Alumni Board Announcements

This month, the Columbia Mailman Alumni Board welcomes 11 new officers and says a fond farewell to 5 departing officers.

New Members

Please join us in welcoming the new Alumni Board Officers as each share a few words introducing themselves to the Alumni Community:

Dorcas Adedoja, MPH ’20

I look forward to utilizing my experience as a Mailman FORWARD Accountability Cabinet Member, Human Rights Campaign ACTIVATE Fellow, and Dotdash Anti-Bias Review Board Member to shape Mailman's future. It is divine to join the alumni board during such a defining moment in school history and public health at large. I am delighted to unite with leaders who understand the time to implement change is now. Mailman’s centennial approaches, and with it comes an opportunity to address persistent shortcomings in the field that have culminated into the health disparities the pandemic continues to lay bare. I pledge to use my tenure to be of service to all, especially those the pandemic has impacted most. Cheers to building public health infrastructure that truly serves the entire public.
Negar Aliabadi, MS ’14

I trained and worked in internal medicine at Bellevue Hospital, followed by NYP-Columbia, where I also received my master’s degree in epidemiology from the Mailman School of Public Health, before entering the world of global public health through CDC. At CDC, I worked on various outbreaks (meningitis, Ebola, acute flaccid myelitis) domestically and globally, as well as on strengthening global immunization programs. I worked closely with health departments, Ministries of Health, WHO and other partners through this work. I have continued my love of vaccine-related work by transitioning to the Department of Vaccine Research and Development at Pfizer, where I currently work on vaccine clinical trials. I am excited to join the Alumni Board of Mailman to engage with public health students and share my experiences in this very exciting field!
Suchi Bansal, MPH ’10

Suchi Bansal is the Director of the Transmedia Storytelling Lab (TSL) at Ci3 at the University of Chicago, an interdisciplinary research center aimed at improving the health and wellbeing of young people. At Ci3, Bansal leads the development and implementation of narrative-based projects. In addition, she also manages the Center’s portfolio of global health projects. She is currently managing the design and testing of an intervention in India that promotes girls’ education and improves sexual and reproductive health of young people.

Bansal is deeply passionate about improving the lives of vulnerable populations. She has over 15 years of experience of working in public health and international development. She began her career as a researcher in international trade and economics at a renowned think tank in India. She followed her interest in development focusing specifically on health issues that affect women and girls living in developing countries. Bansal has worked with international development organizations like the World Bank and leading non-profit organizations on health-related issues. In 2019, she received the 120 under 40 Distinguished Leaders in Family Planning Award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Family Planning at Johns Hopkins University for her contributions to the field of family planning. In addition, in 2020, she was awarded the Outstanding Young Professional award by the sexual and reproductive health section of the American Public Health Association and selected into the prestigious Emerging Leaders Program of the Chicago Council of Global Affairs.

Bansal earned her Master of Public Health from Mailman in 2010 and a bachelor’s degree in economics and international relations from Knox College in 2002.

Suchi is excited about working with the Board on developing new initiatives to enhance alumni engagement with the School and its current students.
Kathy Colon, MPH ’15

Kathy Colon is a senior leader with extensive experience building strategic partnerships with enterprise corporations, hospitals, payers, and life science organizations, responsible for leading business development efforts nationally and globally, with millions in annual revenue. She has supported business strategies, operations, and delivery to further grow market share; and has experience leading teams of up to 450 staff. Her professional expertise is in the areas of medical devices, health information technology, cloud, big data, analytics, SaaS, genomics, CRM, RPA, and AI/cognitive.

Mailman helped me expedite my professional trajectory in a field where there are not many women of color, I am excited to pay that forward. As a NYC native, raised in Elmhurst Queens, by immigrant parents I know how education can open doors for many professional opportunities. With the upcoming centennial celebration in 2022, I am excited to help plan the School’s next 100 years.
Stuart Feldman, BS ’62, MS ’66

Joining the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health Alumni Board is an opportunity for me to give back to the institution that shaped my career. The merger of alumni of the former Columbia University College of Pharmaceutical Sciences with the Mailman School Alumni Association in 2000 makes this possible.

I received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia’s College of Pharmacy in 1962 and master’s degree in 1966. Faculty and mentors at the College led me to a PhD program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. I graduated in 1969. I gained a greater understanding of the importance of public health to pharmacy practice from my faculty and administrative positions at Temple University, University of Houston, and the deanship at the University of Georgia (UGA) College of Pharmacy. In 2006, I retired from UGA. At retirement from UGA in 2006, I took the position as founding dean at New York’s Touro College of Pharmacy. The designed curriculum included public health content at a level found in MPH programs. In 2014, I returned to UGA and the College of Public Health and served as interim department head of Health Policy and Management from 2015 to 2020.

It is such an honor to join the Board, especially during this exciting time of our centennial celebration. I look forward to working with my Board colleagues to advance the mission and community contributions of the Mailman School of Public Health.
Gregory Geba, DrPH ’15

Greg is a physician researcher, who is currently Senior Vice President at Regeneron and Adjunct Associate Professor at Mailman in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. He completed an undergraduate degree at Brown University, a medical degree at the University of Navarre, a Master of Public Health at Johns Hopkins and has a Doctor of Public Health, focused on molecular toxicology from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. After training in Internal Medicine in Manhattan, he completed fellowship training in Immunology, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Yale University, where, as a faculty member and Boyer Center Faculty Scholar in Molecular Medicine, he conducted research in immunological and molecular mechanisms underlying allergic and pulmonary diseases, directed the Medical Intensive Care Unit and served as an attending physician focused on asthma and immunological diseases of the lung. He has spent the last 20 years in the biopharmaceutical sector contributing to the development of over 50 new therapies for the treatment of infectious diseases, allergic, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. He lives in New Jersey with his wife Pilar, a pharmacologist, and three children all in various stages of completing their own academic journeys. He is thrilled to join such an experienced, talented and committed Board to help Mailman continue to engage its Alumni and contribute ideas to chart the next 100 years of Columbia’s public health mission.
Kyle MacDonald, MPH ’19

I am a Canadian pediatric and public health physician living in New York City. I graduated from Mailman with my Master of Public Health in 2019 and lead a CDC/NACCHO grant-funded team at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that provides technical assistance to health departments nationwide focused on substance use and the opioid overdose crisis. I'm also a researcher, writer, and strategic advisor to the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. I am passionate about promoting and operationalizing equity, advancing LGBTQ+ health and the health of people who use drugs, and love analyzing root causes and discussing how policy and advocacy can be leveraged to promote health and justice for all. I am so excited to join the Alumni Board at this critical juncture and hope we can foster dialogue, engagement, ideation, and advancement with alumni worldwide. Now more than ever, the public, government, and industry should recognize the importance of public health. I believe that Columbia and the University's alumni are uniquely positioned to work collaboratively across sectors and put data into action to build a more equitable and just world.
Sun-Ming "Jessica" Pan, MPH ’19

It is with a heart of heartfelt gratitude to introduce myself as one of the incoming Mailman Alumni Board members of 2021. I embarked on this endeavor of service to give back and help shape an institution that has given me and continues to give me so much. As we approach the anniversary of the School’s centennial, I am excited to bring my unique experiences in advocacy, healthcare business, and research to ensure the next 100 years is even brighter for our community.

My name is Sun-Ming Jessica Pan, a graduate of the Master of Public Health in epidemiology program in 2019. I was born in Los Angeles, CA but spent most of my formative years in Shanghai, China and Taipei, Taiwan living through many public health disasters: the Jiji earthquake, deadly typhoons, and the SARS epidemic. It is my international upbringing and understanding of interdependence at a young age that led me to volunteer amid land and floating villages in Cambodia, and clinics in Kenya and Puerto Rico. While I identify myself as a global citizen with responsibilities that extend beyond the American democracy, I also understand the growing issues we have on our own soil. During my time at Columbia University, I co-founded Columbia University’s inaugural Gun Violence Action Week, a weeklong program of interprofessional workshops lectures, and discussions addressing the current U.S. gun violence epidemic and served as the staff lead during the inception of Columbia University’s COVID-19 Student Service Corp in March of 2020.

To me, one of the most important pillars of the public health discipline is collaboration. It is my hope that my commitment to the Alumni Board can lead to giving students a voice, staff and faculty a place, and alumni the time to help us envision how great it can be for the next 100 years.
Sonalee Rau, MPH ’20

Sonalee is a Consultant at Trinity Life Sciences, where she provides strategic advisory services and develops research insights to guide the work of innovative firms in the health care sector. She is particularly interested in health economics and outcomes research. Sonalee received her Master of Public Health at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Prior to graduate school, she worked at several federal agencies, as well as in policy research at the Atlantic Media Company. She is honored and humbled to join the Alumni Board during this momentous centennial year to give back to a school that means so much to her, and believes that to invest in strengthening and maintaining vital public health systems is to invest in the educational institutions that create public health leaders of tomorrow. Sonalee is passionate about occupational safety and health, as well as about researching and advocating for geriatric health services, having co-coordinated a remote geriatric social support and health assessment intervention in Washington Heights with Columbia’s COVID-19 Student Service Corps over the past year. Her passion for public service has also led her to serve on the board of the Washington Leadership Program, a nonprofit dedicated to building the next generation of public sector leadership from within the South Asian American community.
Brenda Senyana, MPH ’10

Brenda Senyana earned her Master of Public Health in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in 2010. It was here that her foundation of public health was formed and her charge to work towards equitable access to healthcare for all persons was born.

Over the last decade, Brenda has worked on numerous projects aimed at reaching the most vulnerable of populations with vital health services. Most recently working as Strategic Information Specialist at ICAP at Columbia University providing technical assistance to HIV/AIDS programs throughout Sub Saharan Africa, the Caribbeans and Central Asia and now, as a Senior Planning Analyst, coordinating Hennepin County’s strategy to end the HIV epidemic in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In both roles, her efforts have been focused on reaching those at risk of contracting HIV with vital prevention methods and those living with HIV/AIDS with optimal care and treatment services.

As she looks to continue her life's work, she sees her election to the Alumni Board as an opportunity to give back to the institution that started her on her way. She is excited to work with fellow board members to create strong ties with members from various public health fields and communities, expand opportunities for current students, and develop greater relationships with alumni. She is also excited to be joining at this time, when the School's centennial is upon us.