Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Professor Tania Babina joined the Columbia Business School in 2016. She received a Ph.D. from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina. Her research is at the juncture of corporate finance, labor economics, and entrepreneurship. More broadly, she studies inter-relationship between human capital and firm investment, financing, and organizational choices. Her current research explores drivers of entrepreneurship and factors predicting entrepreneurial success. Long-term, she seeks to understand how human capital affects the nature of a firm and firm boundaries.

Melanie Brucks is interested in creativity and innovation. Her research focuses on the processes involved in generating and selecting innovative ideas and on the cognitive and behavioral consequences of technological innovations. Her findings help marketers better design ideation activities to maximize productivity and fuel innovation.

Before joining Columbia, Melanie Brucks received a PhD in Marketing from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Farah is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. She teaches an a Product Management course with a focus on AI and Data products. Farah is also a founder at Dioptra, a legal tech startup backed by YCombinator.

Before that, she held different ML and PM roles at Spotify, Argo, and ZS Associates. She received her MS in Operations Research from Columbia Engineering School and another MS in Engineering from Centrale Nantes.

Brendan Burns has spent over 20 years at leading technology, graphic arts and financial institutions including Culture.tech, 1000|Museums, Moody’s Investors Service, Salomon Brothers, and AdOne, an Internet software pioneer. For the past 10 years Burns has managed consulting, advisory and strategic growth assignments under Stepping Stone Capital Partners and Stepstone Art Resources.

Dave was appointed Director of Entrepreneurship at Columbia University in 2013. In his years with Columbia Entrepreneurship he’s helped launch the Columbia Startup Lab, the Columbia Design Studio, Startup Law Studio, CTech and a host of new tech programs and curricula throughout the university’s many schools.

Professor Hubbard is a specialist in public economics, managerial information and incentive problems in corporate finance, and financial markets and institutions. He has written more than 100 articles and books on corporate finance, investment decisions, banking, energy economics and public policy, including two textbooks, and has authored The Wall and the Bridge and coauthored Balance, The Aid Trap, and Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise.

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.

Patricia Angus, JD, MIA, TEP, is Founder and CEO of Angus Advisory Group LLC, an Adjunct Professor and Founder of the Global Family Enterprise Program Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.

David Erickson joined CBS in the Fall of 2024 as an Adjunct Professor in the Finance Department.

Prior to joining CBS, David spent ten years at The Wharton School as a Senior Fellow and Lecturer in the Finance Department and Co-Director of the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance. He earned the Wharton Teaching Excellence Award each of his last six years there. David was also a Lecturer in Law at Penn Law/University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Christian is the Sidney Taurel Associate Professor within the Finance and Economics Division at Columbia Business School. His research focuses on macroeconomics and labor economics, with additional interests in public economics. The common theme behind his research is to understand the determinants of earnings inequality and the role redistributive policies. Before joining Columbia, Christian received a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University where he was named a Fellow of Woodrow Wilson Scholars and was awarded the Towbes Prize for Outstanding Teaching.

Michael is a Founder & General Partner at Bowery Capital based in New York. The firm invests in the next generation of b2b market leaders with a particular emphasis on digital transformation and legacy replacement cycles. Prior to Bowery Capital, Brown was a Co-Founder and General Partner at AOL Ventures. Before AOL Ventures, Brown worked for the investment arm of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. He began his career at Morgan Stanley as an equity research analyst.

Tommaso Porzio is the Daniel W. Stanton Associate Professor (untenured) of macroeconomics in the Economics Division at Columbia Business School. His research primarily studies the role of human capital for growth and economic development with a focus on understanding the barriers that may prevent individuals from exploiting their talent. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and the Journal of Political Economy.