Georgia Institute of Technology School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

In three decades of leadership, John Huff, CE 68, has helped Oceaneering International Inc. become the premier organization in underwater technologies. He grew the business from a small diving company to a highly successful corporation with pioneering technologies that have been used to explore deep ocean basins and outer space. He has achieved a lot in the business world, and he says that understanding people is a key to leadership and success.

Do the right thing. Be introspective when things don’t go the way you want. Run right at your problems. Remember the people. Give back.

Suzanne Shank still keeps two textbooks on her bookshelf from her days as a civil engineering undergrad at Georgia Tech. From her classes on differential equations and mechanics of deformable bodies, those two books remind her of a key lesson she learned in those days: “I was much stronger when I reached out and relied on the support of my peers. I realized I could only go so far on my own.”

Luck seems antithetical to engineering. There are no equations, statistics or models for luck — there is no control. But to Wick Moorman, BSCE 1975, the recently retired chairman and CEO of railroad company Norfolk Southern, luck matters. It has, he insists, been a central force of his career.