Steven Abrahams is a managing director in financial analytics and structured transactions at Bear Stearns. His group provides strategy and research for investors in U.S. fixed income, with an emphasis on mortgage-backed securities. Since joining Bear Stearns in 2001, Dr. Abrahams has been named each year to Institutional Investor’s Fixed-Income All America Research team. Before joining Bear Stearns, Dr. Abrahams held senior positions at Freddie Mac and Morgan Stanley, and at the latter, he was named to the Institutional Investor team. Prior to Morgan Stanley, Dr. Abrahams was an associate at Booz-Allen & Hamilton (1988–91). He has also served as an assistant editor for the American Judicature Society in Chicago. He is a member of the Society of Columbia Scholars, the American Psychological Association, and the American Statistical Association.

John Allison is a Deputy Managing Director of W.P. Stewart & Co., Ltd. He also serves as Chairman of our Bermuda investment advisory subsidiary, W.P. Stewart Asset Management Ltd. He has more than 20 years of investment experience as a portfolio manager / analyst. Prior to joining W.P. Stewart in 1995, Mr. Allison owned and managed the high net worth advisory management firm of Auchincloss & Lawrence Inc. He combined his business from Auchincloss & Lawrence Inc. with W.P. Stewart & Company in November 1995. Previously he served as a Vice President and senior portfolio manager/analyst at Morgan Stanley Asset Management. He began his career as a lecturer at Columbia University. Mr. Allison holds a B.A. from Princeton University.

Bruce Baretz worked with the American Cyanamid Company, where he was director of sales in the Chemical Group and Reckitt & Coleman USA Inc. (director, external research/strategic planning) before forming Keen Solutions, Inc., which markets, licenses, and commercializes emerging technologies. Keen Solutions, Inc., successfully developed and launched the DNA biochip business for a major European health solutions and semiconductor company. Dr. Baretz’s patented co-invention of white light LEDs through down-conversion is presently the manufacturing method of choice and is used by all major producers of white light solid-state lamps, projected to replace incandescent and fluorescent lighting over the next decade. Dr. Baretz has twenty scientific publications and five issued U.S. patents. His affiliations include the American Chemical Society and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Prior to gaining his Ph.D. in chemistry at Columbia in 1983, Dr. Baretz performed research at Yale University (human genetics) focusing on inborn errors of metabolism. He has been a GSAS Alumni Association Board member since 1994 and currently serves as chair of the Development Committee.

Since retiring from his role as the global director of creative services at Deloitte Consulting, Carl Burton has worked as a consultant specializing in corporate communications. He is also a photographer. In an earlier career, he was an assistant professor in Columbia’s Department of English and Comparative Literature as well as director of the University Program of General Education in the Humanities. Dr. Burton has been an active member of the GSAS Alumni/ae Association since 1993 and served as its president for a number of years.

Kenneth Ciriacks served as vice president of technology with Amoco Corporation until his retirement in August 1994. Dr. Ciriacks is a senior fellow of the Geological Society of America, where he is also a trustee and a member of the Executive Committee of the Geological Society of America Foundation. He is also a trustee of the American Geological Institute Foundation and a trustee associate of the American Association of Petroleum Foundation. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is a member of the Board of Visitors of the College of Letters and Science, and of the Board of Visitors of the Department of Geology and Geophysics. He is also on the Board of Directors and a member of the Executive Committee of the Wisconsin Alumni Association. His areas of research were late Paleozoic biostratigraphy; taxonomy, evolution, and ecology of fossil and living pelecypods; and geological aspects of physical and biological processes in modern marine carbonate environments. In 2001 Dr. Ciriacks and his wife Linda Ciriacks established the Kenneth and Linda Ciriacks Graduate Fellowship Fund in Earth and Environmental Sciences to provide fellowship support to students in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at GSAS.

Leonard Cole is an adjunct professor of political science at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, where he teaches science and public policy. He is an expert on bioterrorism. Trained in the health sciences and public policy, he holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. He is a fellow of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and has been a recipient of grants and fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Dr. Cole has written for professional journals as well as general publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, and the Sciences. He has testified before congressional committees and made invited presentations to several government agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of Technology Assessment. He has appeared frequently on network and public television and has been a regular on MSNBC. He is the author of six books including The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare (W.H. Freeman & Company, 1996) and, most recently, The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story (National Academy of Science, 2003).

Jirina Emerson has coauthored a handbook on the law of treaties and is the vice president of the investment firm Condren Walker and Co. In addition to the GSAS Alumni/ae Association Board, Ms. Emerson is also a board member of Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry, New York.

Sylvan Feldstein is a director in the investment department of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. He is the author of over forty articles and authored or edited four books including Municipal Bond Portfolio Management (McGraw Hill, 1995); Dow Jones Guide to Municipal Bonds (1987); and Handbook of Municipal Bonds, Volumes I and II (1983). He wrote the two municipal bond chapters in the seven editions of The Handbook of Fixed-Income Securities (edited by Frank J. Fabozzi, McGraw Hill, 2000). Dr. Feldstein’s other professional associations include the U.S. Treasury Department, Office of Technical Assistance, Yale University School of Management, Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Economico e Social (BNDES), and the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Rio De Janeiro). His dissertation was on the politics of New York City’s municipal debt issuance between 1963 and 1973, and his faculty advisers were professors Wallace Sayre and Robert Connery. Dr. Feldstein has been an active member of the Alumni Association since 1976.

Svetlana Harris graduated with a B.A. in 1959 from Barnard College, was a Fulbright Scholar in 1963/64, and taught European history at Barnard and Sarah Lawrence. She currently works as an editor (nonfiction) and translator (Russian). Ms. Harris has helped organize fund-raising events for New York City’s Bicentennial, the Statue of Liberty Centennial, the Russian Orthodox Theological Fund, the Russian Children’s Welfare Society, the New York Public Library, and Lincoln Center. She has been a member of the GSAS Alumni Association Board since 1993.

Jeffrey Hoffeld has worked at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art as an assistant curator for medieval art and at the Cloisters. He has held assistant professor positions at Brooklyn College and SUNY Purchase. He has been the director of the Neurberger Museum and vice president and partner of the Pace Gallery in New York. Most recently, he formed Jeffrey Hoffeld and Company, Inc., which specializes in European and American art of the twentieth century. In 1988, Mr. Hoffeld published Picasso: The Late Drawings (Hirschl & Adler Galleries/Harry N. Abrams, 1988) and has penned numerous essays on medieval and twentieth-century art.

Dr. David H. Jackson is a worldwide partner with Mercer Consulting, a division of Marsh & McLennan Companies. He leads large consulting engagements for clients in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas, specializing in the intersection of human capital and business strategy. His clients include Microsoft, DuPont, Hewlett Packard, the Bank of America, Intel, Johns Hopkins University, Cable & Wireless, the University of California, and Novartis. He has a particular focus on cultural assessment and integration in multi-national M&A transactions.

Dr. Jackson has held a number of leadership positions at Mercer and served on several global committees and task forces. Previously he was a partner at Aon Consulting, where he served in senior staff and line positions. Dr. Jackson has published articles in Strategic HR Review and Compensation & Benefits International, among other publications. He speaks often on human capital issues for the Conference Board and the Advanced Learning Institute, and has been quoted often in the business and general press.

Previously Dr. Jackson was associate professor of English literature at Centenary College. He has also served as visiting professor of English in the graduate program at the English Institute at Aarhus University, Denmark. As an academic, Dr. Jackson published articles in American Literature, Studies in Bibliography, and in various collections of original essays for the University of Virginia and other academic presses. He has presented at MLA, TEXT, and other national and international scholarly conferences on Victorian literature and the theory/practice of textual scholarship. He has been the recipient of research grants from the NEH and the SC-MLA.

Dr. Jackson is a graduate of Occidental College, where he serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors, chairing the awards and regions committees. He managed the first ever all-alumni survey at Occidental, where he graduated with honors, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and received the Outstanding English Major award. At Occidental, he was a protégé of the distinguished James Joyce scholar Robert Ryf, also a GSAS alum.

As a GSAS Board member, Dr. Jackson has participated on career panels and has also become involved in mentoring GSAS students. He lives in Baltimore, where he and his wife, Patricia, are involved as volunteers in a broad range of community activities and organizations.

Anna Kisselgoff has been the chief dance critic for the New York Times since 1977. She has studied ballet with Jean Yazvinsky, a dancer from Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. After graduating from Bryn Mawr, she studied Russian at School of Oriental Languages in Paris, then earned master’s degrees in journalism and modern European history from Columbia. Ms. Kisselgoff began her career in Paris at Agence France-Presse and became a freelancer for the New York Times, international edition, in 1965. She has taught at Yale and Barnard and lectured widely. The French government named her a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, and Queen Margrethe of Denmark made her a Knight of the Dannebrog. Most recently, GSAS conferred to Ms. Kisselgoff the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement.

Retired. In addition to serving on the GSAS Alumni Association Board of Directors, Dr. Kotchoubey is a Director of the Tolstoy Foundation, Inc. (Vice Chairman, formerly President, Corporate Secretary), Tolstoy Foundation Nursing Home Company, Inc. (Chairman, formerly President, Treasurer), American Friends of Blerancourt, Inc. (Treasurer), Musica Russia Foundation Inc. and Russian Orthodox Theological Fund, Inc. (Chairman).

From 1991 through 2001, Andrew Kotchoubey was an independent business consultant to US companies doing business in Russia and Russian companies desiring to do business outside the former Soviet Union. Areas of involvement included multi-purpose and special purpose sorbents and filters for nuclear contaminated water and oil spills, fire protection, flow control, packaging, disposable medical products, technology for non-invasive cardiovascular testing and diagnostics.

He also lectured on market economy to Soviet industrialists/managers at the invitation of Prof. V. Leontieff, Nobel Prize economist at a seminar sponsored by the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council.

From 1983 to 1991 he was Chief Administrative and Financial Officer, Director, Secretary/Treasurer of Train, Smith Counsel, a privately held investment advisory firm in New York City. His responsibilities included operations including computer systems, telecommunications, portfolio accounting, compliance, corporate accounting, finance and administration. He also served as Director and Corporate Secretary of the Company’s accounting and brokerage affiliates.

From 1973 to 1983 he was a Vice President of Automatech Graphics Corporation, a privately held computer service bureau specializing in data base management and computerized photocomposition in New York City. He was responsible for systems, programming, computer operations, telecommunications, accounting and administration, market research, product development and some client relations.

From 1969 to 1973 he created and managed the MIS Department and Data Center for Interway Corporation (subsequently acquired by Transamerica), and its operating subsidiaries Integrated Container Service, Inc. of New York, NY, one of the largest international leasing companies of intermodal containers, and Realco Services. Inc. of Chicago, IL, the largest leasing company of piggy back railroad trailers. He developed a Container Control and Billing System, reported to be the best in the industry at that time, a Trailer Control and Claims System, Corporate Accounting and Financial Modeling Software.

From 1966 to 1969 he was a Member of the Senior Staff of the Columbia University Watson Laboratory. He managed the Laboratory’s computer facilities, conducted research in Mathematical Physics under Professor Llewellyn Hilleth Thomas and taught as Associate (1967-68) and Adjunct Assistant Professor (1968-69) in the Department of Mathematics of the School of Graduate Faculties.

In 1966 Andrew Kotchoubey received a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University with a thesis on “A Numerical Calculation of the Energy and Wave Function of the Ground State of Beryllium” and was elected to Sigma Xi.

From 1959 to 1962 as a graduate student and Watson Fellow, he lectured at and supervised the computer rooms of the IBM Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University. In 1962, upon the opening of the Columbia University Computer Center under Dr. Kenneth King this lab was closed and Dr. Kotchoubey, having received an M.A. Degree in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University, transferred to the Watson Laboratory as a Graduate Research Assistant to Prof. L.H. Thomas. He lectured at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1961-62) and in the Department of Civil Engineering of Columbia University (1961-63).

In 1959, prior to coming to Columbia University, he worked as an Engineering trainee in the Air-borne Systems and Missile Department and the Surface Radar Department of RCA in New Jersey.

In 1959 Andrew Kotchoubey was Valedictorian at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, receiving an ME (Mechanical Engineer) Degree with Honor.

Born in Florence, Italy, he is fluent in Italian and Russian.

Les Levi has 20 years of experience in the financial markets as a hedge fund portfolio manager, research analyst and investment banker. Currently, Dr. Levi is Managing Director at Plainfield Asset Management, LLC. Prior to taking on this position, Dr. Levi was a partner and senior portfolio manager at Spectrum Investment Group, LP, a multistrategy fixed income fund. Previously, Dr. Levi was a portfolio manager at Advent Capital Management where he managed Advent’s Credit Opportunity hedge fund, a $500 million long/short portfolio of bank loans, high yield bonds, convertibles and derivatives.

Prior to joining Advent, Dr. Levi was a Managing Director in Leveraged Finance at JP Morgan Chase responsible for structuring bank loans and bond offerings for issuers in the telecom, media and technology industries, as well as restructuring the debt of distressed companies. Before the JP Morgan/Chase merger in 2001, Dr. Levi was a Managing Director in High Yield Bond Research at Chase, leading a global team of research analysts covering the media and telecom industries. Prior to joining Chase in 1997, Dr. Levi was a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch, where he was also Co-Manager of Global High Yield Research and, for seven years, a research analyst covering the media, telecom, energy, and steel industries.

Beginning in 1992, when the survey was first launched, through 2001, Dr. Levi was voted onto Institutional Investor’s All America Fixed Income Research team more than twelve times, mostly ranked as the #1 and #2 analyst in the media and telecom sectors. In 1999, he was named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the four most influential professionals in the high yield bond market. Dr. Levi began his career in high yield in 1986 at Drexel Burnham Lambert, where he was a Senior Vice President in Drexel’s High Yield Bond Department covering the gaming, lodging, metals, mining and steel sectors.

In addition to his Columbia degrees, Dr. Levi holds an MBA in Finance from New York University, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude with a B.A. in English from New York University.He is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, teaching in the Market, Ethics and Law program for MBA students. The course he developed and has taught for several semesters—“Managerial Ethics: Lessons from Literature and Film” –draws both from his experience on Wall Street and from his graduate studies at Columbia.

James Merrill, manager, Affiliated Funds, General Motors Asset Management, joined GM in 1991. He is responsible primarily for managing the General Motors of Canada pension plans. Before undertaking these responsibilities, he provided economic advice to contribute to GMAM’s investment decision making and undertook special investment research assignments dealing with market structure and activities of the pension investment community.

Prior to joining GM Asset Management, Dr. Merrill spent fourteen years at Marine Midland Bank, becoming senior vice president and chief international economist. He has served as president of the Forecasters Club of New York, president of the International Economists Club of New York, and president of the New York Association for Business Economics.

Louis Parks received an M.A. in ancient studies from Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1995 and his M.B.A. from Columbia’s Graduate School of Business in 2003. Mr. Parks is a member of both the GSAS Alumni Association Board of Directors and the Advisory Board of Directors of the Writers Studio, a for-profit fiction and poetry school for professional writers, under the directorship of the acclaimed poet (and former Columbia instructor) Philip Schultz. Mr. Parks currently serves as Senior Managing Director, Director of Institutional Equity Trading, and Director of the New York Institutional Office for Raymond James & Associates, Inc. Besides his advanced degrees from Columbia, Mr. Parks earned a B.A. from New York University, where he was awarded both the Sussman and Gallatin medals for leadership and academic excellence. In 1999, Mr. Parks established the Louis A. Parks Graduate Fellowship in Classics to support students in the Department of Classics at GSAS.

Dr. Komal S. Sri-Kumar is currently the managing director and chief global strategist for Trust Company of the West and chairman for the Asset Allocation Committee. He joined the company in 1990. Dr. Sri-Kumar manages more than $5 billion in investments. Prior to joining TCW, he was executive vice president of DBL Americas Development Association, L.P. and senior vice president of Drexel Burnham Lambert based in Beverly Hills, CA.He previously served as president of Country Risk Consulting Service and vice president of Marine Midland Bank in New York.Dr. Sri-Kumar began his career as an economist with Citibank in New York and later worked as a senior international economist for Chase Econometrics. An expert on Latin American financial markets, he has published numerous articles on the subject, appeared on CNN's "Moneyline" and spoken at several conferences sponsored by the Council of the Americas.Last year, BusinessWeek magazine named TCW's Mortgage-Backed Securities Team to its list of the 10 best mutual fund managers in America.

Dr. Sri-Kumar earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia in 1977. His doctoral dissertation was supervised by Professor Robert Mundell, a Nobel Laureate in Economics

Dr. Thompson pursued a varied career using his training as a health economist. He started with the City's Health and Hospital Corporation, becoming the Assistant Vice President for Planning. Making grants to health service researchers, he was a program officer for a major foundation. He ended his career on Wall Street, spending the last 20 years in raising capital funds for hospitals and other health care providers through the use of municipal bonds. He is now retired.

Dr. Thompson has served as President of the Federation of Columbia Alumni and as Alumni Advisor to the University Senate. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Columbia Alumni Association (CAA) and Chair of the CAA's Governance Committee.

Dale Turza is a partner in the Washington office of the New York law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft, specializing in international criminal law. Mrs. Turza has worked extensively on issues involving foreign corruption, economic sanctions and embargoes, national security, money laundering, commercial and arms export controls, foreign boycotts, and Exxon-Florio acquisitions. Her practice extends to compliance, government investigation, and enforcement actions in all of these areas, and she has represented clients before the U.S. Departments of Justice, State, Treasury, Defense, and Commerce. Mrs. Turza represents a diverse group of clients that includes defense contractors, industrial companies, financial institutions, financial services companies, and a major news organization. She has also negotiated on behalf of U.S. clients with foreign governments. Mrs. Turza received her B.A. degree summa cum laude in 1971 from Connecticut College for Women, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She obtained her M.A. degree in 1974 from Columbia University and a J.D. degree in 1978 from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she was editor of the Journal of Law and Policy in International Business. She has contributed numerous articles on a variety of international trade and export control issues to the New York Law Journal and Asia Law. Mrs. Turza is a frequently invited speaker on such subjects as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and economic sanctions compliance at the American Bar Association and other national and international organizations. Mrs. Turza is a member of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia and the American Bar Association and vice-chair of ABA’s Task Force on International Standards for Foreign Corrupt Practices. Currently, Mrs. Turza is a trustee of Connecticut College and chairman of the College’s Alumni Board of Directors. She is president of the Alumni Board of Directors of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University and chairman of the Advisory Cabinet of the Center for Women’s Health and Medicine of Mercy Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Her outstanding dedication and service to Columbia was recently recognized at the 2002 Master’s of Arts Convocation, where she received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement. Mrs. Turza and her husband Peter Turza have established the Turza Family Endowment for the benefit of GSAS students.

Lester Wigler is a financial advisor with Citi Smith Barney. He joined the firm in 2004 and focuses on personally managing the financial affairs of a select group of business owners, executives, professionals and families. With over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, he integrates their needs for tax efficiency, liquidity and investment diversification.

Prior to joining Smith Barney, he served as president of an institutional advisory firm he founded in 1990. In this role, he worked with corporations, banks and monetary authorities in the areas of customized derivatives, financial technology and capital management. From 1987 to 1990, he managed financial risk management activities at Accenture, where he led engagements with international financial institutions. Between 1980 and 1987, he was an officer on the derivatives desks of Bank One and JP Morgan Chase, responsible for the sales, trading and structuring of over-the-counter derivatives transactions. He began his career in 1971 at the investment firm of Blyth Eastman Dillon.

He has written and lectured on the strategic and tactical implications of financial innovation. His articles have appeared in industry publications and he has been interviewed and quoted by major financial journals. He formerly instructed the corporate finance course at the New York Institute of Finance.

Mr. Wigler is a consultant to the New York State Society of CPA’s Investment Management Committee and the Taxation of Financial Instruments and Transactions Committee, for which he chairs an education subcommittee. In addition to serving on the board of the Alumni Association of GSAS, he currently is a member of the boards of directors of the Westchester Philharmonic and the Encompass New Opera Theatre. He is a member of the Oratorio Society of New York.

He received a Bachelor of Arts in music from Queens College, CUNY and a Master of Arts in music theory from Columbia University. He earned a Master of Business Administration in international finance from New York University.

After graduating as valedictorian of both the Bronx High School of Science and Columbia College, Dr. Yancopoulos received his MD and PhD degrees in 1987 from Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons. Following widely-recognized work in the field of molecular immunology at Columbia University with Dr. Fred Alt, for which he received the Lucille P. Markey Scholar Award, Dr. Yancopoulos left academia in 1989 as a founding scientist for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, where he is now the Chief Scientific Officer and President of Regeneron Laboratories. Dr. Yancopoulos is also an Adjunct Full Professor at Columbia University, and was recently awarded Columbia University’s Stevens Triennial Prize for Research and its University Medal of Excellence for Distinguished Achievement. According to a study by the Institute for Scientific Information, Dr. Yancopoulos was the eleventh most highly cited scientist in the world during the 1990's (citation rates reflect how often a scientist’s work is referred to by other scientists, and is widely regarded as the best way to rank scientists), and the only scientist from the biotechnology industry on the list. Dr. Yancopoulos’ scientific contributions were recently recognized by his election in 2004 to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Yancopoulos is widely regarded as a world leader in many fields of biology, and has authored more than 250 scientific manuscripts. Dr. Yancopoulos’ scientific efforts have focused on the discovery and characterization of novel families of cytokines and growth factors as well as their receptors (e.g., neurotrophins/Trks, the CNTF/IL6 family and their receptor complexes, ephrins/Ephs, agrin/MuSK, RORs, DDRs/collagen and angiopoietins/Ties), on the signal transduction pathways utilized by these growth factor systems, as well as on the critical biologic roles these key molecular mediators play during normal development as well as in disease. Dr. Yancopoulos’ diverse work is tied together by his unifying models of molecular and biologic function, and by his attempts to apply his groups’ efforts towards treating human disease. Many of the discoveries of Dr. Yancopoulos and his group have led to therapeutic candidates now in clinical trials, such as the VEGF Trap for cancer and vascular eye diseases, the IL1-Trap for rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases, the IL-4/13 Trap for asthma and allergy, and Axokine for obesity and diabetes.