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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: The application for open projects is now open for non-required students. This notice is only for those who have not applied to a Capstone project, such as any student who wishes to take the Capstone workshop early or as an elective (MPA in Global Leadership, EMPA, PEMP, and other degree programs.
The application for open projects will close at 9:00am on Monday, November 3, 2025. Teams will be announced the following week.
Students should only apply for a project for which they would accept placement. Please review the timetable for the Capstone workshops to make sure that the projects you select are not in conflict with any other core required course you must take next spring.
2025 - 2026 O PEN CAPSTONE PROJECTS:
The following projects have space available to add 1-2 additional students. For more information about the Capstone projects, you can click the project title to access the individual project description, link to the client website, and the faculty bio below.
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Capstone Client
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Project Title
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Faculty Advisor
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BOMA Project
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Policy Frameworks for Inclusive Growth: Leveraging Private Sector and NGO Partnerships to foster Sustainable Livelihoods for Women in Last-Mile Communities in East Africa and the Sahel
As BOMA works to expand its poverty graduation programs through government partnerships and systems change, it recognizes that long-term sustainability and scale require deeper private sector engagement. However, in last-mile communities, often remote, pastoralist, or climate-vulnerable markets are thin, and private actors face significant barriers to entry. This project seeks to examine how policy frameworks can enable inclusive private sector engagement—and how NGOs like BOMA can support and complement these frameworks—to ensure that economic inclusion reaches the poorest at scale.
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Carole Wacey
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Calstart
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Infrastructure and Influence: Realigning Real Estate, Regulation, and Public Mobility
As urban areas expand and demand for mobility grows, municipalities increasingly rely on private developers to finance transportation infrastructure. However, fragmented regulations and weak accountability often hinder equitable outcomes. This project will create a strategic framework and toolkit to align private real estate investment with public mobility goals—leveraging policy, financing, and partnership models to promote sustainable, multimodal, and inclusive transportation systems.
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Damian Busch
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Center for Popular Democracy
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Mapping the Attack, Building the Base: A Human Rights Approach to Trans Rights Through Participatory Research and Organizing
As a coordinated wave of state-level attacks on transgender rights intensifies, this project brings together SIPA students and Popular Democracy’s grassroots leaders to map the right-wing policy ecosystem while elevating the lived expertise of trans and nonbinary communities, especially BIPOC leaders. Through participatory research—policy tracking, ecosystem mapping, community-designed surveys, and narrative collection—it will generate actionable data, tools, and stories that strengthen grassroots campaigns. The project ultimately seeks to shift the national narrative from harm to liberation and advance lasting protections for trans rights.
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Bela August Walker
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Cyber Defense Assistance Coalition
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Improving Cyber Defense Assistance to Meet the Challenges in Taiwan
Taiwan faces relentless and escalating cyber threats, largely attributed to Chinese state-backed actors aiming to disrupt operations and erode public trust. This project will help the Cyber Defense Assistance Collaborative (CDAC) adapt lessons from its Ukraine work to a potential Taiwan contingency—analyzing differences in threat environments, readiness, and partnership structures. The team will deliver a roadmap outlining how CDAC and allied stakeholders can effectively mobilize, coordinate, and measure cyber defense assistance to strengthen Taiwan’s resilience and inform broader Indo-Pacific security strategies.
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Daniel Dobrygowski
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Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC)
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Disconnect: Cybersecurity Decision-Making for Financial Institutions
The financial sector relies on third-party vendors and other institutions to facilitate trades and transfers. The FS-IAC is looking to find solutions and bolster resilience to cyber incidents and recommend best practices for firms when incidents occur. This Capstone will review and analyze feedback from institutions and policy groups to provide recommendations on how firms can minimize impacts on the financial market at large when they decide to connect and reconnect with a third-party after a cyber incident.
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Sydney Jones
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Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
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Access to Justice for the Right to Food: Overcoming Systemic Barriers
Courts demonstrate a clear reluctance to engage with economic, social, and cultural rights like the right to food, often viewing them as political or budgetary matters better left to the executive or legislative branches. This Capstone will conduct an assessment of the barriers to access justice faced by communities affected by violations of their right to food in Guatemala, Malawi, and Indonesia.
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Peter Twyman
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Habitat for Humanity International
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Local Roots to Global Roofs - Scaling Housing Innovation
This project will explore what makes ShelterTech (affordable housing innovation) startups more likely to receive support from key ecosystem stakeholders such as investors, ESOs, and corporates, and how we can better position and engage these actors at global and local levels.
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Chandani Punia
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New Jersey Economic Development Authority
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Developing a Greenhouse Gas GHG Calculator and Benchmarking Tool to Assess Clean Energy Program Impact
Under Governor Murphy’s leadership, New Jersey has taken bold steps to accelerate the state’s transition to a cleaner future. To ensure the State reaches its ambitious clean energy goals, New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA)’s tasked the Capstone team to develop a GHG calculator that can be used for quantifying program effectiveness for climate impact as a key performance indicator.
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Jeanne Fox
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New York City Mayor's Office of Food Policy
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From Kitchen to Career: Boosting NYC Culinary Workforce Recruitment
NYC agencies, including the Department of Ed, have reported persistent challenges in recruiting qualified culinary staff, which undermines the City’s ability to align their food spending with its core values: nutrition, local economies, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, a valued workforce, and transparency. The Mayor's Office of Food Policy tasked the Capstone team to explore the challenges underlying these staffing shortages and develop actionable recommendations to recruit culinary staff into City food service positions.
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Madhuri Kommareddi
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New York State Department of Public Service
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Optimizing Community Benefits for Hosting Energy Projects through Clean Energy Zones
The objective of the project is to determine best practices to achieve meaningful and appropriate community benefits for hosting multiple clean energy projects that enable the state to make more efficient, long-term investments in transmission development via Clean Energy Zones.
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Jared Rodriguez
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New York State Senate, Office of Majority Counsel
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The Future of Earned Wage Access in New York State: Evaluating Impact, Innovation and Regulation
New York State Senate tasked the Capstone team to develop a report which will inform Senate leadership on key considerations with respect to possible approaches to regulating the Earned Wage Access (EWA) industry, which are unregulated products that are designed to provide employees access to wages for which they’ve already worked prior to the scheduled payday.
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Jeri Powell
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Public Citizen
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New York as a Laboratory for Climate-Focused Insurance Innovation
Climate change is radically upending the home insurance market as insurance premiums skyrocket and insurance companies walk away from climate-vulnerable communities. In New York, stakeholders have advanced discussions around the Climate Protection Insurance Act, which would incentivize insurance companies to use their role as risk managers and financial gatekeepers. Public Citizen is advising a coalition of partners advancing this bill, and asked the Capstone team to research on the anticipated impacts of the bill on a range of actors, including insurance companies, energy sectors, investors and communities.
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Tanya Khotin
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Renew Power
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From Strategy to Execution: ReNew’s Roadmap for Implementing Circular Technologies
As the global clean energy infrastructure accelerates, the world is set to add more than 5500 gigawatts of new energy capacity by 2030 while the existing clean energy infrastructure has reached the 4448 gigawatt mark. As existing solar and wind assets mature, there will be a quantum increase in renewable waste, undermining the sustainability of clean technologies. At ReNew, they are focused on turning this challenge into an opportunity by tackling renewable waste sustainably while ensuring economic feasibility in the short and medium term. The project aims to understand the maturity of circularity technologies and enable a roadmap for deploying these technologies in our operations.
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A.J. Goulding
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United Nations Development Programme (UNDP): City Experiment Fund
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A Comparative Analysis for GenAI-Enabled Learning Systems for Urban Portfolios in ECIS
The City Experiment Fund (CEF), as part of the UNDP Slovak Transformation Fund, supports municipalities in Armenia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Ukraine to advance the Twin Transition—bringing green and digital solutions for sustainable and resilient urban futures. The Capstone team will assess how CEF cities currently reflect, adapt, and share knowledge, and propose ways to embed effective learning loops into municipal portfolio management. The aim is to make learning a core capability for cities, strengthening their ability to manage uncertainty, accelerate transitions, and build resilience.
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Mariela Machado Fantacchiotti
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United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
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IFI Strategy: Systematic Plan for UNFPA’s Engagement with the World Bank and IMF
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank Group, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are pivotal institutions in global development. This project is critically important as UNFPA implements its new finance strategy, which is to pursue deeper collaboration with International Financial Institutions (IFIs). The team will develop a concrete, actionable strategy for an enhanced UNFPA partnership with the World Bank Group and the IMF.
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Ourania Dionysiou
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UNESCO and the Learning Planet Institute
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Highlighting Social Emotional learning as a part of Education for Sustainable Development Praxis
UNESCO and the Learning Planet Institute tasked the Capstone team to develop a series of interactive webinars for practitioners and scholars to explore and strengthen the connections between Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The series will foster collaborative learning, facilitate the exchange of practical resources, and encourage critical reflection on frameworks and case studies.
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Radhika Iyengar
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Vishwamitra Research Foundation
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Strategic Corridors and Regional Integration: IMEC, I2U2, and the Future of Multilateral Cooperation
See a message from Professors Chitkara and Sutton
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Angela Chitkara and Samantha Sutton
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More on the Application Process:
To apply, students must submit an application. When submitting an application, students must:
(1) Submit a PDF resume saved as one’s UNI (not as your name, please use your UNI (ie. sa3359.pdf, not as SalehaAwal.pdf or sa3359_CV.pdf)
(2) Complete all the required fields on the online application, including the release form. Because many Capstones will involve work off-campus, we ask all students to complete the release form.
(3) Submit a “statement of interest” for each workshop (no more than 250 words). In addition, students must list their relevant coursework, writing the full name of the course (rather than writing the SIPA course number or an abbreviation of the course). Relevant coursework may include courses taken outside of Columbia University but please indicate where and when the course was completed.
Please note, the Capstone Workshop in Sustainable Development Practice (the D&G Workshop) has a separate application with separate application dates. If you have further questions about the D&G workshops, please contact Prof. Eugenia McGill (em419@columbia.edu) or Vida Huimin Herling (hh2655@columbia.edu).
Read the Capstone Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Students and on the Fall Capstone Consultancy Project Management Course.
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