Russell L. Carson ’67
General Partner,
Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe

When Russell Carson graduated from Columbia Business School, he had never heard the term private equity. Yet it was the company he cofounded in 1979, Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, that defined the field, becoming one of the largest and most successful private equity firms in the world.

Over the past 30 years, the firm has raised 15 institutionally-funded limited partnerships with total capital of over $20 billion and has invested in more than 250 companies. Unlike many buyout firms, Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe — which specializes in the information services and healthcare industries — emphasizes the growth of acquired businesses and ultimately seeks its financial returns through access to the public stock market. (Paul Queally ’90 is also a senior member of the firm.)

A noted philanthropist, Carson is a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, chairman of Rockefeller University and the Endowment for Inner-City Education, and cochairman of the New York City Investment Fund. In 2007, Carson and his family funded a two-year partnership between the School and the nationally acclaimed social-services and education nonprofit Harlem Children’s Zone.

A longtime supporter of the Social Enterprise Program, Carson also serves as chairman emeritus of the School’s Board of Overseers. He was presented with the Columbia Business School Distinguished Leadership in Business Award in 2008 by Henry Kravis ’69 at the School’s 32nd Annual Dinner.

“Columbia introduced me to the world of business,” Carson says. “The School was instrumental to my development as both a businessman and a human being.”

Warren Buffett MS ’51
Chairman and CEO,
Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

In June 2006, Warren Buffett announced that he would give away 85 percent of his Berkshire Hathaway holdings — about $37.4 billion — to five foundations in annual gifts of stock, with nearly $31 billion going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was the largest charitable donation in history.

Arguably the most successful investor in the world, Buffett began buying stock in textile company Berkshire Hathaway in 1962 and soon bought enough shares to control the company and expand its core businesses to the insurance industry and other investments. As of December 7, 2007, Berkshire’s Class A shares sold for more than $150,000, making them the highest-priced shares on the New York Stock Exchange at that time.

Famous for his mastery of value investing, Buffett chose to attend Columbia Business School to study with Professor Benjamin Graham, whose 1934 classic Security Analysis, coauthored with David Dodd, MS ’21, defined the field of investing for generations of practitioners.

Each spring, in association with the School’s Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing, a group of students visit Omaha for an alumni reception held in conjunction with Berkshire’s annual meeting.

“The basic ideas of investing,” Buffett says, “are to look at stocks as a business, use a market’s fluctuations to your advantage, and seek a margin of safety. That’s what Ben Graham taught us. A hundred years from now, these will still be the cornerstones of investing.”

Ron Gonen ’04 (EMBA)
Cofounder,
RecycleBank

Less than two years after it launched, RecycleBank, the pioneering recycling incentives program cofounded by Ron Gonen while he was a student at Columbia Business School, had contracts with several municipalities in the mid-Atlantic and New England regions and was featured in the New York Times and other national media outlets.

RecycleBank provides families with special containers for recycling, identifies the amount households have recycled and translates this into points — RecycleBank Points — that can be used at more than 300 different stores. The company profits by advertising partnering businesses online and charging the city a percentage of its savings on landfill space.

As he unrolls RecycleBank in cities across the country, Gonen is also bringing the concept to college campuses: a pilot program at Columbia provides students with RecycleBank cards that can be swiped at special kiosks in dorms and cafeterias.

Gonen first developed a business plan for the company and consulted with seed funders as a participant in the School’s Entrepreneurial Greenhouse Program. A frequent guest lecturer in class, Gonen has also served as a panelist at alumni entrepreneur events and as a judge at the Global Social Venture Competition, a business-plan competition cosponsored by the School.

“Columbia’s support for entrepreneurs really sets it apart,” Gonen says. “I learned how to sell; there are a lot of great ideas out there, but if you can’t sell your idea, it’s just swirling around in your head.”

Nand Khemka ’56
Chairman,
SUN Group

In 1985, Nand Khemka established the SUN Group to address investment-management opportunities in emerging global markets. Today, SUN is a leading principal investor and private equity fund manager in Russia, India, and other transforming markets, with investments in brewing, oil and gas, power and energy-related sectors, private equity, venture capital, and real estate.

Khemka’s approach combines fiduciary expertise and discipline with entrepreneurship. SUN allocates capital as a direct principal investor and as a private equity fund manager, often in partnership with other global firms. One of the group’s core themes is building ethical leadership in transforming markets.

To that end, the Nand and Jeet Khemka Foundation has contributed to the establishment of two major business schools: the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and the Moscow School of Management.

A member of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers, Khemka hosted students on international study tours of India coordinated by the School’s Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business. In May 2008, Khemka and his wife, Jeet, established the Nand and Jeet Khemka Distinguished Speaker Forum, which will bring leaders in industry, commerce, finance, and government from India and around the globe to the School to share their perspectives on India’s business policies and growing economy.

Khemka also served as a panelist at the School’s inaugural Pan-Asian Reunion in Hong Kong in October 2008.

“Columbia gave me a wide exposure to international business,” Khemka says. “

The School gave me the confidence and courage to deal with global conditions.”

Henry R. Kravis ’69
Founding Partner,
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.

In 1988, Henry Kravis negotiated the buyout of RJR Nabisco at a purchase price of $30 billion — then the highest price ever paid for a commercial enterprise.

As a managing partner of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), the private equity firm he cofounded in 1976, Kravis continues to be responsible for some of the biggest corporate acquisitions in history, including Beatrice, Safeway, Duracell, Owens-Illinois, Toys “R” Us, TXU, and Autozone. KKR pioneered the leveraged buyout — a takeover funded by borrowed money and equity — and today has offices in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. In total, KKR has completed more than 165 transactions with a total acquisition price of approximately $440 billion. In 2010, KKR went public, allowing its stock to be traded openly on the New York Stock Exchange.

Kravis has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards of directors, including RJR Nabisco, Gillette, Channel 13/WNET New York, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Partnership for New York City, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He founded and is cochairman of the New York City Investment Fund, which is designed to create jobs and help small businesses in New York City.

Cochairman of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers and chair of the School’s 2008 Annual Dinner, Kravis served as a panelist at the School’s inaugural Pan-Asian Reunion in Hong Kong in October 2008.

Lulu C. Wang ’83
Founder and CEO,
Tupelo Capital Management LLC

After earning a BA in English literature from Wellesley College, Lulu Wang got her start on Wall Street when she answered an ad for a financial editor placed by a small brokerage firm. Before long, Wang studied research analysis — eventually earning her MBA at Columbia — and went on to become a senior vice president and managing director at Equitable Capital Management. “Education,” she says, “has always been an important part of my life and of what I’ve been able to accomplish.”

Wang was managing some $4 billion in assets for pension, endowment, and mutual funds for Jennison Associates Capital Corporation when she set out on her own in 1998 to found Tupelo Capital Management, a New York–based firm that invests globally in public equities. Wang is one of the original members of the Committee of 100, a group of Chinese-American leaders dedicated to increasing understanding between the United States and China.

Wang has been honored for her professional and volunteer work by such organizations as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asia Society, the China Institute, Girls Inc., the NY Women’s Agenda, and Ernst & Young. She serves as a board member for the Rockefeller University, WNYC Public Radio, the Asia Society, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; a trustee emerita of Wellesley College; a consulting director of the New York Community Trust; and president of the Shoreland Foundation.

A member of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers and cochair of the School’s capital campaign, Wang endowed the Lulu Chow Wang Distinguished Scholar Program in January 2008. The program enables the School to host a visiting senior Chinese academic or business leader every year to foster dialogue and scholarly exchange.

Rochelle B. “Shelly” Lazarus ’70
Chairman and CEO,
Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

During her 30-plus years with Ogilvy & Mather, marketing guru Shelly Lazarus has worked in every product category in both the general-advertising and direct-marketing disciplines. She has also played a significant role in the management of the company, running O&M Advertising and O&M Direct in North America. In 1997, she was named chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide.

Among her many honors and awards, Lazarus was named Business Woman of the Year by the New York City Partnership in 1996. She is one of two women to have served as chairman of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and she has been listed in Fortune magazine’s annual ranking of the 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business since its inception in 1998.

A member of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers, Lazarus also serves on the boards of many industry, business, and academic institutions, including GE, Merck & Co., NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the World Wildlife Fund and the American Museum of Natural History.

In 2003, Lazarus became the first woman to be honored by the School with its Distinguished Leadership in Business Award. A keynote speaker at the student-run Marketing Association of Columbia’s annual conference in 2006, she remains closely connected to Columbia.

“I discovered marketing within the walls of Columbia Business School,” Lazarus says. “It was really interesting and really creative — I fell in love with it.”

Photo: ©2007 Mark Schafer

Gail J. McGovern ’87 (EMBA)
President and CEO,
American Red Cross

In her first international trip as president and CEO of the American Red Cross, Gail McGovern traveled to Yingxiu, China, and met with students and teachers who survived the collapse of their schools during the massive earthquake that hit the country’s Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008. Under McGovern’s leadership, the Red Cross committed $20 million to help the earthquake survivors recover and is working with the Red Cross Society of China to determine additional needs.

Recognized by Fortune magazine in 2000 and 2001 as one of the top 50 Most Powerful Women in Corporate America, McGovern joined the Red Cross in June of 2008 after more than two decades as a corporate executive and six years as a professor of marketing at Harvard Business School.

From 1998 to 2002, McGovern was president of Fidelity Personal Investments, a unit of Fidelity Investments that serves four million customers with $500 billion in assets. Previously, she was executive vice president for the consumer markets division at AT&T, where she was responsible for the company’s largest business unit, the $26 billion residential long-distance service. She began her career at AT&T as a computer programmer and moved up through sales, marketing, and general-management assignments.

“My experience at Columbia transformed my career,” McGovern says. “For the first time, I saw how financial and management concepts could be applied to the real world. I became a completely different business leader.”

Vikram S. Pandit PhD ’86

In less than two years, Vikram Pandit went from heading Morgan Stanley’s institutional client division to running his own $4.5 billion hedge fund to being named CEO of global banking conglomerate Citi, which has some 200 million customer accounts in more than 100 countries.

An active member of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers and frequent guest speaker at the School, Pandit led a session on corporate governance as part of student orientation in September 2008.

“Vikram is an excellent salesman, as one must be to become the head of a large Wall Street firm,” says John Donaldson, the Mario J. Gabelli Professor of Finance, academic director of the Doctoral Program, and Pandit’s dissertation adviser. “But he also has been trained to think very carefully about an abstract problem and to ascertain the fundamental issues at stake.”

Pandit serves on the boards of Columbia University, the Indian School of Business, and the Trinity School. He is a former board member of the Nasdaq, the New York City Investment Fund, and the American India Foundation.

Jerry I. Speyer ’64
Chairman,
Tishman Speyer

Jerry Speyer cofounded the global real estate powerhouse Tishman Speyer in 1978. Today, the firm manages a property portfolio in excess of $76 billion in total value across the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia, including New York’s Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center, Berlin’s Sony Center, and São Paulo’s Torre Norte.

A member of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers, Speyer is vice chairman of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and has also served as chairman of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

An avid art collector, Speyer has been listed since 2004 among ARTnews’ Top 200 Collectors; world-class art is regularly exhibited in Tishman Speyer’s public spaces. In 2007, Speyer was named chairman of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Speyer missed his own 1964 commencement ceremony because of work but returned in 2008 to offer congratulatory remarks to the graduating class: “The world needs you now,” Speyer told the new MBAs. “It’s waiting to embrace you and your new ideas in the energy sector, in the protection of the environment, transportation, technology, healthcare, infrastructure, media, finance, and, yes, even real estate. It needs your bold ideas, your energy, and your passion.”

Frank K. Tang ’94
Managing Partner and CEO,
FountainVest Partners

An expert on investment opportunities in China, Frank Tang founded FountainVest Partners, one of the largest private equity funds dedicated to China, in October 2007.

Tang previously served as a senior managing director of Singapore-based Temasek Holdings, a prominent Asia investment house, where he headed investments in China for more than two years. Tang invested several billions of US dollars in Chinese companies spanning financial institutions, retail, consumer products, real estate, resource, and alternative-energy companies, helping Temasek to become one of the largest overseas investors in China.

Tang started his investment-banking career at Goldman Sachs in New York before moving to Hong Kong, where he served as an executive director in the firm’s private equity business and later as its managing director and head of telecom, media, and technology investment-banking efforts in Asia (outside Japan). He worked for the firm for nearly 11 years.

In October 2008, Tang served as a panelist at the School’s inaugural Pan-Asian Reunion in Hong Kong. Also in 2008, he established an endowed scholarship for incoming MBA students, and in 2007 he returned to Columbia as the fourth speaker in the School’s Sir Gordon Wu Distinguished Speaker Forum, a series that promotes the academic study and professional understanding of China’s economy and business practices. Addressing a capacity crowd of students, faculty members, alumni, and friends of the School at the Columbia Club in midtown Manhattan, Tang discussed the effects of recent market and economic reforms on foreign-investment opportunities in China.

“With a thorough understanding of the Chinese market and an appreciation of its changing investment paradigm,” Tang said, “investors can continue to share in China’s successes today and in the future.”

Alberto J. Verme ’84
Chairman, Europe, Middle East, and Africa,
Citi

In May 2008, Citigroup announced that Alberto Verme, cohead of global investment banking, would move to Dubai, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Working with colleagues across Citi’s global network, Verme facilitates access to the Middle East and provides local expertise to clients seeking to do business there.

Since Verme was appointed to his current position in 2004, Citi has become an investment-banking leader across key regions, products, and sectors. From 2001 to 2004, he served as head of global energy, power, and

chemicals investment banking. During his tenure, the franchise achieved

world leadership and executed several marquee transactions.

Just 10 years after he graduated from Columbia Business School, Verme joined Salomon Brothers as head of Latin America investment banking, building a team that was recognized with the IFR 2000 Latin America Bank of the Year award.

A member of Columbia Business School’s Board of Overseers, Verme was a keynote speaker at the student-run Latin American Business Conference in 2008.