Student Leadership and Ethics Board
The purpose of the center's Student Leadership and Ethics Board is to foster a culture and safeguard a tradition of principled leadership throughout the Columbia Business School community. The Board fulfills its purpose by developing, implementing and monitoring programs that cultivate leadership, build character and promote ethical decision-making, which, in turn, enable Columbia Business School students to become productive, moral and caring participants in their companies and communities.
Each year, first- and second-year Columbia MBA and EMBA students are selected based on an interest in these areas, demonstrated leadership skills and past academic and work experience.Working with the faculty, staff, alumni and other students, members of the Leadership and Ethics Board develop, support, organize and market such Center events as high-profile speakers and experiential learning activities. In doing so, Leadership and Ethics Board members have the opportunity to interact closely with distinguished speakers, panelists and professors and to contribute to the MBA experience.
Members of the Leadership and Ethics Board also take part in the Center's faculty dinners and interact with Bernstein Faculty Leaders.
Board Members for 2009–2010
Kesha Cash '10 — MBA Co-Chair
Olivia Albrecht '10 — MBA Co-Chair
Sophie Romana '08 — EMBA Co-Chair
Daniel Jurow '09 — EMBA Co-Chair
Grant Bowman '10
Vicente Brocchetto '10
Margo Buchanan '10
George Caravias '09
David Chait '11
James Crawford '10
Jim Deasy '09
Allyson Downey '10
Walter Haddick '09
Jessica Harrison '11
Jackson Hewett '11
Carla Holtze '10
Julia Wei Huang '10
Chidiebele Iwuchukwu '10
Hasan Kazmi '10
Goldy Michael '11
Gaurav Mittal '09
Mae Podesta '11
Michael Todd Rudsenske '09
Katherine Sorensen '11
Doug Tsang '09
Stacey Wang '11
Board Members Biographies
Olivia Albrecht studied Philosophy at Princeton University focusing on normative ethics and political philosophy. During her time at Princeton, she worked closely with the Human Values Forum, a University sponsored student-led organization encouraging the inter-student dialogue on the philosophical and value based issues underlying politics, international relations and corporate social responsibility. Additionally, in 2004 Olivia raised funds for the Tsunami Relief Fund after the crisis in Southeast Asia. After her time at Princeton, she became an executive with Young Professionals in Foreign Policy in Washington, DC, and developed relationships with key international businesses. While working at Lockheed Martin Corporation, Olivia served on the Corporate Risk Management Board.
Grant Bowman '10Before joining Columbia Business School, Grant spent the summer interning as an analyst at Blue Ridge Capital. Previously, he spent two and a half years at Lehman Brothers where he was most recently a high yield credit research analyst covering American automotive original equipment manufacturers and automotive parts suppliers. Before joining Lehman Brothers, Grant spent two years as a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in General Studies, in addition to being the captain of the University of Michigan Big Ten champion football team.
Vicente is a former investment banker with five years of experience in the Brazilian market. He was involved in transactions in the Latin American equity capital markets, and the setting of best practices in corporate governance for the companies that the bank took public, in the context of greater awareness of the private and public benefits of good corporate governance in Brazil. Vicente has also been involved in many social activities in Brazil. As an instructor for the Junior Achievement initiative, he was able to speak to many teenagers about leading initiatives in the economic environment.
Before enrolling at Columbia Business School, Margo worked at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as a communications specialist. While at UNDP, she focused on advocacy related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—international targets for reducing global extreme poverty—with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to working at UNDP, Margo worked on the communications team of the United Nations Millennium Project, an independent advisory body to Kofi Annan tasked with developing a policy road map for how the world can achieve the MDGs and reduce the poverty, hunger and disease that affects more than one billion people. Prior to her work in sustainable development, Margo worked as a journalist for the International Herald Tribune in Paris. She holds a B.S. in Journalism with a dual degree in French from Northwestern University.
George Caravias '09 (EMBA Global)
George Caravias, brings twenty-five years experience in the information technology and telecommunications industries in the United States and internationally. As a Senior Vice President at Calim Private Equity, Caravias is responsible for maximizing the value of an early-stage venture portfolio. Previous work as an entrepreneur included establishment, management and profitable exits of a $240 million Australian telecommunications company, a $10 million web hosting business and turnaround of a software venture. He was also a founding member and elected deputy-chairman of a 120-member national telecommunications association. Caravias holds degrees in engineering from the California Institute of Technology and in mathematics/physics from Whitman College.
Kesha founded a consulting firm that combines artistic freedom with corporate structure and financial feasibility to develop sound business strategies. The firm provided services for several fashion and beauty related companies, and raised seed capital for three start-up ventures. Prior to this, Kesha worked as a Mergers and Acquisitions Analyst for Merrill Lynch. Based on her experience in growing up in a low-income neighborhood, Kesha is passionate about giving back to the community. She mentors underprivileged youth and volunteers with Sustainable South Bronx, a nonprofit organization that develops and executes environmental justice solutions through innovative, economically sustainable projects informed by community needs.
Prior to business school, James worked as an associate at TRIAD Capital Management, a mid-market private equity firm based in Chicago. Prior to TRIAD, James worked in UBS’s M&A group and Wachovia’s subprime trading and securitization group in Charlotte. James’s financial career to date has included buyouts, equity offerings, M&A transactions and structured finance. James served as co-chair of Princeton’s Annual Giving team in Chicago and currently sits on the Associate Board of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. James holds a BA degree in Religion from Princeton University.
Prior to Columbia Business School, David D. Chait worked as a generalist consultant at McKinsey & Company in its New York Office, where he had broad exposure to a variety of industries, including the high-tech/telecommunications, financial services and nonprofit sectors. While at McKinsey, David founded and led the Sesame Workshop Service Initiative, which provided in-kind consulting services to Sesame Workshop, an education media nonprofit. David received his B.A. in Economics-Political Science from Columbia College, graduated with honors, served four consecutive terms as class president. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Columbia College Alumni Association.
Prior to business school, Allyson spent four years working in Democratic politics in New York. She served as New York State finance director for Eliot Spitzer’s successful 2006 campaign for governor. After directing his inauguration, she became director of his re-election organization, Spitzer 2010, where she had the opportunity to work with business leaders from across New York State on the public initiatives that were a priority to them and their companies. She holds an MFA in writing from Columbia University and a BA from Colby College.
Wally has held various sales and marketing positions within the surgical space, including Vice President of Marketing and Eastern Area Vice President of Sales. He is currently leading the U.S. Marketing effort for surgical stapling products in minimally invasive surgery at Covidien. Over the last 16 years, he has taken part in building a $41B conglomerate that became Tyco International, one narrow escape from corporate bankruptcy, plans for a $10B start-up, five house moves, a marathon, and two handsome sons. He has seen the building of a corporate conglomerate under “Deal a Day” Dennis Kozlowski, the design of Corporate Governance under Ed Breen, and the launch of a $10B start up (July 2007) of Covidien under Rich Meelia.
Prior to attending Columbia Business School, Jessica worked in strategy consulting for four years, first at Kaiser Associates where she served Fortune 500 companies in the pharmaceutical, consumer goods and technology industry. Subsequently she moved to Dalberg Global Development Advisors, where she did management and strategy consulting for clients that included the Gates Foundation, the African Development Bank in Tunisia, the IFC and Overseas Private Investment Corporation in Washington and mothers2mothers, an NGO scaling up prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in South Africa. In her spare time, she serves as the director of strategy for Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, a volunteer organization in Washington D.C. that strives to foster the next generation of foreign policy leaders.
For 10 years, Jackson Hewett has covered business and economics as a journalist for Sky News and later the BBC. He attends Columbia University on the prestigious Knight-Bagehot fellowship, a program designed to enhance journalists’ understanding of business and economics by placing them in courses at Columbia Business School.
For six years prior to joining Columbia University, Jackson has worked for the BBC as a producer and correspondent, working in London, the Middle East and New York. Seeing first-hand how leadership at a government and corporate level can impact a country’s wealth and the lives of its people, Jackson hopes to deepen his understanding of leadership and ethics at the Sanford Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics.
Prior to business school, Carla spent five years working at Lehman Brothers, in the finance analyst program and then with the office of the President working on diversity programs for the bank. Such programs included global diversity awareness training and launching initiatives like Encore, a program designed to help women who had taken time off in their careers return to the workforce. Carla spent time working in Hong Kong as the interim head of Diversity initiatives in Asia. Carla obtained an undergraduate degree in Economics and Communications Studies from Northwestern University, and a Masters in Science from Columbia University’s Journalism School.
Before enrolling at Columbia Business School, Julia worked in the banking and financial services industry, and at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte as a senior associate. She advised Fortune 100 companies on their IPOs and mergers and acquisitions. Julia is also an active and effective leader in the community. She served as board member of the Fifth Third Bank Diversity Board, a committee member of the Greater Cincinnati Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and leader of Deloitte National Community Day. Julia earned a Master of Accounting degree from the Ohio State University at the age of 21, the youngest graduate in the Program’s history. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Julia speaks fluent English and Chinese and is an award winning pianist.
Chidiebele (Chidi) is Nigerian, and was the MD of Gache One consult an environmental technology firm. Prior to this, he was the manager of coverage marketing at Celtel, where he was responsible for developing and implementing “Project Rose”, a landmark project in telecoms which developed thousands of bore hole projects and implemented immunization projects in Nigeria. Chidi holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from University of Nigeria, an MSc in Management and Environmental Technology from University of Applied Science, Emden, Germany, DeMonfort University Leicester, UK and Aalborg Universitet, Esbjerg, Denmark. He is also a member of: the Nigerian Society of Engineers, the Institute for Mechanical Engineers, and International Society for Environmental Geo-technologist; and a fellow with the Global Institute for Social Innovation, and Startingbloc.
Daniel Jurow '09 — EMBA Co-Chair
Daniel Jurow has worked in digital marketing for nearly a decade, focusing on multichannel and interactive marketing, e-commerce, and digital brand communication. He is currently an Executive Producer at R/GA, a digital advertising agency, leading multipleglobal lines of business for Nike, Inc. Daniel has created campaigns for Nike community-basedprojects such as the Nike Women’s Marathon to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and Cinco de Mile, a 1-mile race in Los Angeles to raise awareness for youth fitness. His experience with these and other efforts around corporate responsibility (NikeResponsibility.com, LetMePlay.com, and his own firm’s charitable projects), and his extensive travel through Southeast Asia, have informed his understanding of the relationship between firm value and societal value, the effect ofindividual character on organizational behavior, and the political and economic influence of media and technology in underserved communities and developing nations. Daniel graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 with a BA in Biological Basis of Behavior. He is also an accomplished music producer and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, a Bulgarian software developer.
Hasan joined Columbia Business School after serving five years with the New York City Police Department. He was a Detective assigned to the elite Counter Terrorism Division and worked on many high profile cases. Prior to that assignment, he served in the 43rd Precinct, located in the South Bronx. Hasan also spent time working as part of his family business in Pakistan, focusing on infrastructure development. He has a bachelors’ degree in Civil Engineering and a masters’ degree in Construction Management, both from Stevens Institute of Technology. While attending Stevens, Hasan was elected as the Vice President of the student body and also served as the head of Community Affairs for Delta Tau Delta. In this capacity he was responsible for the initiation of two successful community service programs: “Habitat for Humanity” and “Adopt a School.”
Goldy studied government at Harvard University and devoted much of his time to focusing on issues of empowering youth, urban education and homelessness. Goldy worked in the Office of Senator Harry Reid and on several political campaigns, including a historic run-off victory for Senator Mary Landrieu before joining Guardsmark, a national contract security firm. He spent six years with the company in management and sales roles, receiving awards for diversity management, sales performance and risk management. He attributes his success there to a focus on using a strong ethical compass to balance the needs of providing outstanding client service, a high quality employment experience for his team and strong company profitability. Outside of work, he continued his focus on urban education and youth empowerment as a volunteer with Junior Achievement and member of the Harvard Alumni Association’s Schools Committee.
Gaurav Mittal '09Gaurav is a Senior Manager with NB Ventures, a privately held consulting company that specializes in process and procurement consulting services. At Global eProcure, Gaurav is part of the Global Leadership Team responsible for delivering services to strategic clients and supporting Global eProcure’s international growth strategy. He also leads their People Care program to identify and develop managers within the firm. His prior work experience includes stints at the Marsh & McLennan companies and Virtual Self, Inc. During his time in Chicago, Gaurav led the initiation of a Junior Board for the Sue-Duncan Children’s center, an after-school program for inner city youth, and was a board member for the Windy City Open, one of the largest professional Squash tournaments in North America. Gaurav has a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Communications from Denison University.
Mae joined Columbia Business School after working for five years for the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) across Africa, most recently as the West and Central Africa regional director. She served as a member of the 15-person senior management team and was responsible for management of CHAI’s offices in 10 countries, including overseeing strategy design as well as programmatic, financial and human resources management. While also with CHAI, Mae launched CHAI’s offices in Liberia, Ethiopia and Lesotho, where she fostered partnerships with each government and designed country-specific programs to facilitate the expansion of quality HIV treatment. Prior to joining CHAI, Mae worked as a Project Analyst for Mintz Levin/ML Strategies, a government relations consulting firm. Mae obtained an undergraduate degree in economics and international relations from Wellesley College.
Sophie Romana '08 — EMBA Co-Chair
Before joining a Private Equity fund in New York in 2000, Sophie worked with French non-profit organizations involved in emergency humanitarian relief. She has worked in Rwanda as head of a relief mission to unaccompanied children following the 1994 genocide. She spent two years in Madagascar where she worked as a consultant for various private and public entities. One of her assignments was to assess the efficacy of USAID’s equipment donations on reducing the judgment backlogs in civil and criminal courts. She has particular interest in socially responsible investment, banking and financial regulations in emerging markets and sustainable development in Africa. Sophie holds a Bachelor’s in International Public Law and a Master in Public Law from Université Paris I – Sorbonne.
After beginning my career in Dallas as a CPA at Ernst & Young, Todd moved to New York in 1997 to become a member of Ernst & Young’s Corporate Finance Group. In 1999, he followed a colleague to Merrill Lynch as a Vice President to provide M&A services to the firm’s tax-exempt healthcare clients. While at Merrill Lynch, he also spent time in the firm’s San Francisco and Palo Alto offices as a member of the firm’s Technology Private Placements Group. In 2002, Todd joined Cain Brothers & Company, a boutique investment bank focused exclusively on health care, and today heads the firm’s financial sponsors and private placement efforts as a Managing Director.
Before enrolling at Columbia Business School, Katherine spent three and a half years at Glocap Search, an executive search firm headquartered in New York City. It was in her capacity as a financial services recruiter for a variety of firms that she became fascinated with the question of how an ethical workplace is built and maintained, one of the subjects she is studying in business school. Prior to Glocap, Katherine worked at Mercer Management Consulting and before that in investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Katherine is involved with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure as well as other cancer charities and has been a volunteer with Big Brothers/Big Sisters. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in economics from Harvard University.
Doug Tsang '09 (Columbia/Berkeley-Haas EMBA)
Doug Tsang joined Microsoft Corporation in 1994 after graduating with a degree in electrical engineering at Brown University. He is currently a Development Lead for Office server products working directly with customers and partners. Having traveled to poorer parts of China and India, his belief in education as a means of raising the standard of living is demonstrated in his volunteering in the local school district, and for non-profit organizations in helping local foster children and in school-building in remote Chinese villages. Working in a company with a firm belief and a pervasive culture in giving back to the community, Doug is especially passionate in exploring issues on corporate social responsibility.
Stacey Wang worked for Deloitte Consulting in the Strategy and Operations practice after graduating with a degree in global management from the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley. She has advised top international clients on mergers and business strategies. Having been educated in Asia, Europe and America, Stacey strongly believes that education is the key to transcending social and economical boundaries. She took an active position in the community, serving as a board member for Leadership High School, the first charter school in San Francisco and participated in Junior Achievement. Stacey was also a proponent of corporate social responsibility at Deloitte, developing financial literacy outreach workshops for high school students.
