Adam Kalamchi / President / Columbia MBA 2013, Linkedin
Prior to enrolling at Columbia Business school, Adam worked in technology private equity at ATIC, an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund. Before that, he spent three years at McKinsey & Company focused on consumer packaged goods and private equity transactions. Adam has also co-founded a non-profit, an internet start up, and acted as an adviser to several start ups. Adam received his B.A. in economics from Harvard College.
Owen Kirshner / VP Operations / NYU JD 2013, Linkedin
Prior to NYU Law, Owen has been involved in a number of start-ups. In 2009 he co-founded FindJoey, which provides bus tracking and management systems to hotels and universities. After spending a summer with the legal team at Meetup.com and working for a startup law firm in Silicon Valley, he’ll be back on the West Coast next year in the emerging companies group at Orrick, Herrington, Sutcliffe, LLP. Owen previously worked at the Massachusetts Division of Banks, doing mortgage lender and broker regulation.
Brian Ballan / VP of Sourcing / Columbia MBA 2013, Linkedin
Brian has broad professional experience in business strategy, operations, and product development. Most recently, Brian worked in Business Development and Product Management at foursquare, focusing on the Merchant Platform. Prior to foursquare, Brian worked as a consultant with L.E.K. Consulting and as a VP in corporate strategy for Citigroup’s Global Wealth Management and Citi Holdings divisions. In between, he spent a year as a line cook at Buddakan NY and co-founded A&B American Style, a condiment company which can be found online at abamerican.com.
Lila Pla Alemany / VP of Communications / Columbia MBA 2013 , Linkedin
Lila is an entrepreneur with extensive experience in raising funds for media and artistic projects. Prior to her MBA, she founded an independent film and theatre production company in Barcelona for 4 years. She wrote and produced several films, documentaries and theatrical shows including a documentary feature film that was nominated to Best Catalan Film in 2007, a global campaign for Amnesty International featuring U2 and Peter Gabriel, and the first live-action 3D film in Spain of a circus show ‘Beds’. Some of her company’s clients included the Catalan National Public broadcasting network, Comunicalia, Amnesty International, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Catalan National Theatre, among others. Lila holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University (First Class Degree) and a MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics. For her summer internship, Lila worked at the global consulting firm Bain & Co. In her spare time, she collaborates with the Catalan Foundation for Children with Cancer and Amnesty International.
Craig Wilson / VP of Events / NYU MBA 2014, Linkedin
Craig grew up in Sparta, NJ and attended Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT where he graduated with an economics degree. In between Middlebury and Stern, Craig has had a variety of careers with one central theme: helping people grow their start-ups. Over the course of that time, he has worked on a cattle farm, as a ski patroller, and helped start a data analytics company.
Zach Lane / VP of Columbia Recruiting / Columbia JD/MBA 2013, Linkedin
Zach is a J.D./M.B.A. candidate at Columbia University. Prior to entering graduate school, he advised a number of different startups through the Reynolds Scholars program at NYU. He also served as the Content Manager of JustMeans.com, a startup focusing on helping companies to communicate with consumers about environmental and social issues. Since coming to Columbia, Zach has served as the president of the social enterprise organization at the law school. He also has experience working on a variety of legal issues for early stage startups and angel investors.
Kevin St. John / VP of NYU Recruiting / NYU MBA 2013, Linkedin
Marianna Zaslavsky / VP of Partnerships / Columbia MBA 2013, Linkedin
Marianna joined InSITE in Fall 2011. Prior to Columbia Business School, Marianna worked for four years at Citi Private Bank, first as an Investment Strategy Analyst and later as an Associate Banker. She advised and evaluated investment portfolios, including private equity and hedge fund allocations, for clients in the ultra high net worth market. In addition, she advised on structured lending strategies and trust and estate planning. Marianna has also been involved in two mobile app start-ups, managing their strategic development and capital raise efforts. Marianna is originally from Ukraine and was raised in Boston. Marianna has a B.A from Columbia University, Columbia College.
Zak Schwarzman / VP Special Projects / Columbia MBA 2013, Linkedin
Zak is a second year Columbia Business School student and active participant in New York’s venture capital and startup community. In addition to serving as InSITE’s Vice President for Special Projects, Zak works at Canaan Partners, a global venture capital firm with $3.4B AUM. He previously worked with DFJ Gotham, AOL Ventures and Learn Capital. Prior to Columbia Business School, Zak spent six years launching and raising institutional funding for international and economic development ventures. Most recently, Zak worked as a senior associate with Seedco, designing and raising over $25 million for job training and small business lending programming, with an emphasis on the green economy. Previously, Zak worked as the Central and South America Regional Field Director for the Obama campaign, designing and executing a pilot initiative to organize American voters living abroad in Latin America. In 2007-2008, he co-founded a community development site for the international development organization Manna Project International, whose board of directors he now chairs. He earned a B.A. In Political Economy with a minor in Business from Tulane University in 2005.Ed Rayner / VP of Alumni / Columbia MBA 2013,
Ed is a second-year MBA student at Columbia Business School. Prior to CBS, he worked in private equity as an Associate at Parthenon Capital Partners, a middle-market growth equity fund in San Francisco and Boston. At Parthenon, Ed was active in evaluating and executing new transactions as well as working with portfolio companies in the healthcare technology space. Prior to Parthenon, Ed worked as a management consultant in Oliver Wyman’s aerospace group, where he worked with a global base of commercial aviation clients on strategy initiatives. Ed graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Computer Science.
Jack Chao / AVP of Operations / Columbia MBA 2014, Linkedin
Prior to attending Columbia Business School, Jack was a Member of the Technical Staff at D. E. Shaw Research, where he developed specialized supercomputers for high-speed molecular dynamics simulations, with the ultimate goal of significantly advancing the process of drug development. During that time, Jack worked in a variety of engineering roles including chip design, design verification, circuit board design, and lab bring-up. Jack holds a BSE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and has completed work toward a PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford as a National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellow.
Sam Slover / AVP of Sourcing / NYU ITP 2014, Linkedin
Sam Slover is a graduate student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). He is the co-founder of Learn It Live, an online learning website that connects people to experts. He’s most passionate about creating new technologies and media that allow people to better learn about themselves and the world they live in, and hopefully make better decisions because of it. Previously, he worked with social entrepreneur projects in Honduras and India, and launched a seed capital program at a micro-finance firm in Bolivia. In a prior life, he was a financial journalist in Vancouver, Canada.
Sanjay is an MBA student at Columbia Business School with an interest in media, entertainment, technology, and entrepreneurship. Prior to school, he spent three years working as the CEO’s right-hand at SONGS Music Publishing, a NYC-based independent publisher that represents songwriters like Diplo, Q-Tip, Morgan Kibby of M83, Conor Oberst, Ted Leo, and Dev. Before that, he spent two years at McKinsey & Company primarily serving hospitality and regional banking clients. Sanjay received a BA/MA in Economics and a BA in Mathematics from Northwestern University.Sikandar Atiq / AVP of Sourcing / NYU MBA 2014, Linkedin
Sikandar is currently a graduate student at NYU Stern School of business. Prior to joining Stern he held the position of Vice President of Portfolio Development for the $50M independently funded growth capital and buyout firm – Next Equities. Here he focused on sourcing opportunities and carrying out an initial assessment of these opportunities. Sikandar has also started two successful national companies and has been recognized as one of Alberta’s “Ten Rising Stars” as chosen by Alberta Venture Magazine.
Prior to attending NYU Stern School of Business, Christina was the digital marketing director at sweetgreen, a Washington, DC based food startup. She helped the company grow and achieve its scale to expand its locations both within the Washington, DC region, Pennsylvania and New York. Simultaneously, she assisted various startups in achieving their scale through rapid market penetration and through innovative digital platforms. Prior to sweetgreen, she worked at Deloitte Consulting and graduated George Washington University with a B.A. in Finance and Economics.
Selim Sulos / AVP of Recruiting (Columbia) / Columbia MBA 2014, Linkedin
Prior to attending Columbia Business School, Selim worked as a manager at Deloitte’s Discovery and Analytics Consulting practice in NY. In this role, he not only advised Fortune 500s on cost efficient discovery techniques, but also assisted Deloitte leadership during the establishment of a $60M cutting edge data discovery facility. In addition, Selim collaborated with discovery startups to use social networking for uncovering corporate corruption. Selim currently advises a NY startup with $1M in seed funding for building an artificially intelligent system that provides legal guidance. Selim received his BA in Computer Science and Economics from Brandeis University, where he graduated with distinction.
Dontae Rayford / AVP of Recruiting (NYU) / NYU MBA 2014, Linkedin
First year MBA student at NYU Stern, specializing in Entrepreneurship and Entertainment, Media and Technology. Before Stern, Dontae earned in BA and MA in Sociology from Stanford University. After graduation, he worked briefly at a startup in Palo Alto, before moving to Sacramento to complete a fellowship with the California State Assembly. For the past 4 years, Dontae was at Google’s headquarters working on initiatives related to advertising, digital payments and the Android operating system.
Frederico Lourenco / AVP of Partnerships / Phd Weill Cornell 2015, Linkedin
Frederico is a PhD candidate in Neuroscience. His current research focus on understanding how experiential (trial and error) learning and instructed knowledge are combined to optimize human decisions. Prior to moving to the U.S. and joining Weill Cornell, Frederico received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering at University of Coimbra, Portugal. Frederico is VP of Operations and co-founder of Repairogen, a biotech start-up that is developing natural DNA repair enhancers that will revolutionize anti-aging skincare. In addition, he is currently part of a team of consultants performing a landscape analysis designed to support strategic planning efforts within Pfizer’s Peptide Research Unit. Beyond entrepreneurship and venture capital, Frederico is passionate about aviation and Krav Maga (yellow belt).
Brian is a problem solver. Prior to NYU Stern, Brian was a career consultant solving the problems of clients across industries. Over time, Brian began to specialize in the enterprise software and solutions space, with an eye on cloud-based technologies. In this function he helped develop joint-ventures around the world for some of the largest players in tech. Outside of his work-life, Brian also addresses social health problems, most notably cancer of the esophagus, the US’s fastest growing cancer.
Tom is a passionate technologist from San Francisco who focuses on strategic solutions and innovative products. Before attending Columbia Business School, Tom was a Principal Engineer at Oracle, where he leveraged multiple customer relationships to deliver innovative solutions to help business units to operate information system with five-nine availability and high performance. He also had some startup experience, having worked in one and co-founded one in location-based mobile games. As a CBS MBA of 2014, Tom continues his passion in strategy and entrepreneurship. He is actively participating in startup communities at Columbia and New York City at large and concentrating on strategy, product positioning, and financial model.
Nick Veomett graduated from the University of Arizona with a B.S. in Biochemistry, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College. In his second year of graduate school, Nick founded the Weill Cornell Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club, which unites scientists in the tri-institutional area interested in entrepreneurship in the life sciences industry. He is also a Technical Adviser to the Big Red Venture Fund, a venture capital fund affiliated with the Cornell Business School, and the Financial Partner in Club Biomed, a student and faculty investment club with equities in the biopharma sector. Currently, Nick works in the laboratory of David Scheinberg, M.D. Ph.D., at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Nick’s research is focused on translating a novel antibody therapy for leukemia into a clinical candidate.