
A Career Innovator Guides the Next Generation
As a Silberstein Family Executive in Residence, Imran Shah BS’84, MS’86, PhD’94 is ready to give back — and have some fun while doing it.
By Jennifer Ernst Beaudry
For Imran Shah BS’84, MS’86, PhD’94, Columbia roots run deep. The media and telecom executive earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD, all in electrical engineering, at Columbia Engineering. Shah’s wife is an alumna of Teacher’s College, and their son followed in their footsteps, attending Columbia as well. He’s a longtime member of the Board of Visitors and has served on the Engineering School’s Entrepreneurial Advisory Board.

Shah deepened his commitment again this fall, serving as the Silberstein Family Executive in Residence to provide mentorship and tactical advice to engineering students. The Silberstein Family Executive in Residence program was endowed by Alan M. Silberstein BS’69 and his wife, Carol ’69BC, in 2019 to recruit luminaries in industry, government, business, and the nonprofit sector to short-term roles as executive advisors and mentors to students in the School of Engineering. It’s a role his many careers have uniquely equipped him to play.
The Columbia effect
Shah was the global industry group lead at the professional services firm Accenture, serving in its Comms & Media, Software & Platforms, and High-Tech Strategy practice. He was appointed to the position after the acquisition of his cable, media, and wireless consulting firm, IBB Consulting Group, in 2017.
Shah is also co-founder of video products company DigiForge, which was acquired by TiVo in 2011. He began his career as a researcher in multidimensional signal processing and was on the ground floor in the early development and wide dissemination of digital high-definition television. He holds 14 patents.
The course of his career hasn’t necessarily unfolded the way he expected when he left his home in Pakistan for the first time to attend Columbia Engineering in 1980 — and that’s a testament to Columbia’s program, he says.
“I had come very focused on doing engineering, but it turned out we were going to take art and music and study literature and philosophy. It was the most fantastic experience; the breadth of courses you take and the seamless educational integration with Columbia College and Barnard ended up becoming quite influential for me,” he says. The variety of the educational experiences Columbia Engineering offered informed the “180-degree pivot” in his career, where he moved from deep research to founding product and management consulting firms. The strength many Columbians have is that they can go really deep but also have a broad vision of the place of their work in society,” he says. “It’s credit to the training we get at Columbia: You’re ambidextrous.”
Resident Exec
In taking up the position of Silberstein Family Executive in Residence, Shah is following in the footsteps of fellow Board of Visitors member Armen Avanessians MS’83, University trustee emeritus and the inaugural executive in residence in May of 2023.
Shah hosted lunch-and-learn sessions centered around topics like entrepreneurship, professional services, and how to navigate a career as a technologist. He connected with students, both undergraduate and graduate, who have “an entrepreneurial bent” and those interested in careers in consulting and professional services.
In fact, in a full-circle moment, Shah’s connection with Columbia students didn’t end with the close of his residency. He has endowed a scholarship for an engineering student who attended high school, or lived, worked, or otherwise studied, in Pakistan, allowing a future student to follow in his footsteps and pursue a Columbia Engineering education.
Shah says while he was glad to share his experience and learnings with current Columbia students, he thinks he got just as much out of the exchange as they did.
“It’s extremely energizing whenever I go back to campus, especially when I’m interacting with students and young faculty,” he says. “[It’s] the common thread in all my involvement with Columbia Engineering.”