Grand Challenges Events

Team Members: Rachel Alvitres, Claire Chung, Tory Hansen, John Werner
Project Sponsor: Wunan Zhou
Supervising Faculty: Robert Karpman
MBA Coach: Hannah Tolan

Team Members: Georgia Bryant, Eric Liang, Rohan Nandy, Lauren Pagliari
Project Sponsor: Andi Merrill and Liz Shuhan
Supervising Faculty: Christina McDowell
MBA Coach: Barrington Davis

Team Members: Jasmine Chang, Angela Chen, Alexander De Leon, Jon Duval, Victoria Gong, Grace Lin, Vivienne Lin, Aissata Maiga, Kiran O’Kelly, Jasmine Ren
Project Sponsor: Eliane Cohen and George Heibel
Supervising Faculty: Trent Preszler

Team Members: Jonathan Mak, Brendan Monahan, Mario Penna, Brian Xu, Joseph Yoo
Project Sponsor: Kyle Trewhella and Deena Anwar
Supervising Faculty: Stephen Shu
MBA Coach: Manisha Goyal

Zachary Burr is an equity trader at Trillium Trading and he believes that success in business should open doors to meaningful philanthropy—particularly in a field like trading, where giving back can be less common. Inspired by the Impact Competition’s mission to show how we all can fuel large-scale social improvements, he serves as a judge to help nurture the next generation of changemakers.

Abby Christman is the Assistant Director of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise housed in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. In this role, she works with MBA students in Big Red Microenterprise, Environmental Finance and Impact Investing Fellows, Sustainable Business Fellows, student groups across campus to organize the Cornell Energy Connection and Cornell Business Impact Symposium, and external partners on other business and sustainability initiatives.

Prior to joining the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, Abby spent 5 years in CALS Animal Science in the PRO-DAIRY extension program, working primarily with the dairy farm business and youth development teams. Abby spent 2 years in the Peace Corps in Cameroon as an Agriculture and Environment Extension Agent where she worked with Heifer International, helped establish a local NGO focused the Environment and Community Health, and ran GLOW and computer clubs at local schools. She has both a BS in Animal Science and a MPS in Global Development from Cornell.

In her spare time, Abby trains and competes in dog sports with her two mastiffs, teaches agility and other classes for the Ithaca Dog Training Club, and enjoys spending time outside riding her horse and hiking in the gorges.

Jake serves as the Associate Director of Strategy and Operations for the David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement. In his work with the center, he is responsible for designing and implementing a variety of initiatives and programs that aim to provide every Cornell student with high-quality community-engaged learning experiences, including courses, research and internship opportunities, and various other engaged practices. Since his arrival at the Einhorn Center, Jake has helped to expand the Einhorn Center’s Engaged College Initiative, partnering with leadership teams across each college to infuse community-engaged learning into the core mission and vision of their schools. Jake holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame, specializing in the sociologies of higher education, organizations, and culture. His dissertation “The Weight of an Anchor (Institution): Institutional Inequality, Status, and Mission in University-Community Partnerships” examined the ways in which the status and mission of universities interact to inform the types of programming and partnerships they create.

David Lennox is Senior Lecturer in Management Communication at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. David enjoys coaching students to help them share their good ideas, construct convincing arguments, and reach diverse audiences.

A strong supporter of the Grand Challenges program, David co-developed AEM 1101, Design Your Dyson, the first year “business for a better world” course, and has taught some version of a management communication course, at Nolan and Dyson, at least 106 times. He relaxes by working in his backyard, watching British comedies, and traveling with family.

David has served as the Director of Undergraduate Studies at Dyson since 2018. In July he will become Dean of the School of Business at Walla Walla University in Washington State.

Kate Reiter is the James F. Cunningham Assistant Director of Engineering Student Project Teams. In this role, she provides training, guidance, and oversight for 36 multidisciplinary teams working to solve complex problems while gaining real-world engineering experience grounded in experiential learning theory. Kate co-facilitates coursework in program onboarding, project team experience, and leadership development. She holds a B.Eng in Civil Engineering from Villanova University and is currently pursuing an M.Ed in Learning, Cognition, and Development from Rutgers University. In her free time, she enjoys practicing yoga and cheering on her four kids from the sidelines of their various ICSD sports and activities.