Class of 1969 grad David Meshulam

He gets up before dawn to exercise and has his first business meetings while most people are debating whether to hit the snooze button yet again.

On a recent day when David Meshulam took a breather to look back on his life since he left Woodbury, he'd just taken the first sick day that he could remember. The Class of 1969 alumnus is in the financial security business, representing a host of insurance companies through his Strategic Financial Group in downtown Los Angeles.

When he's not busy with business commitments, Meshulam regularly plays golf and is active in volunteer causes. He just finished a term as a president of the downtown Los Angeles Rotary Club and is on the executive board of the Boy Scouts of Los Angeles. He is a past member and incoming general chairman of the Jonathan Club Breakfast Club. The Encino resident and his wife Nancy also believe firmly in giving money to worthy causes.

"I have long believed in the theory of doing good while doing well," he explains. "I think we all have a responsibility to share as much as we can. And my personal experience has been the more that I share, the more I've succeeded."

While Meshulam's office isn't too far from the Woodbury Wilshire campus of his day, he has traveled a long way.

"I graduated on a Friday and on Sunday left for Naval officer training school in Newport, Rhode Island," he recalls. "Two months later, I was in Vietnam."

Meshulam spent the next three years in Vietnam, first as a gunnery officer on a ship, then as executive officer of another ship and finally as squadron commander of river patrol boats. He returned the United States during holiday leaves, working in his family's gift pack business.

He spent the next decade after his discharge in the family business, but was ready for a change. Meshulam now had a master's degree and was soliciting friends and colleagues for ideas about a new profession. Someone suggested the insurance business.

"I didn't know what that meant, but I knew some people who sold it," he says. "Nobody wakes up in the morning and says 'I think I want to buy myself an insurance policy.' Consequently, I don't think many people think about it as a career. But, I have to say, I made the absolute perfect choice for myself."

Meshulam enjoys the flexibility the job gives him, remembering the headaches that came along in the family business with having more than 200 people working for him and millions invested in inventory.

"I just don't want that level of complication. If I go out and do something, I get paid," he says. "I'm pragmatic about business."

The Los Angeles native says it's that very pragmatism that attracted him to Woodbury.

"Woodbury was the consummate answer for me. I desperately wanted a business education…and Woodbury offered a very finite program where I went to school and then went to work. I could take he courses that I learned that day and put them into use that afternoon," Meshulam says.

He gives credit to his professors for making his courses meaningful.

"They had practical knowledge; they had done it in the business world. So, it was like a wonderful collaboration (in the classroom) for me," he adds. "I knew what my destiny was. I was going to be in the family business. So Woodbury was a way to accomplish my goals."