Theme: Excellence Through Equity

On September 9, you’re invited to David Geffen Hall on the Columbia Business School campus to hear from professors, business leaders, and expert voices on how equity in organizations propels all of us to excellence.

Columbia Business School
645 West 130th Street
Geffen Hall Cooperman Commons
New York, New York, 10027
United States

Adam Galinsky

Vice Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

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. Professor Galinsky co-authored the best-selling book, Friend & Foe (Penguin Random House, 2015). The book offers a radically new perspective on conflict and cooperation and has received uniformly positive reviews from the New York Times, Financial Times, Economist. His Ted talk, How to Speak Up for Yourself, is one of the most popular of all time with over 7.4 million views.

Angel Yau

Angel Yau is an established comedian, storyteller, writer and award-winning filmmaker from Queens, New York. She is currently the Director of Multimedia at Columbia Business School. Angel is an NBC Diversity Scholar for her comedic out of the box characters. Her comedy will always surprise and never ends the way it starts. She has performed at several comedy festivals such as NY Underground Comedy Festival, SF sketchfest, and many more. She has appeared on PBS, NBC, Amazon, HBO and Netflix. She was recently featured in a BBC documentary about being an Asian American woman in comedy, dealing with mental health, called, “Will I ever be Happy?”

Chris Washburne

Professor of Music and Musician

Chris Washburne is Professor of Music at Columbia University, Chair of the Music Department, and the Founder and of Columbia’s Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program. Chris Washburne has published numerous articles on jazz, Latin jazz, salsa, and popular music. His books include Bad Music: the Music We Love to Hate (Routledge, 2004), Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York (Temple University Press, 2008), and Latin Jazz: the Other Jazz (Oxford University Press, 2020). As a trombonist has performed on over 150 recordings, two Grammy winners and seven Grammy nominated. He has been hailed as "One of the best trombonists in New York..." by Peter Watrous of The New York Times and “one of the most important trombonists performing today” by Brad Walseth of www.jazzchicago.net. H

Claire Shipman

Report/Author/Board Chair, Columbia University

Claire Shipman ’86CC, MIA ’94 is a journalist, author, and public speaker. She is also Co-Chair of Columbia University's Board of Trustees. An expert on confidence and women’s leadership, she’s written four New York Times bestselling books, The Confidence Code, The Confidence Code for Girls, Living the Confidence Code and Womenomics. Her latest book, which came out in June, focused on women and power--The Power Code. Her co-author on all five has been the BBC’s Katty Kay. Shipman spent 15 years at ABC News, reporting on politics, international affairs to social issues. Before moving to ABC, she covered the White House and the Clinton administration for NBC news.

Erika Hall

Associate Professor of Organization & Management

Erika V. Hall is an Associate Professor of Organization and Management at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. As a trained social psychologist, her research explores the powerful impact of stereotypes and the hidden content within them. Hall earned a PhD in Management & Organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Professor Hall's work has appeared in academic journals such as Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Psychological Science, and American Psychologist, and media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and NPR.

Genevieve Gregorich

PhD Candidate, Columbia Business School

Genevieve (Vivi) Gregorich is a PhD candidate in Management at Columbia Business School with a focus on Strategy. Her research examines the role of business in society, the interaction between social movements and organizations, organizational reputation management, nonmarket strategy, and zero- sum thinking. She has authored cases on personal strategy and innovation with a focus on the psychological conditions that generate innovative ideas and the political processes that push ideas through corporate and bureaucratic labyrinths.

Iliana Perez

Executive Director of Immigrants Rising

Over the past decade at Immigrants Rising, Dr. Perez has developed resources and training to inform undocumented people about entrepreneurship; has developed programming to help undocumented people start and grow their businesses; and has worked closely with individuals and organizations across the U.S. to build an ecosystem geared toward connecting and supporting undocumented entrepreneurs.

Juan Rios

Assistant Professor of Social Work, Seton Hall University

As a practitioner scholar, I believe in the importance of integrating our theoretical knowledge to our practice in the field of Social Work. It is my academic mission to ensure our students are constantly applying scholastic thought with applied learning. My experience is both in non-profit and government sectors and presently the Clinical Director of a multiservice specialty practice and serves as a clinical consultant to community mental health agencies.

Kenji Yoshino

Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law

Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law and the Director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at NYU School of Law. A graduate of Harvard, Oxford, and Yale Law School, he specializes in constitutional law, antidiscrimination law, and law and literature. He has published widely in academic journals such as the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal, as well as in more popular media such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is the author of four books, most recently SAY THE RIGHT THING: HOW TO TALK ABOUT IDENTITY, DIVERSITY AND JUSTICE.

Maeve DuVally

Founder, Glasheen & Co.

Maeve is a multi-cultural communications specialist, storyteller and LGBTQ+ advocate. She has spent the bulk of her career as a journalist and corporate spokesperson, most recently at Goldman Sachs. After a lifetime of working for large companies, she is forging her own path, now consulting for corporations and other organizations on communications strategy and diversity, equity and inclusion. Maeve also mentors transgender people and is a frequent public speaker on LGBTQ+ workplace issues. She was a managing director in corporate communications at Goldman Sachs over an 18-year career.

Michael Martin

J.D. M.B.A. Candidate, Columbia Law School, Columbia Business School

Michael is a rising young leader whose career and passion lies at the very intersection of law, business, and real estate. Michael is a current J.D./M.B.A. student at Columbia Law and Business Schools respectively, with an emphasis on leadership and real estate. Michael seeks to utilize her experiences and positions within these industries to accomplish more inclusive and equitable outcomes for underserved communities. She is particularly focused on the following: increasing access to legal processes and addressing housing disparities. Michael has years of both prior legal and business experience working in her family enterprise, Martin & Martin, LLP. Martin & Martin is one of the largest African American and female-owned law firms in Los Angeles.

Tessa West

Professor of Psychology, New York University

Tessa West is a Professor of Psychology at New York University and a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. She has received several career awards, including the early career award from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology.

Valerie Purdie-Greenaway

Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Management

Valerie Purdie-Greenaway's research promotes the development of research regarding people with threatened identities, and examines the consequences of their experiences for intergroup relations. Any individual can have part of his/her identity that is devalued or stigmatized in some way—women in the sciences, gay/lesbian, bi-sexuals in American society, aging workers in technology firms, African-Americans in intellectual settings, certain immigrants in the U.S.

Wei Cai

Assistant Professor of Business

Wei Cai joined Columbia University in 2020. Her research interests revolve around management accounting, organizational culture, and diversity and inclusion. Her research broadly investigates how to measure and manage key organizational capital. For example, she examines how corporate leaders and managers can deliberately design and shape organizational culture, and improve organizational outcomes through innovative management control systems. She uses multiple research methods including statistical analyses of archival data sources, field experiments, and surveys. She closely collaborates with practitioners and collects unique data that can provide important managerial implications for the design of management control systems in shaping desirable organizational outcomes.