Celebrate Excellence

"My personal formula for success is giving 120 percent of my efforts to my work and always looking for new learning opportunities.”

Tao Huang, Grad ’91 and recipient of an Alumni Merit Award, was a computer programmer in China and didn’t know how to speak English when he won an award to study for one year in the United States. He chose a school at which he’d be forced to learn the language: St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis., where he was the only Chinese student out of 1,700.

After earning a master of computer science at Marquette, Huang answered a newspaper ad for Morningstar Inc. and joined the fledgling company as a software developer. By 1998, he was named Morningstar’s president of international operations, responsible for opening offices around the world. At the same time, he began working on his M.B.A.

In 2000, Huang became chief operating officer at Morningstar, managing day-to-day operations. “We strongly believe our mission of helping individual investors make better investment decisions,” he says. “As an individual investor myself, I get lots of satisfaction from creating new products and services knowing people like me will be better off.” 

In 2003, Huang was selected as a Business Leader of Color by Chicago United and has been named one of Chicago’s 40 under 40. “My personal formula for success,” he says, “is giving 120 percent of my efforts to my work and always looking for new learning opportunities. Although I have worked for the same company the past 15 years, I have had many different jobs, which gives me a better understanding of our business and helps me to be more effective.”