Speaker Series
The Speaker Series features experienced leaders from the Blackstone, Techstars, and LaunchPad Campus networks to share stories, skills, insights and lessons learned around entrepreneurship in an interactive online format.
Speakers range from entrepreneurs to investors, and other industry experts.
Career Success Speaker Series:
The Queens College School of Business organizes Business Breakfast every month. It is a great opportunity for students to network with entrepreneurs, alums, recruiters, and students.
Click here for more information.
Speaker Series Events
Business Meet & Greet Career Success Series on 10/19
Adam Behlman is President of Starwood Property Trust’s Real Estate Investing & Servicing segment and President of Starwood Mortgage Capital. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing Starwood Property Trust’s commercial mortgage-backed securities, its conduit lending and subsequent securitization activities, and its real estate investment platform, as well as leading the company’s wholly owned special servicer, LNR Partners.
He previously served as Head of Capital Markets and Chief Risk Officer for LNR. Prior to joining LNR in 2011, Adam served as Head of the Real Estate Finance and CMBS division of UBS. In this role, he was responsible for managing and trading UBSs’ legacy CMBS and commercial real estate loan book, while also helping return UBS to the origination, trading, and underwriting business.
Adam previously held a variety of capital markets and real estate roles with firms including Deutsche Bank, Prudential Securities, and Deloitte. After serving on the Board from 2016–2020, Adam was during the 2020–2021 board of directors term the President and Chairman of the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council (CREFC), which is the leading trade organization for the commercial real estate finance industry, with over 11,000 members.
He is currently serving as the past chairman and chairs the compensation and nomination committees as well as co-chairing the DEI HBCU and Education sub-committee. Adam holds a BA degree from Queens College in both accounting and information systems and economics.
Leah Azizian is the founder of Mission, a real estate-tech company focused on helping real estate owners raise capital more efficiently and scale investor-education. Prior to founding Mission, she served as a real estate broker in Manhattan and Brooklyn, helping primary home buyers, sellers, and investors transact in NYC.
It was moderated by Professor Matthew Bradbury, Lecturer in the Economics Department.
Photo, from left to right: Adam Behlman, Leah Azizian, and Matthew Bradbury.
Business Breakfast on 09/19/2023
Joan Nix graduated from Queens College with degrees in economics and political science. She continued her studies at NYU, receiving her PhD in economics with concentrations in finance and game theory. She has taught for decades at Queens College receiving both the President’s Award for Teaching Excellence and the President’s Award for Teaching Innovation based on her use of the virtual platform of Second Life in her classes.
After spending her sabbatical year in 2018 studying crypto assets, Nix continued to innovate by creating courses in the Economics of Crypto Assets and Blockchain and Money. She has been an active member of the Queens College Business School Steering Committee, advocating for a fintech concentration. She is also a member of the National Economic Education Delegation (NEED) servicing community requests from Montana to Vermont for talks and educational material.
Her publications span economic history, telecommunications, and wavelet analysis of portfolio choices. Her most recent work is on the risk dynamics of Bitcoin.
Website: Associate Professor of Economics | Joan Nix | New York