Reunion Speakers

Maggie Benkert advises firms across a range of sizes, ownership structures, and industries to develop board and CEO succession plans. Based in New York, she brings experience in corporate governance, activist preparedness and defense, long-term board and CEO succession planning, and board buildouts.

Professor Broadie currently teaches the elective courses Security Pricing: Models and Computation, Computational Finance, and Programming for Business Research. He is an Academic Advisory Board Member for the Program for Financial Studies. His research interests include the pricing of derivative securities, risk management and, more generally, quantitative methods for decision-making under uncertainty.

Leo Espinoza specializes in senior-level executive search in the Global Industrial, Global Energy, Private Equity, Financial Officer, Supply Chain and Board Practices. He is a core member of the firm’s CEO and Board Practices. Leo brings more than two decades of experience with domestic and multinational organizations in a variety of industries, and additionally provides search expertise in the business and professional services as well as the transportation and third-party logistics industries.

Extensive executive search and leadership expertise

Daniel Guetta is Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Business School. His research focuses on the ways companies can harness the power of data and analytics to drive value. He teaches classes in business analytics, including data science, pricing, supply chain management, and technical tools such as python and cloud computing. He has authored award-winning case studies in the area with a number of companies, and co-authored "Python for MBAs".

Raji has a diverse range of experiences having served as Chief Executive, Board Director, CFO, COO, and strategy professional within the corporate and non-profit world. She has been a founding board member of two organizations and has sat on an additional six non-profit boards in various capacities from general member to Treasurer and Board Chair.

Professor Knee teaches Media Mergers and Acquisitions, co-teaches The Media Industries: Public Policy and Business Strategy with Professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School, and co-teaches Digital Investing with Adjunct Professor Jeremy Philips. He also serves as co-director of the Media & Technology Program with Professor Sarvary. Professor Knee is a Senior Advisor at Evercore Partners. Before joining Evercore as a Senior Managing Director in 2003, Professor Knee was a Managing Director and Co-head of Morgan Stanley's Media Group.

Bruce Kogut is the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School. He teaches courses on Governance, Governance and Ethics, and Business Strategies and Solving Social Problems. He has taught in executive programs in the US, Europe, and China.

Angela Lee teaches venture capital, leadership, and strategy courses at CBS.  She brings 20 years of innovation, strategy, and entrepreneurship experience to the classroom.  She started her career in product management and then moved into strategy consulting at McKinsey.  Angela is passionate about entrepreneurship and has started several companies in the education sector.  She is a startup investor and the founder of 37 Angels, an investing network that has evaluated 15000 startups, invested in 80, and activates new investors through a startup investment boot camp.

Costis Maglaras is the 16th Dean of Columbia Business School, and the David and Lyn Silfen Professor of Business at Columbia University. Costis received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, London, in 1990, and his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1991 and 1998, respectively. He joined Columbia Business School in 1998, when he joined the Decision, Risk and Operations Division.

Sandra Matz takes a Big Data approach to studying human behavior in a variety of business-related domains. She combines methodologies from psychology and computer science – including machine learning, experimental designs, online surveys, and field studies – to explore the relationships between people’s psychological characteristics (e.g. their personality) and the digital footprints they leave with every step they take in the digital environment (e.g. their Facebook Likes or their credit card transactions).

Professor Netzer's expertise centers on one of the major business challenges of the data-rich environment: developing quantitative methods that leverage data to gain a deeper understanding of customer behavior and guide firms' decisions. He focuses primarily on building statistical and econometric models to measure consumer preferences and understand how customer choices change over time, and across contexts. Most notably, he has developed a framework for managing firms' customer bases through dynamic segmentation.

Nicole is region head of the New York Private Wealth Management (PWM) business and also leads the PWM Sports and Entertainment Solutions (SES) offering, which her team launched in 2018. She serves as co-chair of the Americas Inclusion and Diversity Committee (IDC), and is a member of the Global IDC. Prior to her current role, Nicole was head of the Mid-Atlantic PWM business. She joined Goldman Sachs in 1999 as a private wealth advisor in PWM in New York and continues working with clients today as part of her overall responsibilities.

Mr. Speyer is Chairman of Tishman Speyer. He is one of the two founding partners of the company, formed in 1978. Actively engaged with a number of philanthropic efforts, Mr. Speyer is Chairman of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Mr. Speyer’s other board affiliations include the Museum of Modern Art, where he is Chairman Emeritus, Yankee Global Enterprises, Columbia Business School Board, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board, and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.

Hitendra Wadhwa is an Adjunct Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and founder of the Mentora Institute. He teaches Columbia's most popular MBA leadership class on Personal Leadership & Success. He also teaches MBA and Executive Education programs on Driving Strategic Impact and Leading from the Inside Out, and has received the Executive-MBA Commitment to Excellence Award, the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence, the Lear Award for Service to Students, and the Columbia Marketing Association Award for the Most Dynamic and Engaging Professor.

* It's pronounced like "juggernaut" without the "jug."

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