The Dual Edge

Anton Fredriksson ’15, director of aviation and vice president of transportation at New York City Economic Development Corporation, has one word to sum up receiving his dual degree from Columbia GS and Sciences Po.

“Transformative,” he said of the experience, which gave him not just multiple degrees but expanded viewpoints on how to go about a career. “You hit the ground running with Sciences Po in France [at Le Havre] where, from housing to your bank account, you have to figure so much out on your own. You also really had to grow up to handle the curriculum. It introduced me to fields of study, but also helped me to understand how society works, covering law, economics, history, sociology, and more. The campus also focused on language, with six hours of Mandarin and four hours of French. But when you know you can handle it, you know you have that much more in you. With just under 200 students, you were finding your feet and learning to be an adult.”

After two years, Fredriksson found his feet on a campus of many thousands for the second half of his dual degree: Columbia. “Urban studies is very applicable in my current role working with many urban planners in New York, working on policy,” he said.

He felt Columbia gave him the academic grounding to work well in tandem with leaders in urban planning policy. “The city was our classroom, exploring different neighborhoods in your field work,” he said.

A standout instructor for Fredriksson was Rohit Aggarwala, Adjunct Associate Professor at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. “He was a practitioner during the Bloomberg administration in the area of planning,” he said. “Bringing the lessons from his work into the classroom—again, you saw application.”

While at Columbia, he participated in the Global Scholars Program, traveling to locations such as Germany and Mongolia. “I messaged the Urban China Initiative think tank, a partnership that included Columbia and McKinsey, because [the program] had a stop in Beijing,” he said. “I ended up staying in Beijing for the rest of the summer working for the think tank as an intern. That set up my career, and I applied to McKinsey to work there as a management consultant. It was a separate application process but I think the internship definitely helped.”

In his present role, he is working to improve the health of transportation. “I’m trying to enable a quieter and cleaner future for travel in New York City when it comes to aircraft,” said Fredriksson, who previously worked for Carlyle Airport Group as Director of Strategic Initiatives for The New Terminal One, a roughly $10 billion terminal at JFK Airport, which will serve as an international gateway. “You consider how the city is the landlord of the ground underneath areas such as LaGuardia and JFK. It’s also heliports and other areas. It’s overseeing assets and helping in the transition to a healthier travel-related future.”

Fredriksson’s job involves switching languages, but not necessarily in a linguistic sense. “It’s working across stakeholders and government and community and it’s getting into different languages, such as engineering, legal, and business,” he said. “It’s a situation that is challenging and changing.”

Thanks to his dual degree experience, however, that’s an exciting endeavor he’s uniquely equipped for.