Class Correspondent

In a profile in Investor’s Business Daily, Carl Rubin credited a lesson he learned at Brandeis with helping him succeed as chief executive officer of Ulta. Carl related that he was put on academic probation after his first semester for flunking a course and getting a D in another. He started to work harder — and made the dean’s list his next semester. On the basis of that experience, Carl supports subordinates who acknowledge their errors and learn from them. “If an employee makes a mistake and owns up to it and doesn’t blame someone else, that’s a high-integrity person who I want on my team,” he told the newspaper. After serving as president of Office Depot’s North American retail unit, Carl joined Ulta in May 2010. He became chief executive four months later. Since then, the company has seen its stock soar 250 percent. Ulta sells products and services at salons where women can get their hair done, sample makeup and browse grooming products. Jonathan Stamler was named director of University Hospitals’ Harrington Discovery Institute in Cleveland. He had a productive 15-year cardiovascular research career at Duke University before leaving to head up University Hospitals’ fledgling Institute for Transformative Molecular Medicine. Trained as a cardiologist and pulmonologist, Stamler and his work first made national headlines in 1996 when his lab discovered a new role for hemoglobin, the oxygen-transport protein molecule that gives blood its color. He found that the protein also distributes another gas — nitric oxide — throughout the body. Through his work, Stamler has discovered a fundamental way in which nitric oxide changes proteins. This insight has opened the door for thousands of researchers to advance their work in the treatment of asthma, heart failure, high blood pressure, cancer and other diseases.
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