The Complete Guide to Columbia Business School Applications

Sakshi Ghai is behavioral scientist and a Ph.D. Student in Psychology at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on empowerment, technology and behavior change in the context of Global South. Prior to her research work, she has worked as an advertising executive at Ogilvy & Mather and as a diversity and inclusion researcher at Wharton People Analytics at the Wharton School. She was also a Visiting Scholar at Penn’s Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics and a short-term consultant at the World Bank’s behavioral science unit. Sakshi received degrees from Lady Shri Ram College for Women (BA in Philosophy), Ashoka University (Young India Fellowship), and the University of Pennsylvania (MSc in Behaviour and Decision Sciences). 

Bhavika Goyal is an incoming Product Manager at Google, and has an MBA from the Wharton Business School. Prior to her MBA, Bhavika had worked as a Project Manager at P&G as a technical engineer working in the supply chain division, based out of their manufacturing site in India. In 2017 she founded Joy Is You (www.joyisyou.com), an early-stage wellness start-up focused on improving the mental health of working professionals by teaching them ideas in personal growth, wellbeing, productivity, and mindfulness. She did her under-graduation from IIT Delhi.In this masterclass, she will discuss her professional journey and share mental models and insights into building a career as a Product Manager.

In this candid and insightful masterclass, Jean-Philippe Courtois shares his personal advice and insights on - 1. Art of following your curiosity by building a habit of asking thoughtful questions. 2. Nuances of clarity, positivity, and success to augment personal leadership style. 3. Mental models for contextual awareness for leading cross-cultural and global teams. As executive vice president and president, Global Sales, Marketing & Operations, Jean-Philippe Courtois leads Microsoft’s commercial business across 124 subsidiaries worldwide. From Cloud services to AI and mixed reality, Courtois is responsible for driving strategic planning, growth initiatives, national digital transformation partnerships and running Microsoft global commercial business. Courtois is passionate about enabling businesses to digitally transform with the right strategy, skills and technology to ignite new innovation, new ways of working, new business models and new revenue streams. He helps build vibrant ecosystems with small businesses, start-ups, public sector entities, partners all the way to global industry leaders. Previously, Courtois served as president of Microsoft International where he led sales, marketing and services across all Microsoft subsidiaries outside of the United States and Canada. Before that he held the same role for the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa) as CEO and president of Microsoft EMEA, and was corporate vice president of Worldwide Customer Marketing, based out of Microsoft’s worldwide headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Courtois joined Microsoft in 1984. His first role was as a partner sales representative and, after holding several leadership positions, he was promoted to general manager for Microsoft France in 1994. Courtois holds a Diplôme des Etudes Commerciales Supérieures (DECS) from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Nice (SKEMA). Outside of Microsoft, Courtois is chairman of the board of directors for SKEMA Business School, as well as a board member of Positive Planet, a worldwide leading NGO with a mission to help men and women across the world create the conditions for a better life for future generations. Courtois is also on the board of directors of ManpowerGroup, the global workforce solutions organization. He has served as co-chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Digital Divide Initiative Task Force, on the European Commission Information and Communication Technology task force and previously sat on the board of directors for AstraZeneca. In 2015, he co-founded the Live for Good foundation, which aims to unlock the potential of young people from all walks of life through social entrepreneurship, driving societal innovation through a purpose led community

Lux Capital

Chia graduated from Cambridge and got admitted to Harvard Business School. In this masterclass, he will share his leadership journey, vision for future and concrete ideas about the future of work, specifically how and when should one think of advanced degrees and how skills in one industry can be applied to another

Anagh Prasad was All India Rank – 1 in the first ever edition of JEE Main (2013). He joined IIT Delhi with AIR-66 in JEE Advanced and graduated from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering with the Gold Medal for All-Round Achievement.

Yatin is a serial entrepreneur with a history in bootstrapping and scaling grassroot ventures in the most sustainable manner.

Unnati works as an associate consultant at Dalberg Advisors. In the past year, she has worked on sanitation, food fortification, and family planning. She studied economics at Shri Ram College of Commerce. In college, she interned at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) with their WASH and nutrition teams. She also worked on tuberculosis with Amaltas, a development consulting firm. She also dabbled in political strategy while working on the 2017 Uttar Pradesh State Assembly Elections. Unnati is passionate about applying a social justice lens to her work and can be found debating about politics over coffee and banana chips.

Shrayana Bhattacharya is a Senior Economist in the World Bank’s Social Protection and Jobs Practice based in New Delhi.

Building meaningful careers in politics and public policy with Minister Dharmendra Pradhan & Shri Ramesh Abhishek. Mr. Pradhan is the Cabinet Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas and Steel in the Government of India. As a Member of Parliament, he represents Madhya Pradesh in the Rajya Sabha and was earlier a member of the 14th Lok Sabha. IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary to GoI, Dept of Industry & Internal Trade (makeinindia, startupindia, easeofdoingbiz). Mr. Ramesh has worked in Bihar for over 15 years.

Nabila Jamshed is a public policy and global governance specialist currently working with the United Nations India.

Mr. Kumar is a member of the Indian Administrative Service of 1987 batch and presently the CEO of the Government E-Marketplace. Mr. Kumar brings with him 32 years of experience in public administration.

I am currently a Vice President at Altamont Capital Partners, a generalist investment fund with over $2.5 billion in capital under management, focused on control investments in middle market companies. At Altamont, I help to lead our efforts in the consumer products and services sector, including through active board roles at Altamont portfolio companies Fox Racing and Brixton.

As the founder of Waterfield Advisors, Soumya brings over 25 years of financial services experience. She has advised several of India’s leading business families on issues related to the success and continuity of their family enterprise.

Raheel Khursheed is a globally recognized technology impact leader and for his groundbreaking work of democratizing information at scale was named a 2017 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard, a Yale world fellow 2017, a member of the 2017 class of Asia 21, and a 2018 Draper-Hills Summer Fellow at Stanford University.

Kartikeya covers consumer tech investments at Blume, supporting on sourcing, investing and portfolio management. His areas of focus include fintech, proptech, retail tech, and marketplaces. He joins Blume from an operations role at Bridge International Academies, a leading ed-tech startup in Africa.

Led Government of India's strategy and implementation of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, FinTech andBlockchain initiatives; co-authored India's National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence; ex-Investment Banker withexperience of US$20bn+ in M&A, Equity and Debt transactions across Asia and Americas. 

Ramesh is a program manager at Google; working on Google's Search Ads platform. Previously Ramesh has worked on smart home automation, wireless/fiber internet and technology consulting in Australia, UK and the US. Ramesh did his computer science engineering in India, a Master in IT & Telecom in Australia before completing his MBA at Oxford. Ramesh is also an angel investor with investments across India, US and Europe.

Chetna is a current student of the Master’s in International Economic Policy at Sciences Po Paris, studying China and Energy as her focus areas, where she is a recipient of the Émile Boutmy, Tiara, Charpak Travel and K.C. Mahindra scholarships.

Shayan works as Head of Education Ventures at the Fair Education Alliance, the UK's pre-eminent education coalition. He is an Innovation Ecosystem Builder Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, D-Lab and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. Shayan has worked at Bain & Company, Teach For India, and started his career at a data science unicorn.