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ALUMNI UPDATES

Real Estate Romance

By Hannah Selinger ’02

Ben Appen ’92 and Leslie Chang ’92 met during their senior year at the College, when the housing powers that be placed them on the same floor of Furnald. Fourteen years later, Chang describes their relationship as the quintessential New York love story. “Real estate brings you together,” she says, “because real estate is the driving force in New York.”

And it was real estate, indeed, that connected Appen and Chang, a political science major who wanted to be a professor and an English major who wanted to write, respectively.

Like so many college graduates, Appen knew relatively little about the direction his life would take when he graduated. Hailing from Madison, Wis., he planned to spend the summer traveling through Europe. He also knew that he wanted to become a professor and continue his education in political science.

Upon returning from his summer abroad, Appen decided to return to New York. He had no job and nowhere to stay, so he called friends in the metro area for help. Chang returned his call — her parents had a Manhattan apartment with ample space.

While Chang worked in publishing, Appen applied for a position at D.E. Shaw and Co., a company spearheaded by former Columbia faculty member David Shaw and at the time employing only 70 people. Shaw was looking for candidates without finance backgrounds to join his fledgling investment development firm, which focuses on technology and technology-oriented business ventures. Appen got the job and moved out of the Changs’ apartment.

Ben Appen ’92, Leslie Chang ’92 and their daugher, Ingrid Shih.

But Chang and Appen still were together — they began dating while Appen was living with Chang’s family, and in 1997 they married. By then, Chang had graduated from the Journalism School (1995) and written a book, Beyond the Narrow Gate (1999), which charts the story of four Chinese women who fled the Communist Red Party in 1948. “I was interested in the bond of immigration and what an American identity is,” Chang says. Her parents were born in mainland China and both parents’ families were connected to the Nationalist government. After the Communist takeover, Chang’s parents fled China, meeting in Hartford, Conn., as young adults.

D.E. Shaw and Co. became successful and Appen stayed with the firm long enough to learn the ins and outs of the finance world. Appen now runs Magnitude Capital, a company launched in 2002 that invests in other hedge funds. “Our job,” Appen explains, “is to figure out why markets fail.”

The birth of the couple’s daughter, Ingrid Shih, in April 2004 put Chang’s writing on pause, but she has started a novel about the subculture of the hedge fund industry, working from their downtown apartment. So, for the time being, the search for viable real estate has ended. But in that quirky New York way, the apartment meant everything.

Hannah Selinger ’02 graduated from Emerson College’s M.F.A. program in 2005, where she completed her first novel. She lives and writes in New York.

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