Meet our 2017 Distinguished Alumni

This year’s Distinguished Alumni will be honored on April 21 at 6 p.m. Please join us at Celebration Weekend, April 20-23 to celebrate Olin’s Centennial and accomplished alumni.

The Distinguished Alumni Awards will be followed by a very special affair to commemorate our Centennial. Guests are invited inside Knight and Bauer Hall for a once-in-a-century Gala celebration. The Gala reception will include a band, food stations and cocktails, a photo booth, and a digital exhibit showcasing Olin’s rich history.

The evening will conclude with a celebratory fireworks display as we embark on Olin’s second century of excellence.

Bill Broderick, MBA ’76

Partner (Retired) / Edward Jones / St. Louis

Chair, Board of Trustees / Bridge Builder Mutual Funds / St. Louis

In a 30-year career at Edward Jones, it is safe to say there is very little that Bill Broderick hasn’t participated in building for the firm. Even after his retirement in 2012, Broderick still has a hand in the business as founder and chairman of a subadvised family of Edward Jones sponsored mutual funds, with assets totaling $32 billion.

And that isn’t the only way in which Broderick has continued to participate. Since 2013, he has served as CEO for Victory Wireline, a Texas-based company offering specialized equipment services to the oil and gas industry. After earning his MBA from Washington University, Broderick launched his career at Centerre Bank, which at that time, was one of the two largest banks in the St. Louis area. He made a name for himself over six years, as a commercial banking officer and leader in the credit department, supervising 25 analysts.

By 1982, he had left Centerre to begin his distinguished career in investment banking at Edward Jones, and within four years, he was invited to be a partner in the firm. And that is where he started putting his fingerprints all over it—from product design to marketing to leadership development and beyond.

He took responsibility for the firm’s Equity Syndicate and OTC Trading operations in 1992, supervising 12 traders and syndicate professionals and overseeing the distribution of all new equity IPOs and secondary offerings. In that role, he initiated a college recruiting and rotational development program designed to attract and develop Edward Jones leaders, which remains the firm’s primary program for developing home office managers. The program has benefitted many Washington University graduates.

As the Internet Age took hold in the mid-1990s, Broderick served as Edward Jones’s online marketing leader, a capacity in which he built a team, developed the firm’s online strategy, and launched the first edwardjones.com website—all in just 10 months.

Broderick’s five years of leadership in the Edward Jones investment advisory programs increased the firm’s advisory assets under management from $4 billion to $90 billion. That assignment led to the launch of Edward Jones Advisory Solutions—a fee-based investment management program that today accounts for about 40 percent of the firm’s earnings.

Broderick’s links to the St. Louis community are not only tied to his business dealings, however. He has served on numerous nonprofit boards, including the Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, Visitation Academy, the Missouri Friends of Injured Marines, and St. Andrew’s Resources for Seniors System.

Watch his presentation video.

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Lee Fixel, BSBA ’02

Partner / Tiger Global Management / New York City

At least one national magazine has credited Lee Fixel with having the Midas touch. As a partner in Tiger Global Management and head of its private equity business, Fixel’s hand in the high-tech startup world has yielded gold for his firm and companies around the world.

With billions in venture capital investments under his control, Fixel’s eye for hot startups has paid off handsomely. Many of the companies that have come under his gaze—and into his portfolio—are now so well known they scarcely require introduction, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Eventbrite, Spotify, and SurveyMonkey.

Others fit the category of hot startups that are edging their way into popular culture, such as online eyeglass retailer Warby Parker, online shaving retailer Harry’s, and Peloton, which uses technology to bring the experience of group exercise cycling into the home.

Forbes magazine has named Fixel four times to its annual “Midas List” as one of the best dealmakers in high tech and life sciences. In 2016, Fixel ranked No. 55 out of its 100 hot rainmakers. The magazine took special note of Fixel’s deep reach in India’s technology ecosystem, which included an investment in the country’s online e-commerce leader Flipkart, which at its high point was valued at a reported $15 billion.

Fixel’s foray into the Indian startup scene caused a stir as Tiger Global poured a reported $2 billion into companies involved in online classifieds, groceries, and the ride-hailing service Ola, according to a report in the Financial Times.

All that investment keeps Fixel busy on numerous corporate boards—including those of Flipkart, Ola, Eventbrite, and SurveyMonkey. But he has also remained an active member of the Washington University community. Fixel began a four-year term on the university’s board of trustees in mid-2015. He also serves as a member of Olin Business School’s National Council, charged with providing insights that will help the school achieve its vision to be recognized as one of the world’s best business schools.

Since 2009, Fixel has been active with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, first on the organization’s leadership council, then on its board of directors since 2013.

Before joining Tiger Global Management in 2006, Fixel worked at Alkeon Capital Management and completed the general course at the London School of Economics. He is a CFA charterholder, the highest distinction in the investment management profession.

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Dave Moellenhoff, EN ’92, EN ’92, MBA ’94

Cofounder / Salesforce.com / San Juan Capistrano

Fresh out of business school with a newly minted MBA from Washington University, Dave Moellenhoff was planning to move to Seattle to work—as a bartender.

“I probably would have been the most overqualified bartender around,” Moellenhoff told his high school alma mater, St. Louis University High. The point of the story was simple: stick to your dreams. Don’t settle. Instead of taking a safe, salaried position, Moellenhoff resolved to create a company, and he moved to California.

His first foray into entrepreneurship was Left Coast Software, a computer consulting firm he founded with two others. Soon he got the itch to create a product, which led to $100,000 in seed money from Marc Benioff, who was Oracle’s vice president at the time.

The result was Salesforce.com, now the market-leading softwareas-a-service (SaaS) provider, which Moellenhoff cofounded in 1998.

It was named by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s most innovative companies for five years in a row, and by Fortune as one of the best companies to work for eight years in a row. Salesforce.com enables companies to develop and run any application without investing in hardware and network infrastructure. It now has more than 19,000 employees and generates more than $8 billion in annual revenue.

After the company’s founding, Benioff became Salesforce’s CEO, and Moellenhoff became its Chief Technology Officer, responsible for designing and implementing the infrastructure to power an enterprise application on a web-based scale. Today, that infrastructure serves more than 4 billion page views a day to users around the world.

Moellenhoff also serves on the board of directors of Salesforce.com, which pioneered the 1:1:1 model of corporate philanthropy. The idea: corporations should give back to their communities by donating one percent of their products, equities, and employees’ time.

The foundation has facilitated more than 1.6 million volunteer hours by Salesforce.com employees, given free or heavily discounted licenses to more than 22,000 nonprofit customers, and provided more than $125 million in grants. The foundation has partnered with the San Francisco Unified School District and Oakland Unified School District to steer more than $15 million toward integrated science, technology, engineering, and math programs for all city schools.

Moellenhoff also serves as the governing board member for Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Orange County and the Inland Empire, which last year served 3,400 children.

Before founding Salesforce.com, Moellenhoff held positions at Metropolis Software, an early CRM innovator, and Clarify. He continues to operate Left Coast Software, advising and investing in early-stage technology startups. He serves on the boards of several technology companies, including Specright, Beautycounter, MileIQ, KaChing!, and Cloudwords.

Watch his presentation video.

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Rick L. Ryan, PhD, MBA ’94

Co-Founder and CEO / Apertus Pharmaceuticals / St. Louis

General Partner / Cultivation Capital Life Sciences / St. Louis

In the span of a few decades, Rick Ryan has moved from athlete to scientist to startup entrepreneur. Along the way, he has cultivated a focus on helping other entrepreneurs reach their dreams.

After a stellar pitching career in high school, college, and amateur baseball leagues, the Cincinnati Reds came knocking on his door with a draft offer. Instead, Ryan decided to become a free agent, taking part in initial discussions with the Chicago White Sox while completing his first year in graduate school—after which he had to fulfill an obligation to the Iowa National Guard.

At that point, Ryan never looked back, continuing his pursuit of a graduate degree. Today, he is cofounder and CEO of a St. Louis-based pharmaceutical company called Apertus. He is also a general partner in Cultivation Capital, a venture-funding firm that invests in early stage life sciences startups. Ryan has enjoyed the embrace of the life sciences community in St. Louis.

“There is a sharing of intellectual knowledge and networking of support in St. Louis that is extraordinary,” Ryan said in an interview with St. Louis’ EQ magazine. “It seems like there are only two degrees of separation from anyone in the St. Louis community.”

Ryan completed his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Illinois in 1976. From there, his career carried him to Armour Dial in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he focused his research on the biology of skin. Then an opportunity to join Monsanto brought him to St. Louis for the first time.

His 15-year career at Monsanto exposed him to a variety of management disciplines, including research, product development, commercial development, strategic planning, and international marketing. During that time, he attended Washington University, earning his MBA in 1994.

With his degree in hand, Ryan took on a new challenge, running the global commercial development unit for Embrex, a vaccine company based in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. St. Louis soon drew Ryan back with a position at Purina Mills in the late 1990s. His next move was to LINCO Research, a biomedical research firm, where he served as president. When Millipore acquired LINCO in 2006, Ryan stayed on, serving as vice president for the Drug Discovery and Development business unit.

After retiring from Millipore in 2011, Ryan didn’t stay out of the game for long. With a partner, he cofounded Apertus Pharmaceuticals in late 2011. The company manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) as well as tablets and capsules for oral dosage products. In 2013, he helped form the life sciences arm of Cultivation Capital. Currently, that team is raising its second fund to support entrepreneurs and local economic development.

Rick and his wife Sarah have lived in St. Louis for the past 35 years. They love to travel, and Sarah is a very active volunteer with the Assistants League of St. Louis. They have two children, Matt (wife Blithe and son Colum) and Amy (husband George). Their grandson Colum recently celebrated his first birthday.

Watch his presentation video.