found success in hard work and focusing on the basics,” he says. “Still, I felt a void by not having my MBA.”

He chose Vanderbilt because of its proximity to his company’s offices in the Memphis area. He chose the Americas program over the more traditional EMBA experience, he says, because “it is enabling me to be seen by my client base as having proficiency with companies centered in the Americas. I am also able to bring to the table a unique experience not common among other consulting firms.”

That experience, he says, is distinctive. “It marries the best of graduate school and classmates together with top-notch professors and research tools” — and gives him the opportunity to work with “C-suite” colleagues from different backgrounds.

Reggie’s ultimate business objectives are to build a successful business he can leave as a legacy to his children, and to give back one day as a philanthropist. His experience with the AMBA program is helping him move forward on both fronts. “Vanderbilt,” he says, “is giving me a better platform to be a leader.”



Fun Fact: Reggie is a West Point graduate.

"I am able to bring to the table a unique experience not common among other consulting firms.”