Alumni Relations Committee

Sen. Reed D. Auerbach ‘81IF, ‘82SIPA, ‘85Law was a Partner and Global Chair of the Structured Transactions Group at the multinational law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP in their New York office. Reed led a team of approximately 100 structured transaction lawyers across offices in New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, and London. He has served as a Director of the Structured Finance Association and as a member of its Executive Committee. He has served on the editorial board of The Journal of Structured Finance and co-authored the Fourth Edition of the legal treatise Offerings of Asset-Backed Securities. Reed has been an active alumnus of both the School of International and Public Affairs and Columbia Law School. He has served for 13 years as a member of SIPA’s Advisory Board and was recently appointed to serve on the Dean’s Executive Committee for the Advisory Board. Reed also recently completed two terms as the SIPA representative on the Alumni Trustee Nominating Committee, including his last two years as the Committee’s Chair. At the Law School, Reed served as Co-Chair of the Reunion Committee for his 35th Reunion and his 40th Reunion. Previously he served on the Reunion Committee for both his 25th and 30th CLS Reunions. Reed and his wife Adrienne have endowed a scholarship at SIPA in support of the International Fellows Program. At CLS, Reed and Adrienne endowed a scholarship for financial aid and established a fund in support of internships for students who spend the summer working in the international human rights field for a public interest organization or an international NGO.

Nancy LoIacono is a Research Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. She is an environmental scientist and epidemiologist and has dedicated her career to understanding the effects of exposure to metals (in particular lead and arsenic) on children’s neurocognitive development and the development of adverse health outcomes (cardiovascular and lung disease and diabetes) in adults. She has worked on studies at both the molecular and population levels. She has been involved in several long-term prospective studies that have focused on identifying the adverse effects of exposure to metals, evaluating the effectiveness and safety of various interventions, and formulating strategies to reduce or eliminate these exposures and/or to mitigate their effects.

Sen. Lisa Rosen-Metsch '90GS is the 9th Dean of the Columbia School of General Studies and the first alumna to serve as Dean. Previously, she was the Chair and Stephen Smith Professor, Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health. Dean Rosen-Metsch is a medical sociologist and an internationally recognized scholar whose work has focused on the social determinants of health with special focus on access to care for persons living with HIV and substance use disorders. For the past two decades, her research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has resulted in over 250 publications in high impact journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Addiction, and the American Journal of Public Health.

Mentoring and teaching has always been a high priority for Dean Rosen-Metsch and she has won numerous teaching awards and co-directs a NIH-funded training program with the Columbia School of Social Work. This spring, she taught a new seminar course in the Department of Sociology for undergraduates entitled “AIDS and U.S. Society” that explored how the HIV/AIDS epidemic transformed American society. In her time as Dean, Columbia GS has significantly increased fundraising for student financial aid scholarships, created and launched new international dual-degree programs, and created new initiatives focused on social justice and women student veterans.

Sen. Kwamina Vandyke is an MBA candidate at Columbia Business School and former Creative Marketing Manager at Amazon. He spent six years in consulting with Deloitte and Accenture, during which he founded The Mayhem Collection, a luxury fashion brand based out of Ghana. He also founded New Home Football Academy in Ghana, helping to introduce and develop American football in the region. Vandyke holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Virginia Tech and a master’s in Sports Management from Hampton University.

Sen. Gareth Williams is a professor of Classics who has taught at Columbia since 1992. Since then, Sen. Williams has served on many different Arts & Sciences committees and in the College Core Curriculum. Sen. Williams is a specialist in the Latin language and literature of the late Republican and early Imperial eras, and has written various books on the Roman poet Ovid and on the philosopher-politician Seneca, but also on Renaissance Venice and Venetian humanism.

Sen. Carlos V. Cruz ’88CC was raised in the Marcy Avenue projects in Brooklyn and in South Texas by immigrants from Panama and Mexico and learned the beauty of bringing diverse people together and the power of community, an outlook that he put into practice in his vast extracurricular involvement at Columbia.  As multi-year President of Columbia Pride, and Vice President, Development, and Communications Chairs of the Latino Alumni Association, sometimes simultaneously, he takes great pride in helping amplify and support everyone in the Columbia community.  In his many interactions with Columbians, he is always inspired by our ideas, accomplishments, and character.  After a few great years working with the wonderful team at Columbia Undergraduate Admissions right after graduation with a concentration in Economics, Carlos embarked on a career in supply chain, product development, sourcing, and merchandising where he has risen to positions of leadership at Gap, Inc. and Target, helped structure startups, and consulted. Carlos currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Columbia College Alumni Association and the 1754 Society and the Columbia Alumni Association Board.