There's no doubt that aspects of the United States' health care system are ailing. As the president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) since 2003,  Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, WG'86, applies principles she has learned from her training in business, medicine, and public policy to guide strategic investments that redesign systems and improve the health and health care of all Americans.

Rosalind Copisarow, WG'88, G'88, had begun to see her work as invisible. Most of her waking hours were spent in front of a computer screen churning out cash-flow projections on deals financing the extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea. … Today, at 47, Copisarow is Senior Vice President, International Operations, Europe, Asia & Middle East for ACCION International and a world leader in the microfinance industry.

Iqbal Quadir, G'83, WG'87, was working for an investment banking firm in New York City when an "a-ha!" moment hit him … one that led to an amazing micro-lending partnership that eventually would bring 200,000 phones to Quadir’s native Bangladeshi villages through GrameenPhone, serving 80 million people with an average of 400 people using each of those phones.

While many gadgets have inventors, the DVD had a father. Warren Lieberfarb, W'65, is credited with the vision, persuasiveness, and persistence that took the DVD from an idea—"a high-quality digital movie on a CD"—to the fastest consumer electronic product adoption ever.

More than 30 years ago, philanthropist, financier and Wharton School alumnus Michael Milken, WG'70, began applying the innovations he developed during his studies at Wharton to revolutionize modern capital markets, bringing new financing strategies to fund companies. The thousands of companies he financed created millions of jobs, and the financing markets continue to bear his imprint.

Once upon a time, market research was a fairly straightforward endeavor: questions were asked, answers tabulated and then reported. The Internet has changed all that. Today's research-hungry corporations want instant answers, and a slew of online upstarts are happy to promise those answers—for less money. No one knows this better than J.D. "Dave" Power, WG'59, known as the customer satisfaction guru by the business press.

China is renowned for its ancient culture and its thousands of years of philosophical riches. The country's economy, however, is still a gangly adolescent, according to David Yi Li, WG'92, the chairman and country head of UBS China. Li's own journey, from professional soccer player to his current role as head of the China division of one of the world's largest investment banks, in many ways reflects his country's economic voyage.

Josh Resnick, WG'93, is the president and co-founder of Los Angeles-based Pandemic Studios, one of the largest, most successful independent companies within the $30 billion game market. The entrepreneur spent most of his life within walking distance of the Pacific and situated Pandemic Studios only blocks from the Santa Monica beach. But his two years at Wharton were the urban East Coast detour that made his unorthodox career possible.