Kegan Vosteen: In the Business of Engineering

In the fall of 2023, Columbia Engineering and Columbia Business School welcomed the inaugural class of the newly minted MBAxMS dual degree program. Now that cohort is set to graduate. For Kegan Vosteen, pursuing the joint degree that melded both business and engineering was exactly what he was looking for after completing his undergraduate studies. 

“Having an engineering background definitely gave me the confidence that I could succeed in the MBAxMS,” says Vosteen, a Marine Corps veteran who earned his bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering at University of Southern California. The MBAxMS program at Columbia was “a natural extension of my previous educational experience.”

After Commencement, Vosteen has exciting plans for the summer – including getting married just one week after graduation. Following wedding festivities, he will start work at IBM in its NYC office. 

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How did you learn about the MBAxMS dual degree program with Columbia Business School, and what drew you to this program? 

I learned about the MBAxMS program as soon as it was released. I had my heart set on moving to New York City for business school so I was following Columbia closely and when they announced this dual degree I felt it was a perfect fit for my goals.

What did you study as an undergraduate–and did that inform your decision to pursue an MBAxMS? 

I studied industrial and systems engineering at the University of Southern California. Having an engineering background definitely gave me the confidence that I could succeed in the MBAxMS, and ISE is an engineering discipline that skews more towards business than others, so I felt the MBAxMS would be a natural extension of my previous educational experience.

What’s an “A-Ha” moment you had as an engineering-MBA student?

In the fall semester of my second year, I simultaneously took carbon management (SEAS) and business and climate change (CBS) courses. This gave me unique insights: when evaluating carbon mitigation technologies in my business course, I could identify specific engineering cost drivers and technical barriers affecting business viability. Conversely, when studying carbon management technology, I had a valuable frame of reference for investor risk appetite in first-of-a-kind technologies, allowing me to evaluate new technologies through that lens. This dual perspective helped me see which levers could be pulled on both the engineering and business sides to make these technologies commercially viable.

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How has our guiding principle, Engineering For Humanity, resonated with your experience at Columbia?

New York City offers engineers lucrative opportunities to apply their skills in the financial industry, creating innovative ways to generate enormous profits by rearranging money. However, I've always viewed engineering as a powerful force for positive global change: developing technological solutions to pressing challenges and improving human welfare. "Engineering for Humanity" perfectly captures engineering's true potential, and I hope this philosophy continues to shape not only the School's stated values but also its everyday practices and the career paths its graduates are encouraged to pursue.

Would you like to share some words to live by or a message to your fellow grads? 

Over the last two years, I’ve been increasingly reminded of an excerpt from a beautiful poem by Langston Hughes that states–much more eloquently than I could–my feelings on being a veteran student at Columbia University who spent 10 years in service of the ideals of America:

“O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.”

I hope that each of my fellow graduates endeavor so that Columbia can also be, in Langston’s words again, 

“…the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.”

Lead Photo Caption: Kegan Vosteen, on a school trip in India
Lead Photo Credit: Kegan Vosteen