Neel Kashkari

Kashkari then moved onto the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He would eventually earn a master's degree in engineering, as well as meet his wife, Minal, while at the university. His only full-time position as an engineer came with the Cleveland-based NASA contractor, TRW, which was bought out by Northrop Grumman. The job entailed working on the James Webb space telescope.

While at college, Kashkari gathered his fellow engineering students for a competition to build a working solar-powered vehicle. Although his team did not win, the vehicle finished the race, and he continues to speak about the experiment to this day.

Despite his early success, Kashkari did not forsee a future in engineering, and decided to move into investment banking by earning an MBA at the Wharton School of Business. In his first summer at school, he interned at Goldman Sachs, earning a job once he graduated a year later.

Kashkari didn't have the typical Goldman pedigree, but the investment bank found his engineering background an attractive trait in analyzing technology companies. That doesn't mean he fit in naturally at the bank. He got the nickname "the Borg" based on the Star Trek characters that had serious, no-nonsense personalities, and shaved heads.

Nonetheless, he worked his way up to vice president, collaborating with computer security companies to find funding and/or buyers. One of the larger reported buyouts he worked on involved Microsoft's purchase of an email security company called Frontbridge Technologies. Steve Jillings, Frontbridge's former CEO, has suggested the deal was in the millions, but terms were not disclosed to the public.

Moving to the Treasury

Although he worked at Goldman for four years, Kashkari's greatest accomplishment may have been meeting with the Goldman's then-CEO, Henry Paulson. Kashkari wanted to talk politics with the former White House official. Paulson told his future protege to wait for the right position and then jump on it. A few months afterwards, President Bush named Paulson Treasury secretary and Kashkari contacted Paulson looking for a job.

"Remember that conversation we had?" Kashkari asked. "Well, if you are putting together a team, I want to come with you."

Paulson and Kashkari started at the Treasury on the same day in July 2006.

Kashkari's first role in government dealt with energy, and he helped develop a strategy for the U.S. to less its dependence on foreign oil. Kashkari and his team created Bush's "Twenty and Ten" gas policy that set the administration's goal of cutting U.S gasoline usage by 20 percent over the next 10 years.

In the summer of 2007, Kashkari moved up to assistant secretary for international economics. Charged with devising a way to help struggling homeowners, he became the leader of the Hope Now Alliance, which partnered credit counselors, lenders and investors in an effort to aid troubled homeowners near foreclosure by refinancing their mortgages.

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