Even with his 50th birthday just around the corner, Mark Tillinger, BA\u201981, MBA\u201982, did not have a midlife crisis: He was too busy fighting for his life. Emerging on the other side of a cancer diagnosis and treatment, he sought opportunities to make small investments in the lives of others\u2014with hope that those small changes would build into something much larger.<\/p>\n
Tillinger knew first-hand how investing in someone can make a difference for that person. He came to Vanderbilt as an undergraduate, inspired\u2014and invested in\u2014by his high school math teacher in Atlanta, a Vanderbilt alumnus. Tillinger chose the combined five-year Vanderbilt MBA degree offered at the time\u2014four years for his bachelor degree in economics, the last year overlapping with Vanderbilt\u2019s MBA program.<\/p>\n
Soon after graduation, Tillinger landed at Arthur Andersen in its management consulting information division. He was based in Nashville until he was hired away by Commerce Union Bank as a director of strategic planning. When the bank merged with another, he was recruited back to Andersen\u2019s Nashville office, and then on to Richmond, Virginia, where he headed the banking division. When he became partner\u2014and Andersen morphed into Accenture\u2014he moved to the New York office.<\/p>\n
He was working in New York and living in nearby Connecticut when he started cancer treatment. Cancer coincided with reaching the age of early retirement, an Andersen\/Accenture benefit for partners at age 50. Although he hadn\u2019t originally planned on retiring right at 50, his illness made him question how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.<\/p>\n
The answer was help others. He took retirement.<\/p>\n
One of his first ways to help was creating a need-based scholarship for Vanderbilt MBA students, the Mark A. Tillinger Scholarship Fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew I wanted to make a reasonably significant contribution, but I wasn\u2019t sure how to do it since I was an undergrad as well as an Owen grad. Ultimately, we focused on funding the scholarship at Owen,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was exactly for that reason: to give opportunities to students who might not otherwise be able to go and help them launch their own careers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Five Owen students have received the scholarship since he endowed it in 2007. But he\u2019s given more than the funding\u2014he\u2019s invested personally in the lives of students who received it as well. \u201cThat\u2019s been on an individual basis and if it\u2019s something the student wants,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
Those relationships have helped him to see how his goals for the scholarship program are being met. \u201cIt\u2019s a small gesture, but one that hopefully will generate some people who go on to do some extraordinary things,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been thrilled to be able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
After retiring, Tillinger did something else that has even made the pages of People<\/em> magazine: He launched the Riedel & Cody Fund<\/a>, which offers assistance to pet owners whose dog or cat has cancer.<\/p>\n
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