Program

Karla Palmer

Manager of AI for Social Good and Sustainability at Google.org

Karla Palmer is a manager of AI for social good and sustainability at Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm. There, she manages grantmaking for organizations leading AI interventions to food insecurity, maternal health, public benefits access, and more. Additionally, Karla leads Google.org’s environmental justice grantmaking, having launched the firm’s seminal initiative, the Environmental Justice Data Fund, a $9M fund for frontline communities that have been historically underserved and disproportionately impacted by climate change and environmental degradation. Before managing Google’s grantmaking initiatives, Karla worked as a policy specialist at Google, where she helped shape the firm’s policies on user protection and privacy. A DMV native, Karla holds an honors BA in political science and a certificate of advanced leadership studies from American University. Karla is passionate about connecting underserved communities to critical resources that help them achieve just outcomes and lasting change.

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.

Richard Rothenberg ’17BUS

CEO of Global AI Corporation

Richard V. Rothenberg is chief executive director at Global A.I. Corporation, a big data and artificial intelligence company that provides quantitative research, data-driven signals, and alternative data for institutional clients, including hedge funds, multinational corporations, and governments. He is also president of the Global Algorithmic Institute, a think tank that has a strategic collaboration and MoU with the United Nations and is focused on using big data to measure progress towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Previously, Richard worked as a quantitative portfolio manager and researcher at multi-billion dollar hedge funds and global investment banks, including Deutsche Bank, MAN investments, and other leading institutions. Richard is a research affiliate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — one of the world’s largest supercomputing laboratories — with 13 Nobel Prizes associated with the lab, and he has advised the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a US government agency with a focus on experimental technologies for national security.

Richard is a member of the task force on data for the Sustainable Development Goals at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and a member of the United Nations Science, Technology, and Innovation Expert Group. Richard is chair of the Quantitative Investing Group at the CFA NY Society — the leading forum for the investment community in New York with over 11K professional members — and also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of AI, Robotics, & Workplace Automation. Richard holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and computational finance from the Monterrey Institute of Technology, a certificate of quantitative finance from the CQF Institute, and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York City.

Maneesh Sagar ’03BUS

Chairman and CEO at RS Metrics

Maneesh is a serial entrepreneur, VC, and teacher. He is focused on creating interdisciplinary innovation and creating meaningful and scalable solutions for the most pressing problems of our time. He is the founder of Thynk Ventures, a hands-on VC, investing in the intersection of AI, IoT, machine learning, and process automation. He has an MBA from Columbia Business School, and a BA in economics (magna cum laude) from Ohio Wesleyan University, where he was a Presidential Scholar. He is also an innovation fellow and a founding career coach at Columbia Business School, teaching classes on innovation and VC.

Mark Zurack

Senior Lecturer in Discipline in Business at Columbia Business School

Mark A. Zurack teaches Capital Markets and Investments, Equity Derivatives, and Equity Markets and Products at Columbia Business School. Mark is currently on the board of directors of the Binghamton University Foundation and also serves on the boards of the Alzheimer’s Association, Teach For America, Upper West Success Academy, ETC, Southampton Bath and Tennis, and the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School. Prior to coming to Columbia, Professor Zurack worked at Goldman Sachs for 18 years. He joined GS in 1983 and started the equity derivatives research group. He later assumed a broader leadership role in equity derivatives, co-managing the product in both North America and Asia and leading the effort to cross-market equity derivatives products to high-net-worth individuals. He became a partner in 1994 and a managing director in 1996. Between 1998 and 2001, Professor Zurack served on the board of directors at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. He received his CFA in 1983, his MBA from Cornell in 1980, and his BS from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1978. Areas of interest: capital markets, sales and trading issues, portfolio construction, risk management, and quantitative research.

Rachel Mattes Greenberg

Head of Sustainability at Citizens

Rachel Mattes Greenberg is head of sustainability at Citizens Financial Group (CFG). She is responsible for designing and driving strategic environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives across the bank, including planning, executing, and engaging on the bank’s climate strategy. As a member of Citizens’ ESG executive steering council, she supports senior executive alignment on the enterprise-wide approach to ESG topics.

Building on the company’s foundation of sustainability-related efforts, Greenberg joined to provide leadership and oversight on the next steps of Citizens’ journey to help create a more sustainable and inclusive future for all stakeholders and the communities it serves.

Prior to joining Citizens in 2021, Greenberg served as vice president, sustainability at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. During her tenure, Greenberg led the development of JPM’s sustainable development financing target and its inaugural green and social bond issuances. Previously, she worked as chief of staff for JPM Wealth Management’s Global Head of Investments and in the world of global art, both in New York City and in Tel Aviv.

Greenberg earned a BA in government and history of art and an MBA from Cornell University.

Chrissybil Boulin

CEO and Founder of Vero Learning

Bio coming soon!

Keith Camhi

Managing Director of Techstars Economic Mobility, Powered by Samvid Ventures

Bio coming soon!

Jorge Guzman

Gantcher Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School

Dr. Jorge Guzman is an assistant professor at the Management Division at Columbia Business School. Jorge received his PhD from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and was previously a postdoc at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a lecturer at MIT Sloan. His research focuses on entrepreneurship policy, regional entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial strategy. He was previously involved in the Boston startup ecosystem, and has been an advisor to numerous startups on varied topics, and to regional and national policy agencies on the design of entrepreneurship ecosystems.

Kevan de Silva

Founder of Impactica Labs

Bio coming soon!

Vikas Raj ’10BUS

Co-founder and Managing Partner of ResilienceVC; Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School

Vikas Raj is an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. He is a noted expert on venture capital and impact investing, with a particular focus on financial technology (fintech) and resilience.

Professor Raj is co-founder and managing partner of ResilienceVC, a venture investor in fintech startups that drive financial resilience for the underserved. Over the course of his career, he has invested in over 70 fintech startups, helping them raise over $1 billion and creating over $4 billion in value, with a singular focus on inclusive solutions for highly underserved consumers and small businesses. Previously, Professor Raj was the managing director of Accion Venture Lab, the world’s first seed-stage venture fund focused on fintech for the underserved. Prior to Venture Lab, Professor Raj was an M&A investment banker at Evercore Partners. He also helped build two pioneering entities in the microfinance space, as an early employee at Ujjivan and ASA International, both of which are now publicly traded companies.

Professor Raj has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Columbia Business School (2010). He is also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the chair of the investment committee of the Catalyst Fund, a climate fintech fund focused on Africa, a fintech contributor for Forbes and the host of the Pnyx, a technology debate podcast.

Michael Schlein

President and CEO of Accion

Michael Schlein brings nearly 30 years of extensive international banking, management, and public service experience to his role as president and CEO of Accion. He is responsible for creating and implementing Accion’s strategy, managing its global team, and building a high-performing organization. Michael builds partnerships with the public and private sector, encouraging more energy, investments, and action directed at creating a financially inclusive world.

Michael joined Accion in 2007 as a member of its board of directors and in 2009, became Accion’s president and CEO. Prior to his employment at Accion, Michael served as president of Citigroup’s International Franchise Management, where he managed the bank’s network of 100 chief country officers. Before that, he ran communications, philanthropy, government relations, branding, and human resources for Citigroup. He served as chief of staff at the US Securities and Exchange Commission in the Clinton Administration and in New York’s City Hall in the Dinkins and Koch Administrations. He began his career in investment banking.

From 2014 until Jan. 2021, Michael served as the chairman of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which encourages economic growth throughout New York City’s five boroughs and facilitates investments that build capacity, generate prosperity, and catalyze the economic vibrancy of city life as a whole.

Michael has graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

Jeffrey Prosserman ’22SPS

Founder and CEO at Voltpost

Jeffrey Prosserman is founder and CEO at Voltpost, a venture-backed company based in New York and San Francisco that is on a mission to decarbonize mobility by democratizing charging access. Voltpost does this by retrofitting lampposts into an electric vehicle charging platform. Prior to starting Voltpost, Prosserman was the director of innovation at Samsung in New York City. He has worked at the forefront of technology for over twenty years. In 2022, he graduated from the Columbia University Sustainability Management program and is creating vital climate technology solutions for the future of humanity.

Prosserman is a product management and business executive focused on strategy, design, and innovation. Expertise spans charging, mobile, TV, XR, IoT, and sustainability. As the Samsung director of innovation, Prosserman led a cross-functional team to develop mobile, TV, and digital appliance platforms at the intersection of trends and technology. Some products that Prosserman led development for include Samsung Podcasts, Media Launcher, the first Samsung mobile AR camera apps, and Samsung Family Hub refrigerator, which is focused on reducing food waste and won CES Innovation Awards.

Prior to Samsung, Prosserman was the founder and CEO at Livestage, a 360 video platform that produced VR music video content with major artists and brands. He was also a senior producer at The Daily, the first mobile publication at News Corp. Over his career, he produced projects with WarnerMedia, IBM, BBC Worldwide, Dell, Mashable, Giphy, Johnson & Johnson, and many other brands. With an entrepreneurial spirit, Prosserman is a visionary leader who is driven to build a business that at scale ratchets down millions of tons of carbon, provides cleaner air, builds stronger communities, and creates jobs. With a bias toward action, Prosserman is a general manager and strategist who leads Voltpost business, company, and product development.

Prosserman is committed to making a positive impact by creating a sustainable and equitable future for people and our planet.

Satish Rao

Chief Product Officer at Newlab

Satish Rao is the chief product officer of Newlab, an infrastructure platform for deep tech that addresses significant societal needs by scaling and commercializing emerging technologies and companies. To date, Newlab has supported its 250+ member companies in raising over $2B in capital from 260 venture capital firms, with over $1.5B of successful exits and a collective valuation of over $8B.

Satish leads Newlab’s global applied innovation practice that pairs industry and government enterprises with startups to make progress against climate challenges within the themes of mobility, energy, and materials. With a robust startup community and access to critical infrastructure, Newlab is an engine that drives global networks towards place-based innovation, venture building, and product development.

Satish previously led physical science commercialization activities at Columbia Technology Ventures, where he also launched several lab-to-market accelerator programs. He has a PhD in physics, with research expertise in nanomaterials, optics, and biophysics with one company launched based on foundational IP he developed in the lab.

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.

Nathan Garlock ’24BUS

Head of Revenue Operations and Strategy at Rubicon Carbon

Nathan Garlock is the director of operations at Rubicon Carbon and a founding team member. He’s pursuing an EMBA at Columbia Business School, graduating in May 2024. Nathan began his career in operations at Amazon, and then played a key role at SalesRabbit leading to its successful private equity exit, and later joined Hum Capital as a venture associate before joining Rubicon Carbon in New York City.

Chris Brown

Head of Supply at Rubicon Carbon

Chris Brown is an investment leader with a passion for advancing climate technology and sustainable solutions. Currently serving as the head of investments at Rubicon Carbon Capital, Chris oversees tech-driven carbon projects and carbon removal investments. His career includes strategic roles at Contrarian Ventures, where he championed budding climate tech initiatives, and Alexa Capital in London, where he specialized in climate tech-focused investment banking. With experiences at Goldman Sachs and SSE, Chris brings a blend of corporate acumen and innovative thinking.

Mark Berryman

Managing Director of Impact and Sustainable Investing 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.

Paul O’Connell

President of WaterEquity

Paul O’Connell is president of WaterEquity, a non-profit asset manager dedicated to expanding access to water and sanitation in emerging markets. Prior to joining WaterEquity, Paul spent over 20 years as president and managing partner of FDO Partners, LLC, managing currency and equity portfolios for sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and other institutional investors. Paul has deep experience in the research and practice of international finance. He served as a member of the editorial board of the Emerging Markets Review and the review board for the Research Foundation of the CFA Institute, and has spoken at TED about the potential of capital markets to fund sustainable development goals.

He has published a variety of academic articles on exchange rate behavior, international capital flows, and labor migration. From 2010–2016, he was chair of the board of the US arm of Gavi, a global alliance dedicated to expanding vaccine availability in developing countries. He served on the board of Water.org from 2016 to 2022. An Irish native, Paul received a BA in economics from Trinity College, Dublin and an AM and PhD in economics from Harvard University

Gary White

CEO and Co-founder of Water.org and WaterEquity

Gary White is an observer, an innovator, and a problem-solver. He obtained three degrees in civil and environmental engineering, and as a passionate problem-solver he created a solution that has empowered millions of people in need with access to safe water and sanitation.

When Gary traveled to Honduras in his early twenties, he visited impoverished communities, where he observed first-hand the adversities faced by those living without access to safe water or a toilet at home. While in one village, he was struck by “how many above-ground graves there were, and how small most of them were.” Young children were dying due to water-related diseases.

Gary knew access to safe water and sanitation was the answer to a bright future for the families he met in these villages — a future with more hope, health, and possibilities. He returned to the United States determined to end the global water crisis.

Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala ’00BUS

Chief Climate Officer of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection

Rohit T. “Rit” Aggarwala was appointed Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the City’s Chief Climate Officer in February 2022. Under his leadership, DEP has embraced a leadership role on both stormwater and coastal resilience, streamlined its procurement processes to be able to invest more money in infrastructure each year, and improved DEP’s water revenues by reducing accounts receivable and delivering revenues $250 million above budget in his first year. As Chief Climate Officer, he also led the development of New York City’s most recent sustainability plan, PlaNYC

Prior to the Adams administration, Aggarwala served as the first director of the New York City Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, where he led the creation of the first PlaNYC. He later founded the environmental grantmaking program at Bloomberg Philanthropies and served as president of the board of directors of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. He was part of the founding team at Sidewalk Labs — Google’s urban technology startup — and more recently was a senior urban tech fellow at the Jacobs Cornell-Technion Institute. He has co-chaired the Regional Plan Association’s Fourth Regional Plan for the New York metropolitan area and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Aggarwala holds a PhD, MBA, and BA from Columbia University and an MA from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Gernot Wagner

Senior Lecturer in Discipline of Economics in the Faculty of Business and Faculty Director of the Climate Knowledge Initiative at Columbia Business School

Gernot Wagner is a climate economist at Columbia Business School. His research, writing, and teaching focus on climate risks and climate policy.

Gernot writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate and has written four books: Geoengineering: the Gamble, published by Polity (2021); Stadt, Land, Klima (“City, Country, Climate”), published, in German, by Brandstätter Verlag (2021); Climate Shock, joint with Harvard’s Martin Weitzman and published by Princeton (2015), among others, a Top 15 Financial Times McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2015, and Austria’s Natural Science Book of the Year 2017; and But will the planet notice?, published by Hill & Wang/Farrar Strauss & Giroux (2011).

Prior to joining Columbia as senior lecturer and serving as faculty director of the Climate Knowledge Initiative, Gernot taught at NYU, Harvard, and Columbia. He was the founding executive director of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program (2016–2019), and served as economist at the Environmental Defense Fund (2008–2016), most recently as lead senior economist (2014–2016) and member of its Leadership Council (2015–2016). He has been a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute, and is a CESifo Research Network Fellow, a faculty affiliate at the Columbia Center for Environmental Economics and Policy, a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, a coordinating lead author of the Austrian Panel on Climate Change, and he serves on the board of CarbonPlan.org.

Born and raised in Amstetten, Austria, Gernot graduated from high school in his hometown before moving to the United States for college. He holds a joint bachelor’s magna cum laude with highest honors in environmental science, public policy, and economics, and a master’s and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard, as well as a master’s in economics from Stanford.

Follow Gernot on Mastodon (skip Twitter, at least for now), or sign up for email updates.