Columbia Mailman Students Keep Winning

A team of three Columbia Mailman students took third place in the 31st Annual Everett V. Fox Student Case Competition in October. The prestigious competition, sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, took place alongside the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE) conference in Los Angeles. NAHSE was founded in 1968 to advance Black health care leaders and improve care for underserved communities. 

This achievement is no anomaly for Columbia Mailman; in recent years, students have earned honors at several case competitions, including first place at the 2025 NAHSE competition. Another student team earned first place in the 2026 Cornell-Vanderbilt Healthcare Case Competition on November 7. Students have also excelled in pitch competitions and hackathons; others have secured seed funding and support from Columbia University for their start-ups.

Competing at this year’s NAHSE competition were team captain Taryn Salako, an MPH candidate in Population and Family Health, and teammates Virti Choksi and Tiffany Spector, both MPH candidates in Health Policy and Management. The trio came together through the Case Competition Class taught by David Rosenthal, an associate professor in Health Policy and Management, and Tatiana Blue-Dixon, a Department Instructor. The class’s student coordinator, Isabella Berg-Patton, led a team that won last year’s NAHSE competition.

Case competitions ask competitors to develop solutions for real-world problems. For the NAHSE competition, Kaiser Permanente asked for strategies to expand value-based care into new markets. After reviewing a needs assessment Kaiser provided, the Columbia Mailman team focused on expanding behavioral health access in Atlanta—an unmet need, according to the data. Going further, they pored through county-level data to pinpoint the parts of the city with the greatest need. They proposed building a behavioral health network by forging partnerships between the health system and a local hospital. “Many health systems and even insurance plans are moving more towards value-based care, which essentially involves more of a focus on patient outcomes,” Spector explains. “We were looking at how to extend value-based care into behavioral health through a partnership with a hospital in the area.” 

Over three weeks, Salako, Choksi, and Spector translated their research into a strategy, then refined their findings into a presentation that clearly explained their proposal. The team submitted their slide deck and traveled to Los Angeles to compete in the preliminary, semifinal, and final rounds, presenting to a separate panel of judges at each stage. After submitting their slide deck, they were invited to the competition’s final rounds in Los Angeles. Faculty are not allowed to give specific help related to the case, but Blue-Dixon and Rosenthal gave them general guidance on public speaking and preparing for judges’ questions. 

The team gave their final presentation on a stage in front of a movie-theater-sized screen, making their argument to an audience of senior leadership at Kaiser, several of whom peppered them with questions about the minutiae of how their plan would work. Soon, they learned they placed third out of a field of 36 competitors, earning a $9,000 prize.

“We were all in it to win it. We worked really well together as a team and put in the work to make it happen. There were a lot of meetings and some long nights to make it happen. It’s so gratifying to see the result,” says Salako. 

Choksi adds, “We all brought skills from our coursework and past internships into the case. At the same time, we also developed new ones and learned a lot along the way. The competition itself was an amazing experience because it allowed us to connect with healthcare leaders and students from across the country. At the end of the day, we were confident in our team and our idea. We were all so excited to place third!” 

“The fact that this team placed third is a testament to the hard work that they put in, but also their ability to answer tough questions and find real-world solutions that resonate with a number of the country’s top health care leaders,” Blue-Dixon asserts. 

“A Feather in Their Caps” 

For more than six years, the Columbia Mailman Case Competition class has prepared students to succeed in case competitions and beyond. There, students hone research, strategy, and presentation skills that employers value. Every student in the class must compete in at least one competition; many choose to compete in additional competitions outside of class. Competitions are a win-win: sponsors benefit from students’ innovative thinking, and students gain experience grappling with real-world challenges.   

“We’ve had students compete all over the country and have placed in many different tournaments,” Rosenthal says. “They do it for the experience and the thrill of competing. Of course, it’s also a feather in their caps. Future employers take notice. It can make a big difference as our students launch their careers.” 

Header image on left, left to right: Tiffany Spector, Taryn Salako, Virti Choksi