The School of Professional Studies Graduation is just one month away, on May 15. As we have in the past, the School will hold both morning and afternoon ceremonies so that our graduates and their loved ones may experience this milestone more intimately and comfortably. We are thrilled to announce two distinguished faculty members and two exceptional students who will speak at those ceremonies.
The faculty speaker for the morning ceremony will be Scott Rosner, professor of professional practice and director of the M.S. in Sports Management program. Since joining Columbia in 2018, he has led the program’s strategic and curricular development while helping to expand professional opportunities for students and strengthening its reputation as one of the leading sports management programs globally. Prior to Columbia, Rosner was a practice professor in the Legal Studies & Business Ethics Department at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and faculty associate director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative, where he was a five-time recipient of the Whitney Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. Rosner is also the lead author of The Business of Sports and the forthcoming Sports Business, and has led consulting projects across the sports industry. He holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, an M.S. in Sport Management from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan.
The faculty speaker for the afternoon ceremony will be Mary Sormanti, Ph.D., director of the M.S. in Narrative Medicine program, whose scholarship focuses on psychosocial oncology, grief and bereavement, palliative and end-of-life care, trauma, and narrative medicine. Her work explores the role of narrative in clinical practice, professional development, and interprofessional care, and she has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and professional publications addressing cancer care, HIV prevention, intimate partner violence, and clinical practice with individuals and families facing life-threatening illness. At Columbia, Sormanti teaches courses in trauma-informed practice, motivational interviewing, research methods, and narrative-based clinical approaches, and co-directs the DBT Training Program and Lab at the School of Social Work. Her research has been supported by organizations including the National Institutes of Health and the Open Society Foundation, and her work continues to be shaped by her earlier clinical practice in oncology, hospice, and bereavement care.
For our student speakers, the SPS faculty, staff, and students nominate two members of the graduating class each year as representatives. Our student speakers have the privilege of addressing their fellow graduates, reflecting upon their Columbia experience and sharing words of advice.
The student speaker for our morning ceremony will be Aaman Basra (’26SPS, Applied Analytics), and Thomas Quinn (’26SPS, Information & Knowledge Strategy) will be the speaker for our afternoon ceremony.
Basra was raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, and completed his undergraduate studies at Penn State before moving to New York to pursue an M.S. in Applied Analytics. He has been deeply engaged in the student community, contributing to the Columbia Women in Data & Technology club and helping scale the Applied Analytics Club while building friendships with classmates from more than a dozen countries. Basra currently works as a product intelligence analyst in the AdTech industry, building systems that bring clarity to content at massive scale. An avid runner and writer, he values collaboration, intellectual curiosity, and the lasting connections formed through shared experiences.
Quinn is a student in the Information & Knowledge Strategy program who has collaborated across disciplines with peers and faculty from SPS, Columbia Business School, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. His research examines how passive reliance on large language models can narrow the range of ideas considered in decision-making. He coined the term “social stack,” describing how patterns in LLM responses can shape user thinking. Quinn is a founding partner of Alpha Advisory LLC, where he advises organizations on practical AI implementation strategies that expand human capability while preserving decision-making ownership. He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a B.S. in computer engineering from Bucknell, and lives in Jersey City with his wife, their two sons, and their Portuguese Water Dog, Tyde.
