Amitabh Kant
Mr Amitabh Kant is presently CEO, NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India). NITI is a Government of India institution for catalysing the development process, nurturing an overall enabling environment by working in partnership with States, by being a Knowledge hub and a Think Tank by facilitating implementation. Its aim is to foster involvement and participation of State Governments in policy making and enhance cooperative federalism.
Amitabh Kant is a member of the Indian Administrative Service, IAS (Kerala Cadre: 1980 Batch). He is the author of “Branding India – An Incredible Story” and has been a key driver of “Make in India”, Startup India, “Incredible India” and “God’s Own Country” initiatives which positioned and branded India and Kerala State as leadingmanufacturing tourism destinations. These campaigns have won several international awards and embraced a host of activities – infrastructure development, product enhancement, private-public partnership and positioning and branding. He was responsible for developing Kerala as India’s leading tourism destination. Kant also conceptualized and executive the “AtithiDevoBhavah” – “Guest is God” campaign to train Taxi Drivers, Guides, immigration officials and make them stake holders in the tourism development process. Amitabh Kant was also the National Project Director of the Rural Tourism Project of UNDP which made a paradigm shift in spreading tourism to Indian villages which had core-competency in handicrafts, handloom and culture.
Till March, 2016 Amitabh Kant was posted as Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) – Government of India. He was responsible for formulation and implementation of industrial policy and strategies for industrial development, monitoring the industrial growth and performance of specific industrial sectors, formulation of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Policy and Promotion and facilitation of FDI, Policies related to Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in the fields of Patents, Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications. He was also responsible for promotion of Productivity, Quality and Technical Cooperation.
He was also the Chairman of the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (DMICDC) and National Productivity Council.
Amitabh Kant has also worked as CEO of the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (DMICDC). The Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) is being developed by the Government of India as a global manufacturing and investment destination supported by world class infrastructure and enabling policy framework. The DMIC project is aimed at the development of futuristic, smart industrial cities in India which will converge and integrate next generation technologies across sectors. The DMIC cities will address not merely the urbanization requirements of India, but with manufacturing as the main economic base, will also contribute significantly to the economic growth of India.
Amitabh Kant has worked as CMD – ITDC, Joint Secretary – Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, Secretary – Tourism, Government of Kerala, Managing Director, Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation, District Collector, Kozikhode and Managing Director, Matsyafed. During his tenure in Kerala he structured the Calicut Airport as a private sector project based on User’s Free and developed the BSES Power Project and Mattanchery Bridge under Private Public Partnership. He was also responsible for introducing new technology (fiberglass crafts and outboard motor) in the fisheries sector and launching beach level auctions which substantially enhanced returns to traditional fishermen. As District Collector, he implemented a major project of Urban Revival and Development through traditional Malabar architecture in creation of Mananchira City square in Kozhikode.
Amitabh Kant did his schooling from Modern School, Delhi, graduation in Economics (Hons) from St. Stephens, Delhi University and M.A from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is a Chevening Scholar. He has undertaken the Mid Career Programme of Harvard University, John F Kennedy School of Government and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
He has been the recipient of Economic Time Policy Change Agent of the Year Award, the Bloomberg TV Personality of the year Award, the NDTV Administrator of the year Award and the Distinguished Fellowship of the Institute of Directors. He is the recipient of One Globe Award-2016 for leadership in Transforming Governance for the 21st Century. He is a Member of the Steering Board of “Shaping the Future of Production Systems” of World Economic Forum.
Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy
Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy is Chief Data Scientist at Halliburton (NYSE: HAL). He is also Senior Fellow of International Cyber Security Center at George Mason University. He is a veteran of Big Data and Data Science. He is a global leader often referred as Venture Idealist, who transform businesses by leveraging Big Data, Data Science, and Emerging Technologies.
Nish Acharya
Nish Acharya is a Senior Fellow at American Progress, and is currently a principal at Equal Innovation, LLC, a strategy consulting and investment group working with universities, governments, foundations, and companies to assist them with innovation, entrepreneurship, and globalization strategies. He is also currently advising Northeastern University on its global education strategy.
Nish just left the Obama administration, where he was appointed by President Obama as the director of innovation and entrepreneurship and senior advisor to the secretary of commerce, where he led the president’s efforts to nurture economic growth through innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialization. As part of his work, Nish managed the president’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship—a group of nationally known investors, entrepreneurs, and university presidents. Nish also engaged with 26 federal agencies to provide more than $100 million in funds to universities, research centers, and companies to increase the commercialization of federally funded research. He engaged with more than 500 universities and colleges across the United States to boost their programs supporting innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialization.
Prior to joining Commerce, Nish served as executive director of the Deshpande Foundation, a prominent American philanthropy focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, and scalability around the world. Nish led the foundation’s strategic planning, grant-making, evaluation, and advocacy efforts. Under his leadership, the foundation’s “Sandboxes”—centers of innovation and entrepreneurship—have become a leading international model for regional economic development. During his tenure, the foundation created a Sandbox in India, which supported innovation and entrepreneurs to reach more than 1 million people. Nish has also led the foundation’s venture philanthropy, working to help scale Indian NGO’s like Akshaya Patra and Agastya and the United Way throughout India. It also created Sandboxes to boost the economies of the Merrimack Valley cities of Lowell and Lawrence in Massachusetts, and New Brunswick, Canada.
Nish serves as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bretton Woods Committee, The Indus Entrepreneurs, and the Clinton Global Initiative. He also served as a board member of Akshaya Patra USA and the United Way Worldwide Global Advisory Board.
Nish also served five years as a presidential appointee in the Clinton administration, where he worked with the administrator and deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development for USAID programs in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, and has worked for former Education Secretary Richard Riley and as associate director of scheduling and advance for the president.
Nish has a master’s in public administration from The George Washington University, a B.S. in political science from Northeastern University, and is a graduate of an MIT Sloan School of Management Executive Program. He has been quoted in many major publications, including The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Washington Post, AsianWeek, The Times of India, The Economic Times, Financial Times, Newsweek, BBC, and NPR.
Dr. Charan Singh
Dr. Charan Singh is a RBI Chair Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India. Earlier, he was a Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington DC from August 2009 to November 2012. . He was Director (Departments: Research; Debt Management) at the RBIfrom 1997–2009 where he had joined in 1984 as a Research officer in the Economic Department. Singh earned his doctorate in Economics from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia and was a visiting scholar (post-doctorate) for more than a year each at Department of Economics, Harvard University and the Stanford Center for International Development, Stanford University. Earlier, he had studied from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar; and Delhi University.
His research is published in different academic journals like Economic and Political weekly, Prajnan, RBI Occasional papers, Indian Journal of Economics and Business, Yojana, etc. He has also contributed articles in book volumes. He contributes in public debates thorough TV channels like Bloomberg, Rajya and Lok Sabha TV. He also regularly writesarticles for daily newspapers, both general like The Hindu, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, The Tribune, Deccan Herald andDeccan Chronicle; and economic papers like Economic Times,Business Standard, Business Line, The Financial Express, and MoneyControl.com
Dr. Eugene Flood, Jr.
Eugene Flood, Jr., also known as Gene, serves as a Managing Partner at Next Sector Capital. Previously, he was an Executive Vice President of Diversified Financial Services at TIAA-CREF. Mr. Flood joined TIAA-CREF in May 2011.
He served as the President and Chief Executive Officer at Amundi Smith Breeden (previously Smith Breeden Associates Inc.) since 2000 and served as its Director.
Prior to joining Smith Breeden Associates Inc., he served as a Portfolio Manager at Morgan Stanley Asset Management. Dr. Flood was a Consultant for a variety of private sector companies and government agencies. He has been an Independent Director of Janus Capital Group, Inc. since January 23, 2014.
Dr. Flood served as an Executive Vice President at Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association College Retirement Equities Fund and served as its Trustee for seven years. He serves on the Board of Visitors of the Fuqua School of Business of Duke University, Board of Visitors of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Board of Directors of the Society of Quantitative Analysts.
Dr. Flood served as the Chairman of TIAA-CREF Life Insurance Company. He served as a Trustee of various portfolios in the fund complex of TIAA-CREF Funds since 2005.
He serves on the Visiting Committee for the Economics Department and the Dean’s Advisory Committee of MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He a contributor to CNBC's Squawk Box and Bloomberg TV, relied on his experiences as both an academic and Wall Street trader to guide Smith Breeden. Dr. Flood has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University
Dr. Ram Reddy
Dr. Ram Reddy is CommuniClique's big deal - big impact rainmaker. He's initiated a number of the group's largest customer and investor relationships. He's been a key component to the company's increase in customer base and revenue growth.
Dr. Reddy was the founder and CEO of APEX Technology Inc., a defense contractor, which specialized in compliance for military systems with the United States Army. The company partnered with Raytheon to fulfill a number of multimillion-dollar projects and in 2004 he successfully exited the company through a deal with its largest partner.
He's a member of TIE (ww.tie.org) and an active participant in a number of other networking communities in and around the DC area and across the United States.
Dr Reddy graduated from Rutgers University with a PhD in Electrical Engineering and holds degrees from other internationally recognized universities including The Indian Institute of Technology.
Prashanth "PV" Boccasam
Prashanth "PV" Boccasam is a General Partner at NBVP. He has over 20 years of operational and executive management experience. PV is currently on the Boards of Appfluent Technologies (acquired by Attunity (NASDAQ: ATTU), Appian Corporation, Centrifuge Systems and Copiun (acquired by Good Technology). He was also an investor and co-founder of ClearStandards (acquired by SAP).
Presently, PV is the Chief Executive Officer of Novak Biddle portfolio company Orchestro (formerly Vision Chain) for which he sets the vision, strategy and governance for the evolving company. He is also on the Board of Directors, working with the management team to refocus and restructure the Company and to position it for high-growth.
PV was the founder and CEO of Approva Corporation (acquired by Infor-Lawson) and founder and president of Entevo Corporation (acquired by Bindview Corporation). Both of these enterprise software companies were invested in by Novak Biddle and other top-tier venture capitalists and were successfully acquired.
PV launched his career at Microsoft where he managed enterprise-class products and directed consulting services.
PV is President and a board member of TiE-DC. PV is also the Chairperson of Pratham-DC, India's largest non-governmental educational non-profit group. He is an investor and advisor in Communikids, the Washington, DC, metro area's only premier bilingual pre-school for children.
PV holds advanced degrees in Computer Science from the University of Pune in India and the University of Cincinnati. He is a graduate of the Executive Management Program at MIT's Sloan School of Management and is a Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Smith Business School.
Anand Sudarshan
Anand Sudarshan is the Founder & Director of Sylvant Advisors Private Limited. Anand is also an independent director at NIIT. Till June 2012, he was Vice-Chairman & Managing Director of MaGE, where he has had a distinguished career since May 2006.He currently advises companies & entities in the education sector, and is also a fund advisor with TVS Capital Funds. He is active in supporting Government of India in policy formulation, and is a member of select Committees & Task Forces of the Planning Commission of India as well as the Ministry of Human Resource Development.Prior to his stint at MaGE, he was President, Adea International (a wholly owned subsidiary of Adea Solutions, Inc, Dallas TX), responsible for all global businesses of the IT Services & Solutions company.In 1989 Anand co-founded The Microland Group and for almost 14 years he was part of the team that built it into one of the leading privately held Indian technology company’s chain.He has a Bachelor of Engineering degree (B.S Degree) in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India, and a PGDM from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, India.
