Making Higher Education Access Equitable

Executive powerhouse Danielle Maged CC’89, BUS’97 knows the realities of student debt anxiety firsthand. When she enrolled in the Business School’s M.B.A. program, she borrowed heavily to cover the two-year program — loans that took her “decades to pay off.”

“Lying awake at night trying to figure out how to repay loans is just crushing,” says Maged, adding that today’s world has enough complications and worries without that extra burden. It’s largely what drives her to donate to Columbia in support of financial aid. “I understand that feeling, that pit in the stomach. If I can eliminate that anxiety for some students, then I know that I’ve done something good.”

Maged also sees donating as a way of broadening access to the College, which she says gave her so much: a humanist education, lifelong friends and a sense of purpose in her career, where she’s helped transform several companies and organizations.

Maged grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. As a girl, she says, she was a “definite tomboy” who loved to go with her father to Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks and to Shea Stadium to watch the Jets. In high school, she played basketball, field hockey and lacrosse. At the College, she was a sportswriter for Spectator and interned at ProServ, the leading sports-marketing agency at the time. She became intrigued by the business side of sports.

After graduating, Maged had one goal: to land a job at the NBA.

“I became a bit obsessive about it,” she recalls. “I interviewed 25 times in various departments until the NBA had no choice but to hire me.”

That first role, as a programming manager, launched Maged on a path that led her to executive positions at Madison Square Garden, ESPN and eBay/StubHub, as well as at Fox Networks Group and Global Citizen. Maged, who has a reputation for innovation and mentorship, was recognized with an Ad Age Women to Watch Award in 2017 and was named the WISE (Women in Sports & Events) Woman of the Year in 2013. She now is an independent advisor to early-stage tech startups and private equity firms.

Maged credits the Core Curriculum with introducing her to the insights that helped her grow into what she calls a “transformational, collaborative business leader with purpose.” Reading Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli and other philosophers in Contemporary Civilization “opened up an entire world of human behavior and helped me read interpersonal dynamics.”

Maged lives with her husband and 16-year-old twin boys in Bergen County, N.J. “My boys have attended many Homecoming games,” she says, “and have a wide collection of Columbia sweatshirts.”

A fan of Columbia in every way, Maged also donates her time, having helped to organize “She Opened the Door,” a Columbia Alumni Association initiative that hosts conferences and panels and mentors women. And above all, she strongly believes that universities should accept students purely on the basis of merit, democratizing access to higher education.

“That’s the reason I give and that’s why I encourage all alumni to give,” she says. “Financial aid can have a ripple effect on students and on society, whereby the students go on to do great things that, in the end, can change the world.”

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