SENIOR PROFILE: Chikara Onda

Columbia College’s Chikara Onda has made some of his biggest decisions over the past four years by creating spreadsheets.

It all started when he was in high school in Paris and trying to decide what college to attend in the fall of 2005.

“It was a traditional pro/con list, but I put weights on different factors and gave scores,” Onda said.

Brown actually got the highest score, but Onda said he didn’t feel right about that. “I ended up not listening to the spreadsheet and decided on Columbia,” he said, sitting in Lerner after having finished his last final exams at the University.

Once at Columbia, Onda jumped into Nonsequitur, a campus a cappella group. In fall 2009, when the group realized it couldn’t perform on the date it had been assigned for the Intercollegiate Competition of College A Cappella quarterfinals, Onda created another spreadsheet to determine which of the other three dates would give them the best chance of winning.
“I looked at the prior results of groups competing and assigned a difficulty index,” Onda said. “I guess that’s why I’m an econ major.”

Onda, an economics major with an environmental science concentration, is one of the founding editorial board members and the former editor in chief of Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development.

This summer, he will be doing economic analysis for the Environmental Defense Fund.

He has also been involved with Model United Nations since his freshman year, chairing several conferences at Columbia, and with the United Nations Association of the United States of America, a nonprofit that supports the work of the United Nations, as a junior.

It was Onda’s multinational background—Japanese but born in Austin, Texas, he was raised in Paris—that led him to get involved with Model UN, he said. In high school, he spoke all three languages fluently, though he says his Japanese and French are a little rusty today.

When he’s not writing, studying, or singing, Onda runs marathons. He just qualified for the upcoming New York City Marathon, which will take place in November. Right now, he’s training for a half marathon.

Onda has several reasons for his interest in running. “It was natural because my dad was a marathon runner,” he said.

Additionally, he needed a sport that was “2D.” “I’m not coordinated at all,” Onda said. “I used to play soccer, and I was good until the ball came off the ground.”

When summing up his college years, Onda says he thinks of a three-song set he sang with Nonsequitur at the 2009 ICAA quarterfinals, which the group won: “Fallin’,” “I’m Yours,” and “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

“That set stuck with me,” he said.