SEBASTIAN CERIA
(MSIA 1990, Ph.D. 1993)

Sebastian Ceria is the Founder and President of Fundar, a non-for-profit think tank that specializes in public policies targeted to the growth and development of his native Argentina. He is the former Chief Executive Officer of Qontigo and was previously CEO of Axioma, which he founded and led since 1998. Before that, he was an Associate Professor of Decision, Risk, and Operations at Columbia Business School. He has worked extensively in robust optimization and its application to portfolio management, authoring many articles in industry and academic publications.

He is a recipient of the Career Award for Operations Research from the National Science Foundation and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Ceria holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, and a degree in Applied Math from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

ONUR GENÇ
(MSIA 1997)

Onur Genç is the CEO of BBVA since 2018 — a global bank serving 68M active clients and employs more than 116K teammates. Genç was previously the CEO of BBVA’s USA business in Houston and before that, he was the deputy CEO of the BBVA’s Turkish operations.

Prior to BBVA, Genç was with McKinsey & Company. He joined the global management consultancy in 1999 in Canada and became a partner in 2004. He eventually rose to senior partner at the age of 34 and was named McKinsey’s Turkey office manager in 2009. Genç started out his career in 1997 as a Financial Controller for American Airlines in Dallas.

Genç holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Boğaziçi University and an MSIA from Carnegie Mellon.

CYNTHIA WANG
(MSCF 1997, MSIA 1997)

Cynthia Wang is a seasoned executive and a pioneer in climate-aligned finance with a focus on large scale energy-transition technologies. For the last five years, Wang has been serving on the board of Global CCS Institute.

Most recently, she was Head of China at Bridgewater Associates and she’s also the founder of the Sustainability Innovation Fund at Carnegie Mellon University.

Prior to Bridgewater, Wang was Managing Director at Rothschild and Co., one of the world’s largest independent financial service groups. Earlier in her career, Wang held senior leadership positions at China International Capital Corporation (CICC) and worked as a fixed income derivatives trader at JPMorgan Chase.

Wang holds an MSIA and an MS in Computational Finance from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and an Executive Certificate in Sustainability Leadership from Harvard School of Public Health.

JENNY CORDINA
(MBA 2002)

Jenny Cordina is a Partner with McKinsey & Company, where she is focused on growth, marketing, and sales topics serving primarily leading healthcare institutions on strategic issues around enterprise transformation, growth, and consumer related topics. She has led many enterprise-wide, multi-year transformations driving improved growth, cost, and health outcomes. Within McKinsey, Jenny is the Global Healthcare Consumer service line leader, which she founded, and is the Growth Marketing and Sales Global People co-leader. She is a frequent and significant author of leading McKinsey perspectives.

Prior to McKinsey, Jenny worked at Pratt & Whitney as an engineer in customer engineering of technical customer service with airlines around the world.

She earned an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, with University Honors, and a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering from the University of Minnesota, with distinction.

She is currently a board member of The Conservancy Initiative and serves on the Cheetah Conservation Fund Board of Trustees.

JUSTIN MCELHATTAN
(MBA 2005)

Justin McElhattan is the founder of Nicely Road, a permanent capital company focused on industrial technology businesses as they work to create safer, cleaner, and more productive workplaces. Dedicated to building prosperous communities by reinforcing the joy and dignity of work, supporting healthy families, and enabling more de-digitized spare time, along with his wife Shirley, McElhattan founded Nicely Ridge Foundation in 2018.

McElhattan has spent 30 years in the environmental, health, and safety (EHS) field. He spent 25 years at Industrial Scientific Corporation in various roles, becoming CEO in 2010. He led the sale of the business to Fortive Corporation (NYSE: FTV) in 2017, and subsequently built and ran the environmental, health, and safety business group for Fortive. While there, he led numerous acquisitions and strategic investments, including Intelex, a leading EHS SaaS platform, SAFER Technologies, ehsAI, and Datamaran. He also served as executive sponsor for the Fortive Asian Network (FAN).

McElhattan has a BS of Environmental Resource Management degree from Penn State and is a 2006 MBA graduate of the Tepper School of Business. McElhattan also serves on the boards of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, and Ligonier Camp and Conference Center.

2023 ALUMNI AWARDS RECIPIENTS
Six Tepper School alumni were awarded lifetime, achievement, and service awards for their impressive contributions and careers.

NOTE FROM JONATHAN STERN
Jonathan Stern recognizes the ongoing generosity and engagement of our alumni, students, faculty, and staff.