The Right-and Wrong-Stuff: How Brilliant Careers Are Made and Unmade

Author Bio: Carter Cast

Carter Cast, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, was selected by his students three years running to receive the Faculty Impact Award. When not teaching, he is a venture partner at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, where he invests in early-stage technology companies such as the Dollar Shave Club and Honest Company. He is a lead mentor for TechStars Chicago, one of the country’s leading technology start-up accelerators, and has been featured in “The Accelerators,” a Wall Street Journal forum in which start-up mentors discuss strategies for and challenges of creating a new business. His writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. He has been a guest on shows on Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC and Fox. Prior to his academic and venture-capital career, he was the chief executive officer at Walmart.com. During his tenure, Walmart.com became the third-highest-volume e-commerce company, behind Amazon and eBay. Before his career at Walmart, he was an officer and part of the launch team for Blue Nile, Inc., the leading online diamond and jewelry retailer, now a publicly traded company. Prior to that, he was vice president of product marketing for Electronic Arts, launching products such as The Sims. He started his career at PepsiCo, where he derailed early on before recovering to become director of marketing in the Frito-Lay division.