Faculty

Mabel Abraham is the Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics.  She teaches the MBA elective course on Power, Influence, and Networks and PhD seminars on Organizational Theory. She earned her PhD and MS in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Professor Abrahamson studies the creation, spread, use and rejection of innovative techniques for managing organizations and their employees. He is best known for his work on fads and fashions in management techniques. He is also an expert on the management of organizational change. He has explored the topic of change management in Change Without Pain: How Managers Can Overcome Initiative Overload, Organizational Chaos, and Employee Burnout (Harvard Business School Press, 2005), which won a Best Book of the Year award from Strategy and Business.

Modupe Akinola is the Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and Faculty Director of the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics. Prior to pursuing a career in academia, Professor Akinola worked in professional services at Bain & Company and Merrill Lynch. Professor Akinola examines how organizational environments- characterized by deadlines, multi-tasking, and other attributes such as having low status- can engender stress, and how this stress can have spill-over effects on performance.

Professor Ames's research focuses on social judgment and behavior. He examines how people judge themselves as well as the individuals and groups around them (e.g., impression formation, stereotyping). He also studies the consequences of these judgments on interpersonal dynamics, including prosocial behaviors (e.g., trust, cooperation, helping) and competitive interactions (e.g., negotiations, conflict, aggression). A central aspect of this work is how people "read minds" to make inferences--whether right or wrong--about what others think, want, and feel.

Within the broader field of organizational behavior, Professor Brockner is well known for his work in several areas, including the effects of organizational downsizing on the productivity and morale of the "survivors," the management of organizational change, organizational justice, self processes in organizations and managerial judgment and decision making. He teaches the MBA elective course Managerial Decision Making, the Ph.D. course Individual and Collective Behavior in Organizations, and he is an active consultant and speaker to companies worldwide.

Derek Brown is an Assistant Professor in the Management Division at Columbia Business School. He investigates what stifles equality in organizations and society. His research focuses on how and why group membership, social hierarchies, and intergroup ideologies shape how we react and respond to the increasingly diverse society around us.

Vanessa Burbano is the Sidney Taurel Associate Professor of Management in the strategy area at Columbia Business School.

Ashli Carter is a Lecturer in the Management Division at Columbia Business School. Currently, she teaches topics in leadership, negotiations, and cultivating a growth mindset in the MBA and Executive Education programs, as well as for CBS administrators and staff. Prior to joining CBS faculty, she taught MBA and undergraduate courses in leadership and professional ethics at NYU Stern where she was an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow of Management and Organizations.

Bo Cowgill is an Assistant Professor at Columbia Business School, a research affiliate at CESifo, and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His elective, People Analytics and Strategy, won The Aspen Institute's 2019 Ideas Worth Teaching Award. He was also named to Poets and Quants’ 2020 list of Best 40 Business School Professors Under 40.

Shai Davidai is Assistant Professor in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. His research examines people’s everyday judgments of themselves, other people, and society as a whole. He studies the psychological forces that shape, distort, and bias people’s perceptions of the world and their influence on people’s judgments, preferences, and choices. His topics of expertise include the psychology of judgment and decision making, economic inequality and social mobility, social comparisons, and zero-sum thinking.

William Duggan is the author of three recent books on innovation: Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (2007); Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation (2012); and The Seventh Sense: How Flashes of Insight Change Your Life (2015).  In 2007 the journal Strategy+Business named Strategic Intuition “Best Strategy Book of the Year.” He has BA, MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University, and twenty years of experience as a strategy advisor and consultant. 

Professor Feldberg served as Dean of Columbia Business School for 15 years from 1989 to 2004. He is currently on leave of absence serving as a Senior Advisor to Morgan Stanley. He has been a visiting professor at the Cranfield School of Management in England, the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at INSEAD in France. After graduating from Columbia, Professor Feldberg was employed by B. F. Goodrich Company in Akron, Ohio. In 1972, he was appointed dean of the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business.

Adam Galinsky is the Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics at the Columbia Business School.

Professor Galinsky has published more than 300 scientific articles, chapters, and teaching cases in the fields of management and social psychology. His research and teaching focus on leadership, negotiations, diversity, decision-making, and ethics.

Dr. Jorge Guzman is an assistant professor at the Management Division in 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.

Professor Harrigan, who teaches strategic management courses about corporate growth (as well as turnaround management), is a specialist in corporate strategy, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, diversification strategy, in turnarounds, industry restructurings and the competitive problems of mature- and declining-demand businesses, and in industry and competitor analysis. Most recently, Professor Harrigan has researched the role of technological synergies in corporate strategy.

Professor Higgins, the Stanley Schachter Professor of Psychology and Professor of Business is an expert on motivation and decision making. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is the author of Beyond Pleasure and Pain: How Motivation Works (Oxford) and co-author of Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence (Penguin). He teaches an Executive MBA course on negotiation, and is the Director of the Motivation Science Center. Higgins has received the Donald T.

Professor Horton has taught the popular elective course Modern Political Economy to thousands of MBA and EMBA students over three decades. A member of the Columbia Business School faculty since 1970, he served two years while on leave from the School as Executive Director of the Temporary Commission on City Finances during the New York City fiscal crisis, and later served 15 years as Director of Research and President of the Citizens Budget Commission.

Paul Ingram is the Kravis Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School.  He has received Columbia’s highest recognition for teaching, the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching, as well as the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence, and thirteen teaching awards voted by graduating students at Columbia and Cornell Universities.  His PhD is from Cornell University, and he was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University before coming to Columbia.  He has held visiting professorships at Tel Aviv University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Toronto.

Sheena S. Iyengar is the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School, and a world expert on choice and decision-making. Her book The Art of Choosing received the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year 2010 award, and was ranked #3 on the Amazon.com Best Business and Investing Books of 2010. Her research is regularly cited in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist as well as in popular books, such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance. Dr.

Professor Jick is a leading expert in Leadership and Organizational Change.  He has had a long career of both academic and consulting work in this field. In 2020, he became the Faculty Director of the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership. He has an MS and PhD from Cornell in Organizational Behavior. He was a professor at the Harvard Business School for 10 years and a visiting professor, organizational behavior-human resource management at INSEAD and London Business School. 

Daniel (Dongil) Keum is an Associate Professor of Management at Columbia Business School. His research interests lie in innovation, organizational structure, labor market policy, and their application to public policy formation. He holds a PhD from NYU Stern School of Business and an AB with high honors in economics and mathematics from Dartmouth College. Prior to pursuing a career in academia, Daniel worked at McKinsey & Company for four years. His primary industry experience is in retail, fashion, and corporate portfolio restructuring. 

Soomi Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Management Division at Columbia Business School. Her research focuses on the economics and strategic management of innovation. She received a PhD from MIT Sloan and a BA from Wellesley College.

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.

Gaia Marchisio, Ph.D., is a family-enterprise researcher, consultant, educator, speaker, and writer with 25+ years of impact across global family enterprises, academic institutions, corporations, public-sector organizations, and others. 

Malia Mason teaches the Negotiations elective and co-directs the Women in Leadership Executive Education program at Columbia Business School. In addition to training Columbia graduates, she has brought her expertise to a variety of sectors including financial services, media, tech, telecom, and the arts, providing valuable consulting and training to employees at numerous firms.

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).

Michael Mauskapf is an Assistant Professor of Management at Columbia Business School, where he studies the dynamics of creativity, innovation, and success in cultural markets, especially the music industry. His research has been published in the American Sociological Review, Academy of Management Review, and the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, and it has been featured in a number of popular press outlets, including ABC News, BBC News, The Economist, New York Post, NPR, and Quartz. Michael is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (B.A.

Stephan Meier is currently the chair of the Management Division and the James P. Gorman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich, was previously a senior economist at the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision-Making at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and taught courses on strategic interactions and economic policy at Harvard University and the University of Zurich. His research interest is in behavioral strategy.

Michael Morris is a Chaired Professor in the Management Division at CBS and also serves as Professor in the Psychology Department of Columbia University. 

He teaches MBA and executive-level classes on leadership, teamwork, communication, negotiation, and decision-making. In 2016, he was honored with the Dean's Award for Innovation in the Curriculum for creating two of the school's most popular elective courses: The Leader's Voice and the Patagonia Leadership Expedition.

Willie Pietersen was raised in South Africa, and received a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. After practicing law, he embarked on an international business career. Over a period of twenty years he served as the CEO of multibillion-dollar businesses such as Lever Foods, Seagram USA, Tropicana and Sterling Winthrop's Consumer Health Group. In 1998, Pietersen was named Professor of the Practice of Management at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

Rebecca Ponce de Leon is an Assistant Professor in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. Her research is grounded in the desire to uncover the processes that hinder progress toward diversity and equality in organizations and society more broadly. She approaches this topic by exploring how social categories, like race and gender, and motivated beliefs, like social dominance ideologies, lead to patterns of bias in perceptions and behavior.

Michael Slepian is the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. His program of research examines secrecy and trust. He studies the psychology of secrets and how keeping secrets affects two important variables that govern social and organizational life: trust and motivation. He has studied the consequences of keeping secrets, including how they change our behavior, judgments and actions.

Adina D. Sterling joined Columbia Business School in 2023 as the Katherine Phillips Associate Professor of Business in the Management Division. Adina’s research advances an understanding of how inequality persists in labor markets and workplaces, despite the efforts of many leaders to create fair and equitable organizations.  In particular, her work demonstrates the various ways labor markets and hiring processes lead societal inequalities to be maintained and reinforced.

Dan Wang is Lambert Family 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.

Nataliya Langburd Wright is an Assistant Professor in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. Her research focuses on entrepreneurial strategy, particularly how technology startups around the world scale and why there are international differences in scaling. It is published or is forthcoming in the Strategic Management Journal and Research Policy and earned the SRF Dissertation Scholar and PTC Emerging Scholar awards.  

Qingyuan (Lori) Yue is Associate Professor at the Management Division in Columbia Business School. Her research focuses on the relationship between business and society, especially regarding how organizations respond to contentious social environments and regulation uncertainty. She has published papers on industry self-regulation, business collective action, business responses to social movement, and corporate political strategies.