Winter 2014 Issue

In March 2014, Zephyr Teachout A.M., J.D. ’99 decided to join the race to become governor of New York, taking on fellow Democrat Andrew Cuomo, the incumbent. Teachout argued that Cuomo had moved away from traditional Democratic values; a central theme of her campaign was anti-government corruption, meaning that she supports public financing of elections and limits on big corporate donors. it’s an issue she also explores in her book Corruption in America, which was published in September. Here's an excerpt from the book:

If you were in New York’s Times Square on the first of December in 1994, you would have seen a massive image of the AIDS virus attacking a white blood cell on the Sony billboard. It was World AIDS Day, and the video installation, “Day Without Art,” was the work of Carl Tandatnick ’78. Via the screen, Tandatnick posed an eerie question: “When is Day Without AIDS?”

After spending childhood summers sweeping up sawdust and eating lunch atop overturned drywall buckets on her father’s construction sites, Marnie Oursler M.B.A. ’13 swore off the building business. Then the bullish real-estate market of the early 2000s caught her attention. A property sales agent at the time, she lived on peanut butter sandwiches for two years until she’d saved enough to buy a $250,000 fixer-upper in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Nine months later, in 2005, she flipped it and bought an empty lot to build a home with her $89,000 profit.

In today’s casual, open-plan office where teamwork and flexibility are prized, hierarchy is often seen as too rigid, a Mad Men-like relic as productive as a threemartini lunch. But according to research from Aaron Kay, associate professor of management at Fuqua, employees may actually perform better in more traditionally structured organizations.“Hierarchy can be full of injustice,” Kay says. “But for some tasks and goals, people are better able to do their jobs in that environment than a more egalitarian set-up.”

This summer, Fuqua’s long-anticipated M.M.S. program in partnership with Duke Kunshan University (DKU) welcomed its inaugural class of students. The thirty-seven students from eight countries will study together for ten months. They’ll spend the first three terms on the Durham campus with the 113 students enrolled in the M.M.S.: Foundations of Business program.

A few years ago, an irate father in Minnesota demanded to meet with the manager of his local Target store to discuss why his teenage daughter was getting coupons for maternity and baby products in the mail. The embarrassed manager apologized for the mix-up and called the father a few days later to make amends. This time, however, it was the father who apologized. It seems his daughter, he’d just found out, was indeed pregnant.How did Target know something so personal so soon? The retailer followed the daughter’s data trail, of course.

During last year’s G8 Summit hosted by the United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron and social-finance pioneer Sir Ronald Cohen invited leaders in the impact-investing community to join a task force seeking ways to boost economic investment for the common good. The first-ever Social Impact Investment Task Force brought together hundreds of leaders in finance, philanthropy, social policy, and government, including Fuqua professor Cathy Clark, to share best practices and develop recommendations.

While Will Evans was pursuing a master’s in Russian studies at Duke, he asked his professor, Carol Apollonio, why it seemed so few works of contemporary literature were translated into English. Apollonio’s response: “if you ever want to see a book translated, you have to do it yourself.”

Brooks Bell’s analytics firm, Brooks Bell Inc., which she founded in Raleigh in 2003, focuses on testing and optimization for companies such as Adobe, American Eagle Outfitters, American Express, AOL, and Brooks Brothers and is the first agency to focus exclusively on digital experimentation. Bell, who majored in psychology at Duke, also cofounded ThinkHouse and HQ Raleigh, two residential entrepreneurial communities in Raleigh that support the growing startup ecosystem. What do you love the most about the testing/optimization world?

Years before he started putting diabolical words in Francis Underwood’s mouth, screenwriter Bill Kennedy ’07 found himself at a crossroads familiar to many Duke undergraduates. It was the fall of 2005, and Kennedy had nabbed a final-round interview for an internship at Bear Stearns. But his heart wasn’t invested in banking. “I was lying to these people, telling them that I loved reading The Wall Street Journal,” Kennedy recalls.

For four decades now, William “Mack” O’Barr has taught an advertising course so popular students routinely are turned away. Now they’ll get another crack at it.The digital version of O’Barr’s “Advertising and Society” course debuted October 27 through the Coursera online education platform. He hopes word will reach alums who, years and perhaps even decades later, would still like to hear what he has to say on the topic.

Laken Tomlinson was angry when he learned his grandfather had died.Years earlier, when he was a kid, Tomlinson had called 9-1-1 to help his grandfather, Ivan Wilson, who had collapsed in the bathroom at his Chicago home. He recovered in a week. A few years later, while visiting family relatives in his native Jamaica, Wilson collapsed again; this time, he died.

This past summer, Sally Kornbluth became Duke’s provost, the university’s chief academic officer. A cell biologist, she was James B. Duke Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and vice dean for basic science in Duke’s medical school. You’re following a fifteen year provost, Peter Lange. What kind of example did he set for you as you started in the position?

In the foothills of eastern Crete, a short trek from the seaside village of Kavousi, there are the outlines of an early Greek city. Among the remnants are traces of a communal dining hall, an olive press facility, storerooms, a hearth temple, and clusters of small houses, all dating to at least the fifth century B.C. For most of the year, the site, called Azoria, sits dormant. But each summer, a diverse team of archaeologists—including a handful of Duke students and faculty members— are working to build a picture of how that ancient society functioned.

Some alumni stay connected to Duke from the moment they graduate. But others find a way to reconnect later in their lives. What happens when Duke moves back into your life and you become actively engaged? And how does Duke benefit?