Sean Brady

NYU JD 2011
InSITE Rightframe Team Fall 2009
InSITE Rentricity Team Spring 2009
VP NYU Recruiting 2009-2010

This past summer, Sean worked with the Environmental Defense Fund’s Innovation Exchange Program, studying how business executives at large American corporations network to find sustainable business solutions. As an undergraduate Sean majored in interdisciplinary studies, focusing on team taught courses with students and professors from multiple academic disciplines. He is currently a member of the ABA Committee on Clean Technology and Climate Change and volunteers with the Clean Tech Open. He hopes to work with clean technology start-up companies after law school. Sean graduated from the University of Iowa with high distinction.

Josh Brandley

Columbia MBA 2011

Prior to attending Columbia, Josh worked as a management consultant at Carpedia International, after which he helped launch Vortex Connect, a mobile web technology venture. At Carpedia, Josh advised senior management working in many different sectors on the feasibility of business opportunities. During the launch of Vortex, Josh focused on product management, business development, and client services. Josh received a B.Sc.in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto.

Tim Cohan / VP Internal

Columbia Law 2011
InSITE Frogtek Team Spring 2009
VP Internal 2009-2010

Tim returned to academia after a significant stint in the professional world. He received his undergraduate degree from Williams College in 1989, after which he moved to Paris and established a catering business, which he operated for five years. He returned to New York and began a career in the entertainment industry, as a songwriter, performer, producer, and owner of an independent record label. He spent eight years in the legal and business affairs department of Peermusic, a worldwide music publishing company, eventually specializing in copyright litigation and overseeing large music-catalogue acquisitions. At Columbia he is focusing on intellectual property law and policy, and spent the past summer at the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts, a university-sponsored think-tank focusing on copyright and intellectual property issues.

Lee Drucker

NYU JD/MBA 2011
InSITE Quartzy Team Spring 2009

Lee is the co-founder of SharePower, an on-line shareholder forum focused on improving the corporate governance of public companies by engaging retail investors. Prior to graduate school Lee founded a clothing company that catered to boutiques in NYC. He has also worked at Burford Advisors, a company focused on servicing the legal industry. At Burford, he worked extensively in both the legal process outsourcing and the litigation funding industries. He spent last summer at the law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, in New York. Lee graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in Communication Sciences and History.

Ryan Golden

NYU JD 2011

Prior to NYU Law, he helped implement PeopleSoft Financials for a division of Lockheed Martin, and has worked at both for-profit and not-for-profit startups. His industry experience covers web development, health information technology, and financing. This coming summer, he will be a Summer Associate at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto.

Sharon Goswami

NYU JD 2012
InSITE [me] & goji Team Fall 2009

Sharon has had extensive experience with grant writing in an academic context when she studied Chemical Engineering at Princeton University. As a Reiner G. Stoll Fellow, she researched fuel cells and other alternative energy technologies with Professor Jay Benziger, publishing a paper in American Chemical Society journal Langmuir detailing her findings. She later interned with privately held start-up Vorbeck Materials in R&D for their product graphene and with their in-house patent attorney developing new claims in the patent applications. Most recently, she has interned with the educational start-up Top Test Prep to help them expand their business as well as improve their tutoring services. She plans to specialize in Intellectual Property Litigation after graduating from law school.

Shiv Hira

Stern MBA 2011

At Stern, Shiv is a vice-president in the entrepreneurs club leading an initiative to establish a venture capital fund. Prior to Stern, Shiv worked in the investment banking division at J.P. Morgan Chase within the Syndicated & Leverage Finance Group. At J.P. Morgan Shiv executed mergers, acquisitions, and spin-offs for Fortune 500 companies by structuring loans and developing marketing strategies to raise capital. Shiv was also an internal consultant at J.P. Morgan and worked on projects in various functions including technology, profitability, and corporate strategy. Shiv holds a B.B.A from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Colleen Hongisberg

Columbia JD 2011
InSITE Krossover Intelligence Team Fall 2009

Prior to law school, she received a B.S. from UCLA and worked first at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and then at Compass Lexecon. At PwC, she investigated accounting fraud and obtained her CPA license. At Compass Lexecon, she worked as an economic consultant. This past summer, Colleen worked as an associate with Baker Botts, and this coming summer she will work for Latham & Watkins.

Camilla Jimenez Villa

NYU MBA/MFA 2012
InSITE Catchafire Team Fall 2009

Camila grew up between Colombia and Italy where she used to be a professional fencer. She studied Communication in Milan before joining the NFTS in London to train as a filmmaker. After the NFTS, Camila and two fellow graduates founded “Cut the Papaya”, an independent film production company. Camila currently lives in NYC, where she is pursuing an MBA/MFA in Film Production at NYU.

Christopher Johnson

Columbia MBA 2011
InSITE PayPerks Team Fall 2009

Prior to Columbia, Chris served as President/Managing Officer of Rackson Corporation, a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise company, which owns and operates 18 restaurants in New Jersey and Michigan. For the past five years, Chris has managed a company staff of over 270 employees and the restaurant operation, marketing, and administrative duties. This fall, he constructed and opened two new restaurants in his New Jersey market. Previously, Chris owned and operated a Dunkin Donuts restaurant in Michigan.

Michael Katz

Columbia MBA 2011
InSITE Tigerbow Team Fall 2009

Before starting at Columbia, he was Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Conductor, an NYC-based technology start-up. Prior to Conductor, he focused on media investments as a venture capitalist at Pequot Ventures (now known as FirstMark Capital), and worked for Merrill Lynch in the Global Markets & Investment Banking division. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Project Enterprise, a Harlem-based nonprofit that provides micro loans and free consulting services to low-income entrepreneurs. Mike graduated with a B.S. from Georgetown University.

Oren Livne

NYU JD/MBA 2012
InSITE [me] & goji Team Fall 2009
InSITE Rentricity Team Spring 2009

At NYU, Oren is a Leadership Program in Law and Business Scholar and an Intellectual Property Law Scholar. He worked for several years at the Office of Technology Transfer at the University of California, Office of the President before co-founding a technology transfer office at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. He is currently managing a portfolio of intellectual property for UCSB’s Solid State Lighting and Energy Center and has significant international experience negotiating with institutions and companies (from startups to multinationals) in Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Germany, and France as well as the United States. Oren has published in several journals on topics including cost conscious patent filings and monetizing intellectual property. He graduated first in his class from Rutgers University where he majored in biochemical engineering and pursued a year of graduate study in chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a registered patent agent and a Certified Licensing Professional.

Stephanie Palmeri

Columbia MBA 2011
InSITE PayPerks Team Fall 2009

Prior to Columbia, Stephanie was a Senior Consultant at ‘mktg’ in the Marketing Applications & Consulting Group. Her consulting projects included identifying, designing and implementing digital marketing and technology solutions for global clients including SAP and Diageo. Prior to this, she was a Marketing Development Manager at Estee Lauder, where she led both new product and promotional marketing programs for the Clinique brand in alternative distribution channels. Her professional career began at Accenture, where she consulted Capital Market and Financial Service clients on market data assessment and automations projects. She is interested in the use of new media and technology to grow and sustain brands. Stephanie graduated from Villanova University with a BSBA in Marketing and Management Information Systems.

Gregory Pennington

Columbia MBA 2011
InSITE PayPerks Team Fall 2009

Prior to Columbia, Gregory worked at Google as an engineer, focusing on ads products and sales partnerships. He designed and delivered new tools to Google’s top customers and helped them interface their infrastructure with Google’s ads-buying systems. Before that, he was engaged in computational biology research at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a BS and MS in computer science from Carnegie Mellon in 2005 and 2006.

Brian Rothenberg

Stern MBA 2011
InSITE Rightframe Team Fall 2009

Outside of school, Brian is an intern at Canaan Partners, a venture capital firm specializing in early-stage information technology and life sciences investments with $2.4B of capital under management. Before moving to New York, Brian lived in his native San Francisco Bay Area where he worked at Yahoo! for several years. As Product Manager for Yahoo! Real Estate, he helped grow the online property to the #1 most visited real estate website. Concurrently, he helped several other Yahoo! businesses gain market share by serving as Team Lead for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) across the $1B Local Marketplaces & Commerce division. Brian also started two companies; an online ticket brokerage company and a private equity company that successfully acquired three web businesses. Brian earned a BS in Business Administration from the University of Southern California. Brian recently started blogging about technology and venture capital at his website.

Zach Safir

Columbia JD/MBA 2011
InSITE Maestro Market Team Leader Spring 2009
InSITE Royal Felt Team Leader Fall 2008
InSITE Frutels Team Spring 2008
VP Columbia Recruiting 2009-2010

Zach joined InSITE in Spring 2008. During law school, he interned during his first summer with Office of the Vice President and General Counsel at Yale University and his second in a summer associate positions at a law firm in New York. Before law school, Zach spent two years as an Associate in the Los Angeles office of the Boston Consulting Group, where he focused on the travel and tourism, education, and consumer goods industries. He graduated from Yale University in 2005, where he majored in History.

Alex Shellhammer

Stern MBA 2011
InSITE [me] & goji Team Fall 2009

Prior to attending NYU, he spent 4 years as a Design Engineer at Honda R&D Americas, Inc where he was responsible for leading the development of vehicle components from concept ideation through mass production. At Honda he gained extensive experience in operations, product development and project management while negotiating across functional groups to successfully implement his designs. He also has experience working for Toyota where he spent a summer learning and implementing the operational effectiveness techniques of Continuous Improvement (Kaizen) and the Toyota Production System (TPS). Alex holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a BA in East Asian Studies from Bucknell University.

Maria Testani

Columbia MBA 2011
InSITE Rightframe Team Fall 2009

Previously, Maria was an associate at a boutique investment bank, Salem Partners, where she advised life sciences and technology start-ups through the venture capital funding process. Prior to Salem Partners, Maria was an investment banking analyst at Citigroup in New York and Wachovia in Los Angeles. As an analyst, Maria advised numerous clients on capital raises and mergers and acquisitions in the energy, gaming and entertainment sectors. Maria is also an active volunteer and fundraiser for New York Says Thank You, a non-profit organization which travels to disaster ravaged cities every 9/11 anniversary and assists in the rebuild of the community. Maria graduated Summa Cum Laude from New York University’s Stern School of Business with a BS in Finance and Accounting.

Marisa Tricarico

Stern MBA 2011
InSITE Tigerbow Team Fall 2009

Prior to business school, Marisa worked at Clarion Healthcare, a strategy consulting company specialized in pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other healthcare-related spaces. Marisa has experience assessing commercial opportunity & potential indications for new products, devising new product entry strategy, and evaluating new therapeutic areas for client expansion. Before Clarion Healthcare, Marisa worked as a neuroscience researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, performing structural neuroimaging research related to aging & Alzheimer’s disease. Prior to Massachusetts General, she worked as a research assistant with fMRI technology at Boston University’s Center for Memory and Brain. She has published a first-author abstract for the American Academy of Neurology and has co-authored other publications in the Journal of Neuroscience and Gene. Marisa holds a BA in Cognitive Neuroscience and is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Boston University.

Sean Weinstock

NYU JD 2012

Prior to NYU Law, Sean took on a variety of entrepreneurial projects including co-founding LocoBuzz, a Web 2.0 firm aimed at providing online event ticketing and remote viewing capabilities for college events. Sean previously worked as a Strategy Intern at Stone Yamashita Partners, a boutique management consultancy in San Francisco, where he primarily focused on a client engagement with a major pharmaceutical.

Ben Zhuk

Columbia MBA 2011

Ben founded Antenna, a product design company in NYC, in 2004. Since then, he has co-founded three joint ventures that use communication technology to create new markets in underserved B2B niches. Ben is focused on improving customer experience through behavior analysis and rapid product iteration.