In a time honored tradition, the Feldberg Fellows of Columbia Business School convened with the esteemed Dean Costis Magalaras on Wednesday March 27, 2024 at the new campus. Approximately 20 Feldbergs were in attendance.

The New Kravis Hall at Columbia Business School

The meeting served as a platform for the Dean to articulate his vision and priorities, igniting inspiration among the distinguished Fellows. In particular, Dean Maglaras drove his vision to place Columbia as one of the Top 3 Business Schools in the country through curriculum innovation, connectedness with the best business leaders in the world, and emphasizing the importance of technology, climate innovation, and healthcare.

Dean Maglaras recently had hosted Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) and Jensen Huang (Nvidia) at the school and pushed that he wanted to continue to have top leaders come and address the school. He is a humble educator and engineer and shared his surprise at how lateral the job becomes as Dean and how important it is to build linkages across groups and foster capital campaigns, encourage faculty, and support students while continuing to expand the campus' footprint.

He pointed out the importance of improving the school's private equity program and addressed questions about the state of the school and the challenges Columbia and other school's have faced with Israel-Palenstine issues. He shared many thoughts with the students on this last topic highlighting how he rallied 16 of the schools 16 Deans to sign a letter to focus on improving the culture of the institution to avoid hurting students and creating a safe space for students to convene and learn from each other.

He is a passionate educator who believes elite universities like Columbia explain the success of America post World War II and believes the majority of innovation for our planet will be driven out of those very schools as we look to the future.

The session was mostly a dialogue with questions from various Feldbergs including Gairy Hall '16, Mike Kopko '09, Scott Asher '09, and Maggie Monahan '24. It was a great gathering of Feldberg Fellows and Dean Maglaras ended thanking the Feldbergs for building one of the strongest affinity groups of alumni at Columbia Business School.