ENTREPRENEURSHIP - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer for the Harlem Children 's Zone
Anne Williams-Isom is the Chief Executive Officer for the Harlem Children's Zone®, before which she served for five years as HCZ's Chief Operating Officer. As COO, she oversaw all programs in HCZ's cradle-through-college pipeline, including Promise Academy I and II, led HCZ's more than 2,000 staff, and strengthened the organization's use of data to improve services and outcomes for 28,000 children and adults. She also took the reins in restructuring HCZ's College Success Office and developing innovative strategies to support our college students individually and at scale. She took over the position of CEO in July 2014.
Prior to joining HCZ, Ms. Williams-Isom worked in leadership at New York City's Administration for Children's Services (ACS) for 13 years, concluding her tenure as Deputy Commissioner of the Division of Community and Government Affairs. While at ACS, she instituted and oversaw the implementation of a number of innovative initiatives, including the first ever ACS Leadership Academy for Child Protection, a program designed to help the 160 ACS Child Protective Managers lead the 3,800 frontline staff responsible for investigating the 55,000 reports of child abuse and neglect each year. In addition, during the creation of the original HCZ Project in the 1990s, Ms. Williams-Isom provided HCZ's former CEO and now President, Geoffrey Canada, with strategic counsel on integrating preventive services into HCZ's neighborhood-based network of programs.
Ms. Williams-Isom found her calling to help improve the lives of vulnerable children and families when she was still a child herself. Growing up with a single mother in Queens, she witnessed firsthand the many challenges confronting kids in struggling communities. But it was always clear to her that with the right support and opportunities-above all, education and a lot of love-all kids have the potential to do extraordinary things.
Ms. Williams-Isom earned a bachelor's degree in political science and psychology from Fordham University. Soon after, she began working in Community Affairs for the New York Police Department in Brooklyn. While working in Brooklyn at the height of community policing in the 1980s fueled her commitment to social justice, it was during her time as a student at Columbia Law School that she fully discovered her passion for advocacy work and came to appreciate the critical role played by communities in finding lasting solutions to social problems. After receiving her J.D., she practiced law for five years at two of New York's most prestigious firms before joining ACS.
Ms. Williams-Isom served on the Advisory Council of the My Brother's Keeper Alliance, inspired by President Obama's My Brother's Keeper initiative. In January 2016, she was appointed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to his Children's Cabinet Advisory Board and selected to be a member of the spring 2016 cohort of the Aspen-Pahara Education Fellows Program. She is also on the board of directors of Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization, and the board of trustees of the Central Park Conservancy. She is the recipient of a Public Interest Achievement Award from the Public Interest Law Foundation at Columbia Law School (2015) and an Annie E. Casey Foundation Children and Families Fellowship (2007-2008). In May 2018, she received an honorary doctorate from the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service.
Routinely sought after for her expert guidance on child welfare and community development, Ms. Williams-Isom has been featured in The New York Times, Barron's, Crain's New York, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Essence, as well as on WABC's Here and Now and CUNY-TV's Black America. A native New Yorker, she is a long-time resident of Harlem, where she lives with her husband, Phil, and has raised her three children.
Advisory Council member Ben Fried is Google's Chief Information Officer, overseeing the technologies that make Googlers go. He's the New York office Tech Site Lead, responsible for 8,200 Googlers in the company's East Coast headquarters. Ben has a diverse background in systems engineering and software development. He led development of mission scheduling software for NASA at a bay area startup, and spent over a decade at Morgan Stanley, where he rose to the level of Managing Director, and led teams responsible for software development, internet infrastructure, and business intelligence. Ben is a graduate of Columbia University.
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner of the leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and The New York Times bestselling author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which is now available in over 16 languages.
Ben had made his way around Silicon Valley, making his mark at companies like Netscape and AOL. He started his own company Opsware, which was sold to Hewlett Packard in 2007. While at HP, he worked as a senior vice president and general manager for Business Technology Optimization for Software.
Ben has been called the "CEO Whisperer" and the "Consigliere of Silicon Valley." Andreessen Horowitz has invested in and been major sources of support for companies like Facebook, Skype, Instagram, Oculus Rift, Airbnb, Groupon and many other major players in Silicon Valley. Ben is a leader in tech investment and the tech industry and has been featured in The Washington Post and on the cover of Fortune Magazine.
Ben graduated from Columbia University in 1988 with a Bachelor's in Computer Science.
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Managing Partner
- Founder, ZocDoc
Cyrus Massoumi is Managing Partner and Founder of humbition, an early stage venture firm focused on NYC startups. Prior to humbition, Cyrus founded Zocdoc where he led the company for 8 years as CEO. Earlier in his career, he worked at the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he gained extensive experience in healthcare technology and new product development. Cyrus is a graduate of Columbia Business School, where he earned an MBA with honors and received the Heffernan Award for Outstanding Service, and the Exemplary Leadership Award, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelors of Science with honors. Cyrus is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health. Cyrus has been recognized by both Fortune and Crains on their 40 under 40 lists and by Fast Company as one of the Most Creative People in Business.
Job Titles:
- Director of Entrepreneurship at Columbia University
Dave was appointed Director of Entrepreneurship at Columbia University in 2013. In his years with Columbia Entrepreneurship he's helped launch the Columbia Startup Lab, the Columbia Design Studio, Startup Law Studio, CTech, and a host of new tech programs and curricula throughout the university's many schools. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School where he teaches the Greenhouse Accelerator Program, the Launch Your Startup class and at Columbia Engineering where he teaches the Entrepreneurship Bootcamps to incoming Masters students.
By background he's a serial founder and angel investor in 125+ companies. His personal blog, www.davelerner.com/blog, explores the worlds of university entrepreneurship, angel/venture investing, and startups and he's a frequent contributor to many other publications, including Business Insider, whose SAI group named him both one of the "top 100 most influential New Yorkers in the digital business community" and "one of NYC's top 100 early stage investors".
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Founder, Entrepreneur and Investor
Deborah Jackson is a founder and entrepreneur, early-stage investor and former investment banker. She spent over two decades helping clients raise capital starting at Goldman Sachs when it was a small partnership. In the1990s, she focused on raising private capital for some of the early health care related on-line sites and technology companies. Her private investments range from cloud based technology, consumer on-line services and mobile disruption technologies.
In 2012 Deborah founded Plum Alley to advance women entrepreneurs and strong teams of women and men, to build better products and companies that are positioned to outperform others. In 2015, Plum Alley launched Plum Alley investments and identifies opportunities for its members to be "future literate" as they invest in quality companies with high potential. Plum Alley forms syndicates and invests directly with other major investors and focuses on companies with transformative technology that will bring massive benefits to society.
Deborah's work has been featured in numerous publications including a feature story in the print edition of the Washington Post. She was selected by Fast Company Magazine in their cover story about 60 women worldwide who were selected for their "League of Extraordinary Women". Other articles have run in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times and Inc Magazine.
Deborah's path to becoming an entrepreneur is a featured chapter in the 2014 book: Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology; and in two other books published in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, she was honored by Bpeace with the 2016 Leader of Economic Impact award.
Deborah has been on CNBC's Power Pitch and judges competitions at Harvard Business School, Startup Weekend and Columbia Social Entrepreneurs. She is recognized as one of Forbes' "Women Changing the World VCs/Entrepreneurs."
Deborah has been a featured speaker on entrepreneurship, venture funding and her own path at the: Texas, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania Conferences for Women, Harvard Business School, Columbia Women in Business and the Family Office Association.
She has served on the Boards of numerous non-profit organizations and is a proud supporter of Columbia Business School and Columbia entrepreneurs. Deborah lives in Manhattan with her husband and spends time often with her adult daughters.
Job Titles:
- Columbia Entrepreneurship 's Associate Director of Finance and Operations
Denise is Columbia Entrepreneurship's Associate Director of Finance and Operations. In her role, she is involved in supporting the Collaboratory, managing CE budget and finances, and organizing CE events and programming. Her day-to-day management of Columbia Entrepreneurship's initiatives facilitates continued impact and growth for Columbia's entrepreneurial students and alumni.
Prior to joining Columbia Entrepreneurship, Denise held a variety of positions at Crain's New York Business and InvestmentNews. Most recently, Denise was Department Administrator at Columbia Journalism Review where she oversaw operations to meet the financial and strategic initiatives of the department.
Donnel Baird is the founder of BlocPower, a startup that markets, finances and installs solar and energy efficiency technology to help houses of worship, non-profits, small businesses and multifamily projects to slash their energy costs. Donnel spent three years as a community organizer in Brooklyn and one year as a voter contact director for Obama For America. He managed a national Change to Win/LIUNA campaign to leverage Dept. of Energy energy efficiency financing to create green construction jobs for out of work populations. He partnered with the Washington Interfaith Network to generate a $100m government investment in underserved communities in the District of Columbia. Donnel has a B.A. from Duke University and an M.B.A from Columbia Business School. BlocPower is backed by Kapor Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Greg is the Founder & CEO of KeyMe, a New York based technology company disrupting the locksmith services industry. Before KeyMe, Greg was the first employee at Aperia Technologies - a hardware technology company in the commercial trucking industry. Before start-ups, Greg worked in finance as an Associate at CM Capital Advisors and as an Analyst at Sterling Stamos Capital Management. Greg attended Columbia Business School, holds a bachelors in Mathematics and Economics from UC Santa Barbara, and is a CFA Charterholder.
Jared Hecht is a co-founder and the CEO at Fundera, an online marketplace for small business financial solutions.
He started Fundera after his cousin experienced the frustration and lack of transparency of applying for a small business loan. Previously, Jared co-founded GroupMe, a group messaging service that in August 2011 was acquired by Skype, which was subsequently acquired by Microsoft in October 2011. Prior to GroupMe, he led Business Development at Tumblr where he focused on international expansion and strategic partnerships.
Jared currently serves on the Advisory Board of Columbia University Entrepreneurship and is an investor in startups such as TransferWise, Sweetgreen, and Flatiron Health. Jared received his BA in Political Science from Columbia University where he served as the publisher and managing director of Inside New York.
Job Titles:
- Divisional Vice Chairman at UBS
Jolyne is a Divisional Vice Chairman at UBS in the firm's Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) division within the Global Wealth Management business. Jolyne joined UBS in July 2019.
Job Titles:
- Advisory Council
- Co - Founder of Benvolio Group
Lew Frankfort is a co-founder of Benvolio Group, an investment firm that focuses on direct investing in early stage disruptive consumer-facing brands. Lew serves on the Board of Directors of We Company (WeWork), Mindbodygreen, Advanced Assessment Systems LLC and Recycle Track Systems (RTS). Lew is a member of the Board of Overseers at Columbia Business School. Lew is also affiliated with several non-profit organizations. Since 2014, Lew holds the title Chairman Emeritus of Coach Inc., where he was previously Chairman and CEO. During his 35 years with Coach, he built the NYC based leather goods company into a leading global accessories and lifestyle brand. Lew began his career in NYC government, culminating as Commissioner of NYC's Head Start and Day Care programs. He holds a BA degree from Hunter College and an MBA from Columbia University.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO of Exubrancy
Liz Wilkes is the founder and CEO of Exubrancy (Acquired), a leading workplace wellness company. Exubrancy operates on-site wellness across fifteen US and European markets for over 500 companies, including Dropbox, Spotify, and NBC. Liz founded the company in 2013 and sold the business in 2017. She also serves as an investor and adviser to early-stage wellness and social impact ventures. Previously, Liz founded and exited a lighting and design business and spent time at Trigger Media, a media-focused venture fund. Liz holds a B.A. from Amherst College, an MBA from Columbia Business School and is a Certified Meditation Teacher.
Job Titles:
- Hearst in 2001 As Director of Legal Affairs
- Vice President and Co
Mark C. Redman is a vice president and co-general counsel of Hearst. Redman joined Hearst in 2001 as director of legal affairs of SmartMoney, a joint venture between Hearst and The Wall Street Journal. Redman joined the Hearst Office of General Counsel in 2003.
Redman started his legal career as an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, where his practice primarily focused on mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance transactions. Redman also previously served as the vice president and general counsel of FreeRide.com LLC, a technology-enabled affiliate marketing and loyalty program.
Redman sits on the boards of and assists various nonprofit organizations and is a member of the Columbia Entrepreneurship Advisory Council.
Redman holds a J.D. from Columbia University, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, and a bachelor's degree from Hobart College, where he graduated magna cum laude and was inducted to Phi Beta Kappa.
Job Titles:
- General Partner at Bowery Capital
- Member of the Class
Mike is the General Partner at Bowery Capital based in New York. Prior to Bowery Capital, Brown co-founded AOL Ventures and led investments in over 30 companies primarily focused around the next generation of CMO and CTO spend. Before AOL Ventures, Mike worked for the investment arm of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, helping to invest capital in early stage internet startups on behalf of the British entrepreneur.
He began his career at Morgan Stanley. Outside of his professional life Brown serves on the Board of Directors of the National Forest Foundation and co-chairs the Columbia College Young Leaders Council. Mike holds an undergraduate degree from Columbia University.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board of Directors of JDS Therapeutics
Phillip M. Satow is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors of JDS Therapeutics, an innovative health care company and parent company of Nutrition 21, LLC, and a leader in the nutritional supplement industry.
Mr. Satow is the former president of Forest Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and former executive vice president and member of the Board of Directors of Forest Laboratories, Inc., its parent company. In addition, to the Forest Laboratories board, on which he served on from 1999-2005, Mr. Satow formerly was a member of the Board of Directors of Eyetech Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Noven Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Crucell, Inc., a Dutch publicly traded biotech company. He was co-founder, chairman and CEO of JDS Pharmaceuticals LLC, which developed and marketed branded pharmaceutical products before it was acquired in 2007.
He is a past chair of the Columbia College Fund, a past president of the Columbia College Alumni Association and a recipient of the John Jay Award for distinguished professional achievement. Mr. Satow was the recipient of the Alexander Hamilton Award in 2015, the highest honor paid to a member of the Columbia College community,
In 2000, Mr. Satow and his wife, Donna GS'65, co-founded The Jed Foundation, a public charity committed to reducing the young adult suicide rate and improving the mental health support provided to students by universities nationwide. The Foundation is collaborating on mental health programming with hundreds of universities that enroll several million students. Mr. Satow is board chairman.
Mr. Satow's son, Michael, is a member of the Class of 1988 and a current member of the Board of Visitors and his daughter, Julie, is a member of the Class of 1996.
Job Titles:
- Co - Chairman of the Board of New York City Center
- Special Advisor to the President of Columbia University
Richard serves as the Special Advisor to the President of Columbia University, a position he assumed after retiring as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University. He is the Founder of Columbia Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Design and a member of the Columbia University Medical Center Board of Advisors, where he chairs the Cancer Advisory Council. Richard is also the Founder and Senior Managing Director of The Orienta Group, an investment and advisory firm, and is a retired General Partner of Goldman Sachs & Co, where he had a senior management role in the firm's fixed income, currencies, and commodities businesses.
Richard is the Co-Chairman of the Board of New York City Center, and a member of the Board of the Harlem Children's Zone. He also chairs the Board of Advisors of the Ragon Institute, a health research partnership between the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University and MIT.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow for Social Impact at Columbia
Sarah Holloway is the Senior Fellow for Social Impact at Columbia Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Design and a member of the faculty at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) where she teaches entrepreneurship, design & innovation, and nonprofit management. Sarah is a serial social entrepreneur and the co-founder of six ventures in K-12 education including Mouse.org and Computer Science for All (CSforALL) and The Wellness Classroom. She is the Co-Founder and Director of eLab, an online fellowship aimed at bringing together problem-solvers, experts and entrepreneurs in K-12, higher education and workforce to rethink the systems that educate our planet to help ensure equality and equity of access. Sarah sits on the Board of CSforALL, n-Powered, Five One Labs, Eat Offbeat, BenefitKitchen, Open StartUp and Gotham Gives.
Job Titles:
- Bloomberg 's Chief Technology Officer
- CTO, Bloomberg
Advisory Council member Shawn Edwards is Bloomberg's Chief Technology Officer. Based in New York, he oversees the development of Bloomberg's global technology strategy, including enhancements to the company's core business, the Bloomberg Professional service.
Shawn and his team, in partnership with Bloomberg's global Engineering team, are instrumental in the ongoing development of Bloomberg's leading market data, analytics, news and community products. The team researches existing and emerging technologies, architects solutions in strategic areas and sets the technology direction for the company.
In his role, Shawn advances the company's engagement with academia, including research fellowships, grants and sponsorships, and also leads engagement with the open source community and the broader developer community in general.
In 2017, Shawn was named to the top ten of the Institutional Investor Tech 40 - an annual ranking of financial industry technology leaders. He was previously included in the top ten of the Institutional Investor Tech 50 in both 2015 and 2016.
Previously, Shawn ran Bloomberg's global Engineering group where he helped streamline the product development process, bolster the Bloomberg network's technical infrastructure and create a user-experience design team, which now influences product development company-wide.
Prior to joining Bloomberg in 2003, Shawn worked for Bear Stearns & Co. where he was a managing director in the company's fixed income trading group. He has also held positions at Mentor Graphics and IBM.
Shawn received a bachelor's of science and a master's degree from the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University.
Sree Sreenivasan is proud to be involved with Columbia Entrepreneurship as part of his giving back to the University he loves. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School who spent two decades there as a professor and stints as Dean of Student Affairs at the school and Chief Digital Officer of Columbia, he's now a social media and digital consultant working with nonprofits, startups and executives around the world (his business partner and best friend is fellow alum Andrew Lih). He's also been the Chief Digital Officer of the City of New York and of Metropolitan Museum of Art. He co-taught an entrepreneurship course on campus with Kenneth Lerer, cofounder of Huffington Post, former chairman of Buzzfeed and cofounder of Lerer Hippeau, a leading NYC VC firm. In 2015, he was named on one Fast Company's 50 Most Creative People in Business.
Blank, credited with starting the Lean Startup movement, is Columbia's Senior Fellow for Entrepreneurship. He is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, The Startup Owner's Manual; his May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story defined the Lean Startup movement. Blank created the National Science Innovation Corps - now the standard for science commercialization in the U.S. The Hacking for Defense class he created, and which is taught at Columbia and 30 other universities, is revolutionizing how the Defense Department and Intelligence community can deploy innovation with speed and urgency.
In her role as Senior Director of Marketing and Communications, Yvette tells the story of Columbia's culture of innovation, dynamic entrepreneurship initiatives, and its world-class entrepreneurs. She is also Chief Communications Officer in Residence at the Columbia Startup Lab, mentoring ventures on their branding, PR, and communications strategies.
Yvette has 15 years of experience in the public, private, and education sectors. She started her career leading communications at an early-stage startup, and has built outreach strategies from the ground up a few times since. She has prepared senior staff at startups and major companies for media interviews, congressional testimony, and events, and garnered coverage in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, USA Today, Reuters, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNET, and more.