Program

Nan Gibson 

Executive Director, PolicyCenter at JPMorgan Chase

Nan Gibson is executive director for public policy and corporate responsibility at the JPMorgan Chase PolicyCenter, based in Washington, DC.

In this role, Nan works with policy, community, and business leaders to drive evidence-based, effective public policy solutions at all levels of government. She provides policy expertise across a broad range of economic issues and conducts outreach to key stakeholders to build unique partnerships for initiatives related to economic security, and workforce development.

Nan works closely with criminal justice reform leaders to advance policies that lower barriers to employment and create greater economic opportunity for individuals involved in the justice system. She developed the strategic framework and co-leads the corporate recruitment and programmatic work of the Second Chance Business Coalition, a group of more than 40 large companies committed to implementing second chance employment practices and advancement strategies.

Previously, she served as chief of staff and executive director for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama Administration and as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress.

Aedan Macdonald ’24BUS 

Director of Justice Through Code at Columbia University

Bio coming soon!

Sharon Joseph ’97BUS

CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem

​Bio coming soon!

Sandra Navalli ’03BUS, OAM

Managing Director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise and Assistant Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School

Sandra Navalli is the managing director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia University. The center trains the next generation of leaders to address social and environmental challenges, by supporting the creation and communication of new ideas, and by providing curricular and extra-curricular opportunities for students. Focus areas include social entrepreneurship, international development and emerging markets, public and nonprofit management, corporate responsibility and sustainability. Under the center, the Tamer Fund for Social Ventures provides seed grants to nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid early-stage social and environmental ventures. Sandra has over a decade of experience in the social impact field, and previously worked in business and product development for an education technology social venture, management consulting, microeconomic policy, and in corporate law. She received an MBA from Columbia Business School and honors degrees in economics and in law from the Australian National University.

Helena Plater-Zyberk ’06BUS 

CEO and Co-founder of Supportiv

Helena Plater-Zyberk is CEO and co-founder of Supportiv, the digital peer-to-peer mental health support service that serves health plans, large employers and Medicare, and has helped over 1.2 million individuals cope with, heal from, and problem-solve struggles like anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout, and stress. Supportiv lowers the cost of mental health care by 10X and delivers clinical-grade outcomes with its combination of bleeding-edge Natural Language Understanding, Precision Peer SupportTM based on real-time people-matching for shared lived experience, live human moderation, and hyper-personalized resources that are matched in real-tim for each individual.

Elise Schuster ’09PH ’04BC

Co-founder and Executive Director of OkaySo

Elise (they/them) believes that we can grow as human beings only when we have a space where we can be vulnerable yet safe and they’ve spent their career building these types of spaces. Primarily Elise has done this in sexuality education but has also spent time in comprehensive youth development and medical education.

Elise is a skilled facilitator and trainer, systems thinker, communicator, and collaborator. They love building new things and helping them become the best thing they can be. They’re always looking for what needs to change in order to make something more efficient, effective, or equitable.

Elise is currently the co-founder and executive director of OkaySo — a technology nonprofit that connects young people with questions about sexual health, relationships, identity, and more to experts they couldn’t reach any other way for personalized support and information.

Sandi Drucker Wright ’04TC

Director at Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School; Founder of Bespoke Impact Advisors

Sandi Drucker Wright is a director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at the Columbia Business School, where she built and managed the Nonprofit Board Leadership Program (NBLP), a highly successful experiential learning program now in its sixteenth year. The NBLP trains MBA students to play effective roles as members of nonprofit boards upon graduation. In addition, Sandi works closely with alumni and students as well as engaging with the New York City community to find opportunities for the center to partner with companies and organizations around the center’s work.

Sandi is also founder of Bespoke Impact Advisors, a social impact advisory firm that works with companies, individuals, and foundations and is passionate about making meaningful connections and creating high-impact partnerships. Her private-sector experience includes executive-level marketing and business development positions in media, retail, and e-commerce, having led research at News Corporation’s online properties, as well as overseeing marketing strategy and business development at the e-commerce divisions of JCrew and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Sandi is treasurer of the Suzanne Wright Foundation, a board member of Horizons at Sacred Heart University, and an active alumna of Colgate University, having been elected to its Alumni Council, serving on the Women’s Leadership Council, and most recently, receiving a Maroon Citation. She was formerly secretary of the Board of the International Radio and Television Society Foundation.

Sandi holds a BA with honors from Colgate University and a MA from Teachers College, Columbia University where she focused on media and technology.

Ivan Tchatchouwo ’20TC

Founder and CEO of The Zone

Ivan Tchatchouwo, a Cameroonian native raised in Bronx, NY, is on a mission to improve student-athletes’ well-being. He is the co-founder and CEO of The Zone, a digital wellness company for student-athletes and its staff. As a recognized thought leader and mental wellness advocate, Ivan is driven by his unique experiences as a high-performing student-athlete to ensure wellness resources are accessible and personalized to sports organizations and their athletes, creating a more efficient wellness culture.

Wole Coaxum 

Founder and CEO at Mobility Capital Finance

Wole C. Coaxum is a founder and CEO of Mobility Capital Finance, Inc. (“MoCaFi”). MoCaFi is a startup financial technology company that leverages mobile technologies, data analytics, and digital strategies to improve the financial behaviors of underbanked communities. MoCaFi’s goal is to move 1,000,000 people away from high-cost alternative financial services products, e.g., payday lenders, check cashiers, pawn shops, etc., into the economic mainstream so that communities can live healthy and productive financial lives.

Before starting MoCaFi in 2016, Wole served as managing director at JPMorgan Chase, where he held a series of leadership positions in business banking, card services, and treasuryand securities services.

Before joining JPMorgan in 2007, Wole was a senior executive of Willis Towers Watson, serving as chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Willis North America and CEO of Willis Canada. He started his career at Citigroup, working in investment banking, asset management, insurance, and corporate functions.

Wole currently serves as a trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy and is a board member of Selective Insurance. His former board participation includes the Roosevelt Institute, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Phoenix House New York, and Phoenix House Foundation. He is the recipient of the Harlem YMCA – Black Achievers in Industry Award and the Franklin A. Thomas Pioneering Leadership Award from Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Development Corporation.

He has an MBA with a concentration in finance from New York University, a BA with a major in history from Williams College, and studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Exeter College, Oxford University.

Kelly Ifill ’17BUS 

Founder and CEO at Guava

Kelly Ifill is the founder and CEO of Guava, a neo-bank and community platform designed to serve Black entrepreneurs and small business owners. Kelly works to close the racial wealth gap by providing equitable financial products to these entrepreneurs. This aligns with her longstanding mission is to equip Black and Latinx founders with access to capital and networking opportunities.

Prior to founding Guava, Kelly co-founded Seneca Network, a nonprofit organization that connects Black and Latinx founders at the earliest stages of their businesses with angel investors, mentors, and industry experts. She previously held roles in edtech investing, where she saw firsthand the challenges Black founders face in securing funding.

Kelly began her career in education, on the founding team of a public high school in central Brooklyn. She has also led math departments in Brazil and Dubai. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Baruch College, an MA of education in mathematics from St. John’s University, and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

As a first-generation American, raised in an immigrant family of entrepreneurs in Brooklyn, NY, Kelly’s personal and professional journeys have informed her passion to help create wealth for our communities.

Jenny Tolan ’14BUS 

Co-founder of Level

Jenny Tolan is the co-founder of Level. Jenny has devoted her career to working across education and social justice, previously as deputy director of Exalt Youth, a criminal justice organization. Prior to Exalt, Jenny spent five years as the product marketing lead for the Google for Education team, building technology for students worldwide. Before Google, Jenny worked in education and global development, including at the Global Fund for Children in DC and India, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, and as a fifth grade math teacher at a KIPP charter school in Brooklyn through Teach for America. Jenny has a BA in international relations and Spanish from Stanford University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. She lives in Brooklyn with her three young boys.

Dan Wang

Co-director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise and Lambert Family Associate Professor of Social Enterprise in the Faculty of Business

Dan Wang is Associate Professor of Business and (by courtesy) Sociology at Columbia Business School, where he is also the Co-Director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise. His research examines how social networks drive social and economic transformation through the analysis of global migration, social movements, organizational innovation, and entrepreneurship. He teaches the core MBA Strategy Formulation course, an elective MBA course on Technology Strategy, a PhD seminar on Organizational Theory. He also teaches in several Executive Education programs on Social Networks and Technology Strategy. He earned his BA from Columbia University (Columbia College) and PhD from Stanford University.

He received the 2020 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Core and the 2018 Singhvi Prize for Scholarship in the Classroom, Columbia Business School’s top teaching honor conferred by the graduating MBA class. He was also named to Poets and Quants’ 2018 list of “Best 40 Business School Professors under 40.” In 2021, he received the Robert W. Lear Service Award, given by the graduating class for his commitment to the MBA student body.

Wang’s research lies at the intersection of business and society with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. One of his main research streams focuses on the global migration of high-skilled individuals. Specifically, Wang studies “reverse brain drain”, or how the return migration of skilled professionals spreads ideas, technologies, and new ventures to different parts of the world. Another research area focuses on how social protest and activism create an interface between business and society. In this work, Wang has analyzed collaboration networks across social movements to predict innovation, knowledge sharing, strategic choices, and protest scope across activist groups. Finally, in on-going work on entrepreneurship, he has analyzed the implications of different network structures of venture capital syndication for the innovation output and financial performance of start-ups. 

His work has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Social Forces, Social Networks, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Theory and Society.  He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Strategic Management Journal and Special Issue Editor for Organization Science and has served as a Consulting Editor for The American Journal of Sociology.  He is co-editor of the book series, Elements in the Structural Analysis of Culture, Social Organization, and History with Cambridge University Press.  His work has been cited in The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR and has been recognized with multiple awards from the Academy of Management. He has also been awarded both the Dissertation (2012) and Junior Faculty Fellowship (2017) from the Kauffman Foundation. He has also contributed to practitioner-oriented publications such as Strategy+Business, and written Op-Eds for CNN. 

Blair C Smith ’00BUS 

Senior Director, Center for Financial Markets at Milken Institute

Bio coming soon!

Jonathan Winer 

Co-CEO of Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP)

Jonathan is the co-founder and co-CEO of Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP). Over two decades Jonathan has led three private equity platforms and personally led investments of over $3B with a focus on the application of technology to real assets.

Previously, Jonathan was head of investments for Alphabet’s urban innovation platform. In this role, Jonathan managed dedicated investment funds related to technology venture capital, real estate, and infrastructure.

He previously founded Nereus in 2009, a private equity fund that invests in alternative energy infrastructure in Asia. Prior to Nereus, Jonathan worked at the D. E. Shaw group where he built the private equity team across venture capital, growth equity, and structured finance. Jonathan started his career by founding startups in natural language processing and computational biochemistry.

Jonathan graduated from Yale with degrees in philosophy and computer science. Jonathan is based in SIP’s Brooklyn office and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Doug Beal ’95BUS

Partner and Director, Sustainable Financial Institutions, Finance, and Investing at BCG

Doug is the global head of BCG’s Societal Impact Finance and Investing practice — working with banks, asset managers, and asset owners to direct capital where they can make the most impact and returns.

Doug has more than 25 years experience in advising financial institutions, corporations, investors, governments, and development organizations on strategies and organizational capabilities — all with the intent of creating sustainable and positive, social, economic, and environmental impact. Doug was formally the global leader of BCG’s Economic Development Practice.

Throughout his career Doug has contributed frequently to the global media including The Economist, Financial Times, Huffington Post, and The Hill. Doug recently did a TED talk on the topic of wellbeing as an alternative measure of economic progress. Doug is on the advisory board of the Cornell University Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise.

Preeti Bhattachari ’14BUS ’09CC

Head of Sustainable Investing at JPMorgan US Private Bank

Preeti is the head of sustainable investing for J.P. Morgan’s US Private Bank. In this role, she works with advisors and their clients to incorporate sustainability into their investment portfolios, develops thought leadership, and works with portfolio managers and due diligence colleagues to expand the Private Bank’s sustainable investing platform. 

Preeti has a decade of experience stewarding sustainable investments across asset classes and return profiles. Prior to JP Morgan, Preeti worked on post-investment engagement at Calvert Research & Management. Before that, she served as a vice president of integrated capitals at the F.B. Heron Foundation, working to better align the foundation’s endowment with its mission, informing Heron’s long-term strategic direction, and helping to steward its investments across asset classes. Preeti has also served as the assistant director for the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing and a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she reported on global issues that included the global financial crisis and climate change. Preeti earned a BA from Columbia University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Courtney Thompson ’17BUS

Executive Director, Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley

Courtney Thompson is an executive director in Morgan Stanley’s Global Sustainable Finance group, supporting the development of sustainable investing products and solutions across the firm’s institutional securities, investment management, and wealth management divisions. Courtney began her career in economic consulting at Analysis Group, followed by a strategic advisory role at Next Street. She graduated with a BA in economics from Williams College and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Courtney currently serves as board co-chair of Microlumbia, a student-led impact investing fund, and was previously a member of Columbia University’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing.

Bruce Usher

Co-director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise; Elizabeth B. Strickler ’86 and Mark T. Gallogly ’86 Faculty Director; and Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Business School

Bruce Usher is a Professor of Professional Practice and the Elizabeth B. Strickler ’86 and Mark T. Gallogly ’86 Faculty Director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School. Professor Usher teaches on the intersection of finance, social and environmental issues, and is a recipient of the Singhvi Prize for Scholarship in the Classroom, the Lear Award, and the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

Professor Usher has written numerous cases for use in business school courses, with a primary focus on climate change and business. In 2019, Usher published Renewable Energy: A Primer for the Twenty-First Century (Columbia University Press), the first in the Earth Institute’s sustainability series of books.

Prior to his work at Columbia, Professor Usher was CEO of EcoSecurities Group plc, which developed greenhouse gas emission reduction projects in developing countries. EcoSecurities was acquired by JP Morgan in 2009. Professor Usher was previously the co-founder and CEO of TreasuryConnect LLC, which provided electronic trading solutions to banks and was acquired in 2001. Prior to that, he worked in financial services for twelve years in New York and Tokyo. Professor Usher is an active investor and advisor to entrepreneurial ventures focused on climate change and clean energy (UsherWorks.com). He is a board member of Community Energy, OptiRTC, and CapShift, and is Chair of the Tamer Fund for Social Ventures. Usher earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Mimi Boublik ’90BUS

Board Co-chair at the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise; Founding Partner at Parents Against Vaping e-cigarettes (PAVe)

​Mimi Boublik is currently the founding partner of Parents Against Vaping e-cigarettes (PAVe), a national grassroots nonprofit dedicated to protecting youth from the dangers of vaping. Mimi serves as the board co-chair of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise advisory board at Columbia Business School.

Mimi was a senior managing director in research and strategic consulting at KRC Research & Consulting, which was a division of Robinson Lerer Sawyer Miller (RLSM), a communications management and consulting firm. KRC is now an independent unit of Interpublic Group of Companies. In this capacity, Mimi directed both qualitative and quantitative research and provided strategic consulting, working with clients across a range of industries, including health care, consumer products, insurance, energy, and banking. Her work informed clients in corporate positioning, business strategy development, product development and positioning, advertising, and public relations.

Before joining KRC, Mimi worked at RLSM, where she specialized in corporate repositioning, internal and external corporate communications, and crisis management. At KRC and at RLSM, Mimi’s clients included Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Prudential Insurance. In addition, she worked with a number of companies seeking to bring new consumer products to market. Prior to joining RLSM, Mimi was a member of Deloitte & Touche’s management consulting group, assisting her clients with business strategy, corporate positioning, market research, systems technologies, organizational restructuring, operations reviews, and improvements.

Mimi is a graduate of Columbia Business School, and completed her undergraduate work, with honors, in English and French literature, at Cornell University. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children. Since 1990, she has been an active board of directors member of The Jericho Project, a nonprofit providing housing and supportive services to homeless men, women, and their families.

Scarlet Cronin

Vice President for the Americas at Tent Partnership for Refugees

Scarlet is the senior director of global partnerships at the Tent Partnership for Refugees.

Prior to Tent, Scarlet worked at the Clinton Foundation for eight years. She was the associate director of the Commitments Department and head of the Response & Resilience track at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). In this role, she advised corporate, philanthropic, government, and nonprofit leaders responding to natural disasters and humanitarian crises. Before that, Scarlet worked at the Elie Wiesel Foundation, founded by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, where she organized international conferences with world leaders.

She has a BA from Trinity College Dublin.

Mark Berryman

Managing Director at Caprock

Mark Berryman is a managing director of impact and sustainable investing at Caprock. Mark leads Caprock’s impact and sustainable investment business and supports the management of impact-focused family and foundation clients. Mark has over 20 years of experience in impact investing and emerging markets finance. Mark currently sits on numerous impact and sustainable fund management boards and is a member of the Impact Assets 50 Investment Committee. Prior to joining Caprock, Mark spent 10 years as a lead investment officer with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group, where he focused on investing in financial institutions and funds (private equity, venture capital, and private debt) mainly operating in emerging markets. While at the IFC, he was field-based in Turkey, China, Mali, and Washington DC. Mark also led Deutsche Bank’s Global Social Investment Funds Group launching and managing global structured debt funds for financial inclusion and social enterprises. Mark began his career over two decades ago as a three-year Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa, and has held other positions at eBay, the Multi-lateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the Microfinance Information Exchange. Mark holds an MBA and master’s in international affairs from Georgetown University.

Cecilia Emmy Chao

Managing Director at Bain Capital Double Impact

Cecilia Chao is a managing director at Bain Capital Double Impact. She joined Bain Capital in 2008 and prior to her current role, she was a member of the private equity portfolio group. Prior to joining Bain Capital, Cecilia was a vice president at Del Monte Foods. She led the strategic planning and business development group and held positions in marketing. Prior to Del Monte, she was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she primarily focused on the CPG and financial sectors. Cecilia received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Yale University, where she double majored in chemical engineering and economics.

S. Mona Sinha ’93BUS

CEO and Founder of Insight Circle Fund; Board Chair of Women Moving Millions and the ERA Coalition Fund for Women’s Equality

Mona Sinha is a globally recognized advocate for gender equality. She has parlayed a corporate career to work at the intersection of social justice and women’s leadership.

Mona is CEO and founder of the Insight Circle Fund, which uplifts women’s leadership and centers marginalized communities. In 2023, she will launch the Insight Circle Project, which will catalyze resources for bold ideas and paradigm shifting leaders. Mona is the board chair of Women Moving Millions and the ERA Fund for Women’s Equality. She is an executive producer of Disclosure, a groundbreaking documentary film on trans representation. She is also an executive producer of Sell.Buy.Date , My Name is Andrea and the 73rd Tony Awards nominee for best play and finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, What the Constitution Means to Me.

With a focus on governance, strategy, and sustainability, Mona serves on several nonprofit boards She is a trustee emerita of Smith College, where she was vice chair and led the $486MM Women for the World capital campaign as well as the transgender admissions policy. Mona is an investor in women-led businesses and mentors several hundred people. She has a BA in economics from Smith College and an MBA in finance/marketing from Columbia University.

Mona has been widely recognized by CARE USA, Columbia University, Smith College, Children’s Hope India, Women’s eNews, Breakthrough, and Apne Aap/Gloria Steinem. In 2015, she received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which is presented annually to US citizens whose accomplishments in their field and service to the world are cause for celebration.

Jackie Jones ’17BUS

Chief of Staff and Director of the Gender Equality Division at The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Jackie Jones leads the office that oversees the foundation’s gender integration efforts, women in leadership investments, and the gender equality division’s business functions. She serves as a trusted advisor to the division’s president and executive team, supports the division’s culture and overall effectiveness, and promotes gender-related collaboration and progress across the foundation.

Jackie joined the foundation in 2019 as a deputy director on the gender equality team, where she led gender integration activities; shepherded implementation of the women in leadership strategy; managed the team’s strategy, planning, and management functions; and played a key role in the design and launch of the gender equality division.

Earlier, Jackie was an executive at Accenture, the global management consulting firm, with expertise in innovation growth strategy, organizational effectiveness, and social impact strategy. She worked across industries to enable organizations to design and implement operating models that empowered teams to execute their strategies. Jackie has worked in 20 countries across the globe and has lived in Sri Lanka, Ghana, Tanzania, and Hong Kong.

Jackie has undergraduate degrees in art history and business from the University of San Diego and MBAs from Columbia Business School and London Business School.