Tamer Institute

Here are five takeaways from the inaugural "Charting a Path Forward With Business Schools and Corporations" conference, which was designed to draw greater attention to the employment barriers formerly incarcerated people face—and the steps necessary to remove them.

The center's Inclusive Entrepreneurship Initiative seeks to build venture ecosystems in the communities around the School.

Clean tech company BlocPower, where Donnel Baird '13 is founder and CEO, is included in CNBC’s annual Disruptor 50 list, which "highlights private companies that are chasing some of the market’s biggest opportunities, and growing despite a tough capital markets environment and slowing economy."

Professor Vanessa Burbano's research on how CEOs taking a stance on social-political issues has "virtually no positive impacts on employee motivation whatsoever" is mentioned in this article on how sustainability has become increasingly more important to prospective business school students.

Entrepreneur Jason Kang, ’16SEAS, was honored for the creation of the venture's Highlight technology, which colorizes disinfectants, and for his pioneering work improving health care cleaning and infection prevention standards globally.

The center is mentioned for providing programs that support a deeper pipeline of female founders in the field of investing to scale companies to take meaningful climate action.

At this year’s Climate Business & Investment Conference, headlined Climate × Data, five common themes emerged from panel discussions and interactive presentations.

"At Columbia, I found a dedicated academic space where I can engage my interest in environmental sustainability while growing my financial expertise through the courses and learning opportunities organized through the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change," says M.A. Miller '24, on how the center's curriculum programming led her to ultimately choose CBS.

After seeing the lack of diversity in the asset class of venture investing, center advisory board member Andrea Turner Moffitt ’07 wanted to find a way to open doors for women and other underrepresented investors. As part of a call to women (and men) to invest in women innovators, she launched Plum Alley Investments. The venture firm looks for companies that stand to improve society and the planet via new technologies or medical breakthroughs. It also stipulates that its portfolio companies have at least one woman in the founding team. At our annual Awards Breakfast in May, we were thrilled to honor Andrea with the Social Enterprise Leadership Award for her support of women-led businesses and social ventures, and her commitment to expanding social enterprise at Columbia Business School.

S. Mona Sinha ’93, center advisory board member, recently reflected on how she came to realize that her business acumen could be valuable to purpose-focused organizations. In her work today as global executive director of Equality Now — a large legal nonprofit that works to change laws that enshrine equality for women and girls — she is focused on the importance of putting equality and equity at the center of business to create a world in which women and men have equal rights under the law and full enjoyment of their human rights. At our annual Awards Breakfast in May, we were thrilled to honor Mona with the Horton Award for her dedication to the social enterprise community at Columbia University, and for her extraordinary strategic and philanthropic leadership to elevate women’s issues worldwide.