Meet Our Staff
The University Ombuds Officer is Marsha L. Wagner. The Associate University Ombuds Officer is Jennifer McFeely. The administrative assistant, Les Mau, manages office operations and makes appointments for visitors on both the Morningside Heights and CUMC campuses. Marsha Wagner and Jennifer McFeely listen to concerns, offer a range of options and with permission, help to facilitate resolution.
Marsha L. Wagner
Marsha L. Wagner has been Columbia University ombuds officer since 1991, when the Ombuds Office was first established. Experienced in mediation, she has led many training workshops on conflict resolution, and she has designed national professional development programs for organizational ombuds. She served three terms on the Board of Directors of The Ombudsman Association, 1993–99 and 2004–05, and one year on the Board of Directors of the International Ombudsman Association (IOA), 2005–06. She has chaired the IOA Committee on Ethics, Standards of Practice and Best Practices and since its launch in September 2009, she has been the President of the IOA Board of Certification for Certified Organizational Ombudsman Practitioners©. Marsha's Ph.D. is in the field of Chinese and comparative literature; she was previously affiliated with Columbia University as assistant and associate professor of Chinese literature and director of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library. In addition to two books on Chinese poetry and an anthology of essays on the 1989 Chinese democracy movement, she has written several articles, including "The Ombudsman's Roles in Changing the Conflict Resolution System in Institutions of Higher Education" (PDF), "Apologies," "The Organizational Ombudsman as Change Agent" (Negotiation Journal 16, no. 1 [January 2000]: 99-114), and "Alternatives to ADA Mediation."Marsha Wagner is a Certified Organizational Ombudsman Practitioner©.
Jennifer McFeely
Jennifer McFeely joined the Columbia University Ombuds Office as Associate Ombuds Officer in June 2011. Jennifer studied comparative literature as an undergraduate at Kirkland College, received her MSW from Rutgers University, and completed intensive training in family systems therapy at the Family Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts. She worked as a clinical social worker and social work administrator in outpatient mental health agencies in New Jersey and Massachusetts and then, for eleven years, she directed the counseling and guidance programs at the Horace Mann School in Riverdale. Her particular areas of expertise are relationships in families, workplaces, and communities; family and workplace conflict; aggression; mindfulness and other forms of preventative mental health; social and academic coaching; and the experience of women and members of minority groups in environments in which they have historically been underrepresented or excluded.