Business school was once described in relatively familiar terms: finance, management, strategy, leadership. 

As Columbia Business School’s Class of 2026 walk across the stage later this month, however, they enter a working world where those foundational skills still matter, but also one where the most urgent problems rarely fit neatly within one discipline. Today’s business graduates are expected not just to master a field but to learn how to move across many. 

Artificial intelligence is now embedded in workflows once defined by human judgment alone, reshaping how companies make decisions and measure risk. Climate concerns change how firms think about growth and accountability. And across industries, leaders must balance  technical expertise with ethical responsibility. 

CBS Insights spoke with three graduates—Zachary Costa, Theodore Davidson, and Wendy Catalina Ogando—about how their time at CBS prepared them to succeed in  that reality. The interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

The Problem Worth Solving

Theodore Davidson (EMBA-NY ‘26)
Recipient of the Theodora Rutherford Inclusion Award

Theo Davidson felt compelled to attend CBS because it promised more than a traditional business education: It offered a way to bring classroom learning into environments where business tools could have real human stakes. Before enrolling, he was drawn to the ReEntry Acceleration Program, which brings entrepreneurship education into correctional facilities.

He was also interested from the start in The Economics and Politics of Digital Disruption course, taught by venture capitalist Bradley Tusk. Davidson had read Tusk’s book, The Fixer, before the semester had begun and was eager to take a course anchored by the book and taught by someone who helped bring Uber to New York City. Coming from a compliance background, Davidson had already seen one side of the collision between regulation and technology. The course helped him see the fuller picture of politics, economics, and power dynamics that shape whether innovation takes hold.

For Davidson, CBS’s location was a key benefit. A Brooklyn native, he had already worked in New York City prior to attending CBS, so staying there was a “non-negotiable.” The city, Davidson noted, was not just a backdrop but one of its assets — a place where classroom ideas, policy debates, emerging technologies, and professional networks converge.

That breadth carried into his student life. Davidson was involved in the AI Club, the Black Business Student Association, the Retail and Luxury Club, the Entrepreneurship through Acquisition Club, and the Student Leadership and Ethics Board. The last was especially meaningful because much of his career has sat at the intersection of leadership and “doing the right thing, even when it is not the easy thing,” he said.

Together, those experiences helped him think about business leadership less as a function or industry and more as a way of approaching complex problems. After graduation, Davidson plans to remain in consulting, continuing to advise companies as a strategic advisor while also contributing to causes he cares about. His work with Tusk Philanthropies has been one of the most meaningful parts of this chapter, and he intends to keep that thread going.

“The through-line across my career has never been the industry,” he said. “It has always been the problem worth solving.”

For incoming students, Davidson recommends identifying your goals and your “why” before arriving on campus. CBS offers an extraordinary number of opportunities, he noted, and without a personal framework it is easy to say yes to everything and become spread too thin.

Davidson also cautions against being too rigid. Some of the most valuable moments happen between scheduled commitments — after class, over dinner, or in a hallway.

“Your cohort is one of the most valuable things you will leave with, so invest in those relationships,” Davidson said. “Use the city too. You are at Columbia. New York is part of the program whether it is officially on the syllabus or not. And give yourself permission to not have everything figured out. That is kind of the point.”

Reading Between the Numbers

Zachary Costa (MSAFA ‘25)
Recipient of the William J. Heffernan Memorial Award for Service

Zac Costa came to CBS looking for technical depth and ended up gaining a new perspective on where that expertise could lead.

His path to CBS began after he left a role in audit to work as a research assistant at the University of Washington with a former professor. The experience gave him a glimpse into the life of a researcher, but also revealed gaps in his skill set, particularly in econometrics and coding. The Master of Science in Accounting and Fundamental Analysis program at CBS offered a way to build those capabilities while keeping several doors open: doctoral study, industry opportunities, internships, or some combination of all three.

His favorite course, Fundamental Analysis for Investors, Managers, and Entrepreneurs, helped expand how he thought about accounting. The course focused on interpreting accounting information in a valuation context, but also pushed students to look beyond the basic financial statements. Costa studied footnotes, proxy statements, and other sources of information, including LinkedIn hiring data. The work required technical precision, but also sound judgment and the ability to understand what the numbers were saying and what they might be leaving out. His final project on Nordstrom, completed before the company went private, became one of his proudest academic accomplishments.

A second course, Business and Climate Change, was an elective he described as eye-opening because it introduced him to the business environment surrounding sustainability efforts.

Costa served as a vice president of three clubs: the Green Business Club, the Community Impact Club, and Cluster Q, the LGBTQ+ affinity club. His roles focused largely on content, engagement, and finance. Along the way, he helped build biweekly Green Business Club newsletters, manage Cluster Q’s budget, and create an introductory budgeting worksheet for young adults with developmental disabilities.

That combination of technical work and community engagement became part of the broader toolkit he developed at CBS. Accounting was central, but it was not isolated as it connected to sustainability, service, product decisions, organizational systems, and, eventually, technology.

Because MSAFA students finished their studies in December 2025, Costa is already working as a Platform Accountant at Airbnb. He first joined the company as a summer intern in finance transformation and general ledger accounting, initially as a way to help pay for school. He loved both the company and the work, and when a role opened in Revenue Operations, he applied.

So far, the job has given him exposure to a wide range of work, from month-end reconciliations to product launch testing to AI implementation. The work increasingly touches operations, automation, product strategy, and emerging technology.

Costa’s advice to incoming students is to remain open without losing sight of themselves. CBS offers opportunities across industries, departments, locations, and institutions. It can be easy, he said, to feel pulled toward paths that are more popular or traditional. 

“Lean in to the many opportunities presented, but also be sure to stay true to you. Do not pursue a different goal simply because you see many of your classmates working towards it,” Costa said.

At the same time, changing course can be the right decision when an experience genuinely resonates. Costa did not expect to work in industry after graduation, but his internship showed him that it was the right fit. In business school, as in business itself, the toolkit includes the ability to recognize when new evidence should change the plan.

Staying Hungry and Curious

Wendy Catalina Ogando (MBA ‘26)
Recipient of the Theodora Rutherford Inclusion Award

Wendy Catalina Ogando arrived at Columbia Business School with the instincts of a builder.

Moving across international borders—from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to Miami, Florida— taught her to be resourceful, adapt quickly, and focus on solutions that measurably improve people’s lives. As co-founder of Admit.Me Access, she had seen the immediate impact of building repeatable solutions that expand opportunity. But she had also learned that early wins can be fragile without long-term strategy, disciplined capital allocation, and the operational expertise to sustain them.

That realization shaped her decision to attend CBS. Ogando wanted to move from founder to strategic leader—someone who could translate product insight into investor-ready plans, understand finance as a strategic language, and design organizations that could grow beyond any one person. She came to CBS, she said, to learn how to “read a balance sheet as a narrative” and align incentives so programs could scale.

CBS’s location in New York City placed her near partners, investors, and decision-makers. The classroom gave her frameworks to test ideas. Staff, coaches, and peers created the conditions to run programs, iterate quickly, and measure what worked. That combination of intellectual rigor and operational access felt uniquely suited to the next phase of her work.

Her favorite courses formed what she described as a toolkit for strategic leadership. Foundations of VC in Japan sharpened her global venture lens. Financial Statement Analysis and Valuation gave her technical fluency to model and interrogate business economics. Private equity courses translated that fluency into deal and portfolio thinking. Modern Political Economy pushed her to connect firm strategy to policy and macro forces. Power and Influence showed how informal networks, incentives, and organizational dynamics shape outcomes as much as formal strategy.

Together, the courses changed how she thought about leadership. “These classes moved me from operator to systems thinker,” she said.

AI became part of that shift as well. Ogando saw AI integrated across cases and projects as a way to strengthen judgement. “Learning to use AI to amplify judgment rather than replace it felt like preparation for the future of work,” she said.

Outside the classroom, Ogando leaned into student leadership because she wanted to help people find their footing. As president of the Hermes Society, she led more than 200 ambassadors and partnered with Admissions to engage thousands of prospective students. She also served as a Peer Advisor, Career Management Center Fellow, Consortium Liaison, and board member of The Hub, collaborating on speaker programming and community-building efforts.

What motivated her most were moments of tangible progress: a first-year student who found an internship opportunity after a cold email, a classmate who discovered a new network through a Hub event, students who stepped into leadership roles because of introductions she helped make. Those experiences reinforced her focus on “designing programs that actually work” and the quiet satisfaction of helping others succeed.

Her own career plans evolved, too. Before CBS, Ogando had not imagined finance as her path. But the core curriculum changed that. She found herself drawn to the story numbers tell about a business and to the strategic lens finance provides for shaping long-term outcomes. During her MBA summer internship at AAVRANI, she built financial planning and analysis models, forecasting tools, and investor-ready reporting that supported a bridge funding round. An in-semester internship at Angeles Ventures deepened her understanding of valuation and deal sourcing.

In the near term, Ogando wants to combine analytical rigor with systems thinking to help organizations allocate capital, plan for growth, and build durable operating models. Long term, she hopes to use that expertise to expand educational and economic opportunity at scale.

“The through line for me is the same,” she said: “use financial strategy to create institutions and products that broaden opportunity.”