Columbia B-School Celebrates 100 Years

5. Joseph Stiglitz, University Professor and member of the Finance and Economics Division, receives the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001

It’s not every day that you can take a class from someone who invented a branch of economics. With Stiglitz, Columbia students get just that. Stiglitz created “The Economics of Information” that examined the consequences of information asymmetries and earned him the Nobel Prize for Economics. He’s made major contributions to theories from macroeconomics to development economics and trade distribution to income and wealth distribution. Stiglitz was chief economist and senior vice-president for the World Bank along with being a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. He has been awarded more than 40 honorary doctorates and owns a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.

6. An innovator in international business

Columbia was one of the first schools to include a focus on international business in its curriculum. In 1991, the school took another large step forward with the establishment of the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business in 1991. The school has focused attention and resources on understanding and teaching topics ranging from China’s rapid ascendance to the top of the global economy, to liberalization in emerging markets, to how globalization can be a force for good in the world.

7. Shelly Lazarus

Lazarus was one of four women to graduate from Columbia with an MBA in 1970. She has spent more than four decades at advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather, where she is currently chairman emeritus. Lazarus truly worked her way up the ranks, as one of the first women to work on the account side at the agency, then eventually the agency’s first female CEO. Fortune has consistently recognized her as one of its 50 Most Powerful Women since it started the list in 1998.

8. Nina Tandon 

Tandon graduated with an MBA from Columbia in 2012. She co-founded EpiBone, the first company to grow human bones from stem cells. The technology allows EpiBone to gather 3D models of bone deficiencies in patients, extract stem cells, and then grow bone from the stem cells to alleviate the deficiency. Tandon combined her MBA with a PhD in biomedical engineering to help found a company aiming to transform the field of regenerative medicine. She’s led extensive research in stem cell and tissue engineering and her company could potentially change the lives of the millions of people undergoing bone-related surgeries every year.

9. Shazi Visram

Visram earned her MBA from Columbia in 2004. During her time at Columbia, frustrated with the lack of healthy options for baby food, she came up with an idea to create her own – and mapped out a progressive business providing healthy food options for infants while giving back to and supporting sustainable agriculture. She presented her plan at Columbia’s A. Lorne Weil Outrageous Business Plan Competition and won. Afterward, she launched Happy Family, a fast-growing baby food company that was named Fast Company’s Rockstar of the New Economy in 2012.

10. Yuzaburo Mogi 

Have you ever eaten a bland stir-fry that was seemingly missing an ingredient? Mogi has dedicated a career to helping add flavor to your wok. After earning his MBA from Columbia in 1951, he joined Kikkoman and promptly went to work introducing soy sauce into the American market. He hired chefs to write recipes and got those recipes placed in newspapers around the country to get families interested in soy sauce. American sushi was never the same.

Happy anniversary, Columbia, and here’s to another 100 years of innovation!

DON’T MISS: WALL STREET’S STUNNING COLLAPSE AT COLUMBIA; AN INTERVIEW WITH COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL DEAN GLEN HUBBARD