Aditi Shrivastava
Co-Founder, Pocket Aces
Aditi is the co-Founder at Pocket Aces, a new age
digital entertainment company making highly engaging content for the
millennial. The company reaches 50 million people weekly via their channels FilterCopy,
Dice Media, Gobble, and Loco. As social media becomes increasingly powerful in
influencing how people think and act, progressive media companies such as
Pocket Aces can have a significant impact in shaping the future of this world.
Before Pocket Aces, Aditi has set up the
Intellecap Impact Investment Network, the largest angel network investing in
for-profit businesses dedicated to creating a positive social impact across
India and East Africa. She worked with entrepreneurs, advising them on their
business models and investment approaches.
Prior to joining Intellecap, Aditi spent over 5
years at Goldman Sachs in New York, specializing in
quantitative equity research, trading and
portfolio management.
She graduated magna cum laude from Princeton
University majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She is a
CFA (USA) charter holder, the Curator of the World Economic Forum Global Shaper
Mumbai Hub, and a TiE Mumbai Charter Member.
She currently serves on the advisory boards of
Jibu, an affordable clean drinking water enterprise in East Africa, and Impact
Business Leaders, an organization dedicated to grooming more talent for the
impact space.
Aditi is passionate about problem solving,
dance, and travel. She calls Kuwait (where she grew up) and Mumbai (whereshe
currently resides) home.
Anisha Singh
CEO & Co-Founder, Mydala
Anisha Singh is an Indian digital entrepreneur. She co-founded mydala, along with Arjun Basu and Ashish Bhatnagar in 2009. mydala, based in Delhi, is India’s largest local services marketing platform, present in 209 Indian cities and with 28 million registered users.
She holds a Master’s degree in political communication and an MBA in Information Systems from American University, Washington DC.
Anisha began her career with the Clinton administration on Capitol Hill, helping women entrepreneurs raise funding. She worked with Centra Software in Boston setting-up e-learning ecosystems. After returning to India, she launched Kinis Software, which provides digital content solutions. In 2009 she launched mydala, which is now India’s largest local services marketing platform with 28 million registered users and a presence in 209 cities. mydala.com is expanding and has stepped in the UAE market as well.
She is known for speaking her mind and is a great advocate of women rights and encourages women to fight their fears and do what they want to do. She has spoken at several national and global events on a range of topics – including entrepreneurship, women leadership, the start-up ecosystem in India and more.
Anjali Singh
SVP and COO – Banking & Financial Services, Genpact
Anjali is a part of the Corporate Strategy team and leads Partnerships and Strategic Alliances across the company along with being the Strategy Leader for Banking and Financial Services. In the Strategy group she has worked with different consulting firms to lead enterprise wide Strategic Revenue / Cost projects.
Anjali has spent close to 8 years with Genpact in different roles across Business, People and Strategy functions.
She has led the Financial Advisory and Wealth side of the business for the Wells – Wachovia relationship as an Operating Leader; been the Global People leader (heading Human Resources, Training and Communication) for Genpact’s largest verticals spanning close to 20000 people – Financial Services, Insurance and Healthcare; and as SVP, Corporate Strategy, delivered significant business impact leading enterprise wide projects. She has an inherent passion for developing and sponsoring women leaders and promoting gender diversity.
Prior to joining Genpact, Anjali worked for 8 years with American Express in a variety of Operations, Marketing and Relationship roles. She has also worked with eFunds, an outsourcing partner for American Express, and Colt, a Fidelity owned company.
Anjali is a post graduate from Delhi University and has more than 20 years of work experience, primarily in Financial Services domain. She has a 17 year old son and enjoys traveling and reading in her leisure time.
Ankita Bhatia
Marketing Head, SoulTree
Ankita Bhatia is passionate about Brand Building, Content and Digital Marketing. She has more than 11 years of experience in Tech services and products across global markets as well as consumer businesses and e-commerce in India. Having worked both in B2B and B2C businesses, her experience has been well rounded across different facets of marketing, ranging from brand sponsorships and events, to PR and Influencers, Performance marketing, Alliances, Content, Social Media and having a 360 degree integrated approach to marketing.
She believes in marketing that delivers on business outcomes, both creative and analytical. Anything else is irrelevant in my view.
She would describe herself as highly driven, curious and creative. Challenges motivate her and she believes that one won\'t learn anything unless they try. And that learning should never stop.
Her other interests include Travel, Food, Books and Writing.
Anna Sinha
Group Leade, Consumer & Sensory Insights at Nestle RND
Anuranjita Kumar
MD HR, Royal Bank of Scotland
Anuranjita is Managing Director Human Resources, International hubs at RBS.
Prior to this she was the Chief Human Resources Officer for Citi South Asia. She has worked across Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and USA.
Anuranjita began her career with Procter & Gamble in 1994 and joined Citi in 1995. She has held a variety of roles including Senior HR Generalist for Corporate and Investment Banking, Staffing and Development manager in NY and Senior HR advisor for Private Bank in Singapore. In her last role in India, she was Head of Compensation and Benefits for South Asia, before moving to London in 2005 as Head of HR Strategy and Planning for EMEA.
In 2007, Anuranjita was the first South Asian and woman leader to be appointed Head of HR, Global Banking EMEA. During this challenging period, she successfully partnered with the global banking team to turnaround the business bottom-up which resulted in EMEA Corporate and Investment Banking function being recognized as the most improved Corporate and Investment Banking franchise in Europe by Financial News. These achievements and more led to Anuranjita being recognized as an ‘Upcoming South Asia Leadership Talent’ by Asia Networks.
After an exciting stint in Europe, she returned to India in 2012 as the Chief Human Resources Officer for Citi South Asia, given the mantle to handle the turnaround of its India franchise. Leveraging on her European experience, she led the India franchise through a remarkable transformational journey, ensuing significant growth across all parts of the franchise in the last three years. This has resulted in a host of prestigious recognitions for the franchise every year, such as the ‘Significant Achievement in HR Excellence Award’ by CII in 2013 and 2014, ‘Top 10 Companies for Gender Diversity’ by NHRDN in 2013 and the ‘Excellence in Leadership Development’ award by the Society for Human Resource Management in 2014.
She is the first woman management committee member at Citi India. She is also on the board of Citi Services India Limited and Citicorp Finance India Limited, Chairperson of the HR Committee at Amcham India, Advisory board member of SHRM India, Member of the South Asia Executive Council Conference Board, Member of CII National Core Committee on Human Resources, Member of the National Human Resources Forum India and the Citi business champion for American India Foundation.
She has also been recognized as amongst the ‘Most Powerful HR Professionals of India’, by the World HRD Congress in 2012 and amongst the ‘Most Powerful Woman Leaders’ by Fortune in 2013.
Throughout her career, she has focused in developing and executing commercially viable HR strategies, fostering global talent and cultivating a responsible and enriching culture that believes in the progress of its people and customers. She also actively engages as an executive coach for senior executives within and outside of Citi and has been accredited as an executive coach by I-coach academy in the UK and by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. She is also a senior trainer for the Senior Leadership Development curriculum at Citi.
Anuranjita is a management graduate of XLRI, specializing in Human Resources. She attended Welhams Girls School and is a gold medalist and topper in industrial psychology from Delhi University. She is also a certified diver and has explored some of the best known diving sites globally. She is keenly involved in volunteering with underprivileged children.
Aparajita Gogoi
Executive Director, Centre for Catalyzing Change (Formerly CEDPA India)
Dr. Aparajita Gogoi is the Executive Director, of Centre for Catalyzing Change (formerly CEDPA India). Dr Gogoi is a political scientist with over 20 years of experience in program management, advocacy campaigns, and defining approaches and strategies for policy issues, especially young people’s health and rights.
She is passionate about women’s health issues and has been an advocate for safe motherhood and believes that surviving childbirth is a fundamental right of every woman. She is also the National Coordinator of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, India (WRAI) and a former elected member of the board of the Global WRA.
She played a pivotal role in conceptualizing and implementing Center for Catalyzing Change’s widely known scaled up programs on inclusion of SRH education for young people in schools. In her current role, Aparajita has been instrumental in scaling up SRH programs, being implemented by Education Department in the states of Jharkhand and Bihar in India, covering more than a million young people in the last 5 years. She is currently also leading SRH and life skills programs reaching more than one hundred thousand out of school girls every year.
Under her supervision, the organization is also implementing projects that address the issue of gender based violence aimed at impacting attitudes and raising awareness of laws and support services for women/girls facing violence.
She holds a PhD (International Politics), from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a Post graduate diploma in Journalism. She has been accorded recognition for her work in various forums- on 8th March 2011, Guardian, UK, marked International Women’s Day by selecting 100 of world’s most inspiring women, and she was named as one of these 100 women.
Aradhana Lal
Vice President- Sustainability Initiatives, Lemon Tree Hotels
Aradhana Lal is the Vice President - Sustainability Initiatives, Lemon Tree Hotels and she leads the development and execution of a broad-based, company-wide strategic sustainability initiative. Ensuring that the company’s sustainability effort enhances business performance and supports the long-term interests of the company and facilitate internal and external communications and visibility as the company spokesperson on sustainability issues. Create and implement communication strategies to publicize the company’s sustainability effort and promote broad awareness of sustainability initiatives, both internally and externally.
She formulates action plans with defined objectives, targets and responsibilities to support agreed upon sustainability strategies. Measure and monitor progress against sustainability strategies, objectives and performance targets.
She has worked with Hindustan Unilever Network as Sales Operation Manager and also worked at The Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi as Deputy Sales Manager.
She holds an MBA degree in Business Administration and Management from IIM Ahmedabad.
Archana Kumar
Chief Human Resource Officer, IREO
Archana Kumar is an HR professional with over 27 years of experience, she had an experience with multiple industries and organizations over complete HR spectrum. She started her career as a Management Trainee at Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (IPCL) now Reliance Petrochem and in the five year tenure, graduated to handle complete bouquet of HR responsibilities.
From IPCL she moved to IT Software and joined CMC (now a TCS group company). Her role encompassed the entire spectrum of HR functionalities. Privatization of CMC and merger with TCS gave her intensive insights on corporate integration. She led the disinvestment process issuing ESOPs and was the lead for integrating of HR of CMC with TCS applying Tata Business Excellence Model and the Tata Code of Conduct.
She joined NIIT Ltd in 2004, a company steeped in HR DNA, as Business HR Head for India, ROW & China. She developed Competency Model, 360 Degree survey, Learning plans, on-line appraisals, in-house L&D faculty at NIIT’s School of Employee Education & Development – SEED, and much more.
Equipped with the best HR learnings from past experiences, she ventured to lead the HR at Ireo, a professionally managed, FDI fund in the business of real-estate. She brought the best HR practices to Real Estate and make Ireo, one of the aspirational company to work for. Today, Ireo\'s industry agnostic HR processes and systems that have stood it in good stead winning accolades as \'Best companies to Work for\' in 2016, \'Company with Great Managers\' and \'FICCI\'s Innovation in HR\' in 2017.
Her strength is in inclusive focus on all aspects of HR from tactical and strategic with focus on employee engagement for higher productivity. She holds additional responsibility for Admin, Internal Communication and Compliance at Ireo. She is an ardent believer of IT systems in HR such as SAP. She welcomes the importance of HR today in the Corporate sector transporting it from a Business support role to being the critical differentiator for business success.
She holds an MBA degree in HR from University of Lucknow.
Audrey Clegg
Head of Talent, ABB - Zurich
Audrey joined ABB as Group Vice-President – Head of Talent Management in 2012. Prior to this she was with Wolseley as Group Director of Talent and Leadership Development & HR Director of Group IT. Audrey has 24 years of experience in HR including recruitment, career development, leadership development and talent management. Audrey is a board member of CEMS (Community of European Management Schools) and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina in Business Administration.
Avani Kapur
Director at Accontability Initiative, CPR
Avani Kapur has been working in the field of budgetary analysis since 2008. Currently, she is leading the Budget and Public Finance research work at the Accountability Initiative - a research organisation based in Centre for Policy Research that works on tracking the governance and implementation of key social sector programmes.
Prior to Accountability Initiative, she has worked at the Centre for Development and Human Rights (CDHR), with Dr. Arjun Sengupta. As part of her activities at CDHR, she was responsible for assisting Dr. Sengupta in his reports to the Human Rights Council as the ‘Independent Expert on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’ and the ‘Right to Development’.
Avani has an M.Sc. in Development Studies from the London School of Economics, U.K and a B.A cum laude from Smith College, Massachusetts, USA.
Dana Brown
Pro Vice Chancellor, De Montfort University (DMU)
Professor Dana Brown joined De Montfort University (DMU) in March 2016 as the founding Principal of Leicester Castle Business School (LCBS).
Raised by her mother in America with her father in England, Dana’s life and career has spanned the two countries and beyond. While completing her BA in Political Science and Slavic Languages at Rutgers University in New Jersey, she spent a year at Exeter University and a further year on Exeter’s Russian language programme in Moscow. After completing her BA, Dana was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study for the MPhil in Russian and East European Studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. She later earned her PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), completing a dissertation on the intersection of market and social reform in former Soviet countries.
In higher education, Dana served as Director of the Trenton Academic Centre at Rutgers University, facilitating early experiments in distance learning. After her Ph.D. she was appointed as University Lecturer in International Business at Said Business School and Clore Fellow of Management at Lady Margaret Hall,
Oxford University. At Oxford, Dana sat on the LMH Governing Body, Development and Strategic Planning Committees, and led the college’s student exchange programme. At Said Business School, she co-directed an interdisciplinary forum on Corporate Social Responsibility, the Oxford-Achilles Working Group on CSR.
She moved to France in 2010 to take up a Professorship of Strategy at EM-LYON Business School, where she was also the Academic Director of the Doctorate in Business Administration run jointly with Sun-Yat sen University. In 2013, she returned to Oxford as the Director of the MBA at Said Business School and oversaw a curricular reform and significant growth and internationalisation of the programme. Dana has also taught executive education and MBA courses at Oxford, EMLYON, IE Business School and the American University in Cairo.
In 2014, Dana completed certification as an Executive Coach with Meyler-Campbell in London and practices informally. She has worked for eight years as a selector for the Alfa Fellowship Programme, which sends young professionals from America, the UK and Germany on a ten month professional development programme in Moscow. Dana is also involved with Warm Heart, a social enterprise providing opportunities for children and their communities in the Phrao region of Thailand.
Debolina Dutta
VP- HR & CSR, Luminous Technologies (wholly owned subsidiary of Schneider- Electric)
Debolina Dutta has 23 years of work experience in HR & Sales domain. She had a degree in Electrical Engineering from College of Engineering, Pune, a Post Graduate Degree in management from IIM, Bangalore and completed her FPM-Industry program from IIM Indore. She is working as Director and Head of HR, VF Brands (I).
Dimple Agarwal
Partner- Transformation and Talent, Deloitte UK
Dimple Agarwal is the global leader of Organization Transformation and Talent for Deloitte’s Human Capital practice. She consult at the C-suite level on operating model and organizational design, HR and talent strategies, leadership strategies and development, and major transformation programs in the space of M&A, culture and digital. Her 23 years of consulting experience includes work in the United Kingdom, many Asian, African and European countries.
She is a frequent speaker on the Future of Work and advises clients on responding to the business opportunities and challenges as a result of the changing dynamics of society, organisation and talent. She sits on the leadership team leading on Talent for Deloitte Consulting in the UK. She has a Bachelors degree in Psychology and Masters degree in human resources.
Dr. Garima Singh
CEO, Saket City Hospital, MAX Healthcare
Dr. Garima Singh has over 14 years of experience in hospital administration in Tertiary care Private hospitals in India and abroad; both in Project commissioning as well as in medical operations. Key strength lies in developing multidisciplinary team that is aligned to organisational goals and in execution.
She specializes in hospital Administration; especially appreciated in business head role (pnl),Project commissioning, Intersection management (Interdepartmental coordination), Physician Interactions and recruitment.
She holds a Master degree in Hospital Administration from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
Durga Raghunath
CEO, Digital, The Indian Express
Durga Raghunath is the CEO Digital at The Indian Express Group .
And also she co-founded Juggernaut Books. As co-founder and CEO, lead product definition, business thinking, brand building and partnerships for a 35+ person-team that is reimagining books for the smartphone user. Currently she is a board-member and advisor.
After a dozen years in digital media - product development that changes consumer behaviour, and consumer technology are deep interests. She spent the last few years obsessing about mobile experiences and thinking more about monetization of digital products, commerce and subscription. She is happy to help consumer media startups through the pillars of content, community and commerce.
She holds an MBA degree in Business from the Indian School of Business.
Gunjan Soni
Head, Jabong & Myntra
Gunjan Soni is responsible for setting the strategic direction for Jabong and leading it to profitability. She also leads Marketing for Myntra.
She has over 13 years of diverse experience in strategy, operations and marketing with a passion for advanced big data analytics. Her previous role was Executive Vice President for Strategy and CEO Office, with Star India, she has worked on new initiatives in Content, Sports and Digital.
Prior to joining Star India, she was a Partner at McKinsey and worked across multiple consumer sectors and geographies, including India, UK, Singapore and Bhutan. I am credited for starting McKinsey\'s Scientific Marketing practice for India.
She holds an MBA degree in Finance from XLRI Jamshedpur.
Kanika Mathur
COO, MullenLowe Group
MullenLowe Group Singapore has appointed Kanika Mathur as APAC COO Unilever. Mathur is responsible for bridging the MullenLowe Group local teams in APAC, and partnering with local MullenLowe CEO's to drive an enhanced, integrated offering for Unilever.
Mathur brings extensive experience in brand building, integrated marketing communications and digital transformation in the region. Prior to joining MullenLowe Group, she was Senior Vice President, Digital and Content Marketing at Dubai Tourism & Commerce Marketing.
Before this Mathur set up Publicis Groupe's digital presence in India, establishing Digitas and Razorfish and building up a 400+ strong team.
Kavita Shah
CEO, Concern India Foundation
Kavita Shah is the CEO at Concern India Foundation. One of the key areas of work is the empowerment of women from economically and socially weak backgrounds. They support programmes that work towards changing the mindset of communities to accept women as equal. The programmes they support rehabilitate women facing domestic violence, dowry harassment, and mental and physical abuse and offer educational support and vocational training so as to equip them with the skills to live economically independent lives.
Growing up in Chandigarh, Kavita completed her schooling from Carmel Convent and went on to do her BCom from the Government College and Post Graduate degree in Banking and Commerce from Punjab University. After working for several years in marketing and finance and starting up her own enterprise, she moved from Delhi to Mumbai with her husband. Soon after, she decided she wanted to work for a non-profit organisation, which brought her to Concern India Foundation.
Today, she has worked with Concern for the past 20 years, growing it to now support 270 grassroots NGOs across seven Indian cities in the areas of education, health and community development.
Kruti Bharucha
CEO, Peepul Foundation
Kruti Bharucha is currently the Managing Director for ARK India - an international organisation, headquartered in London, whose purpose is to transform children\'s lives. ARK India\'s interventions are focused on improving the quality of education provided and available to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Prior to ARK, she was Senior Director and Leader of the Finance Practice for CEB, advising CXOs in the areas of corporate finance, internal controls, talent management, finance function productivity and information risk management and mitigation. Her previous work experience includes McKinsey and Co., where her expertise was in the field of consumer goods, retail and agri-business. She has also worked at The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, where she specialized in fiscal policy and financial sector reform.
She has an MSc. in Development Studies (with Distinction) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MA in Economics from the University of Maryland and a BA (with Honors)
from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi.
Lopamudra Banerjee
HR Head, Carrier Midea
Lopamudra is an experienced HR professional who comes from a HR Generalist background. She has over 10 years of experience in Human Resource Consulting working in global professional services organisations, project managing delivery of complex and diverse HR projects with both public sector and private sector clients.
She has worked extensively in the areas of developing and deploying HR solutions aligned with business strategy. This spans the area of HR Strategy, Organisational Development, Talent Management & Effectiveness, Performance and Total Rewards Management.Organisation Design, HR Process Design, both as a team member and in a project management role.
Good analytical skills, Business Appreciation, Process Orientation and Strong Interpersonal skills are some of my key strengths. She holds a Master’s degree in History from Delhi University.
Madhavi Das
CMSO, FSSAI
Ms. Madhavi Das holds a Master degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Sustainable Development. She has more than twenty five years’ experience in India’s civil service, during which time she has formulated, implemented and led flagship Government schemes in a range fields.
As Executive Director of the Pension Fund Regulatory Authority, she has been instrumental in developing financial sector regulation. She has also been Secretary General of the Apparel Export Promotion Council and held senior posts in the Ministries of Telecommunications, Textiles and Finance.
In her current role as Joint Secretary and CMSO at the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, she is directly involved in several policy related issues including large scale training and capacity of Food Business Operators and social behavioural change through awareness building.
Mandira Kala
Head of Policy and Research, PRS Legislative Research
Mandira is Head of Policy & Research at PRS Legislative Research. She led PRS\' engagement with MPs, to provide them legislative and policy support. Her core role involved engaging with MPs regularly to understand their research needs, briefing them on upcoming issues and designing initiatives that add value to the work of MPs. Mandira also anchored the LAMP Fellowship during its initial years.
Previously, she has worked in the research team of Azim Premji Foundation, Bangalore and Centre for Social Policy, Boston, USA. She was awarded the UNDP Asia- Pacific Human Development Academic Fellowship in 2008. Mandira was selected as an Emerging Leaders Fellow 2011-12 by the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne. She has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Meenu Vadera
CEO Executive Director, Sakha Consulting Wings
Meenu is a feminist and a social entrepreneur who has pioneered the idea of ‘Women on Wheels’. Women on Wheels has received several recognitions and awards for its innovative business model as well as for the transformative impact made on lives of resource poor women.
With a postgraduate degree of Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) and a Masters degree in Social Development and Public Policy from London School of Economics, she has been working on women’s issues – nationally and internationally. Having worked on women’s issues for over 20 years as a grassroot worker, trainer, implementer and a leader, this unique new project initiated by her stands as testimony to her resolve and commitment towards enabling women to live a life of dignity and socio-economic freedom.
She has been involved in development initiatives as the Country Director of Action Aid in Uganda (1998-2003). Having returned to India afterwards, she has led an innovative initiative of Aagaz Academies-Schools of Leadership for elected women panchayat leaders, before founding Azad Foundation and Sakha Cabs for Women. She now acts as CEO and Secretary of the Trustee Board for Azad and CEO of Sakha Cabs.
Meenu’s commitment to women’s rights and development has been an integral part of her personal as well as professional life.
Neeta Revankar
Whole Time Director & CFO, Sasken Communication Technologies Limited
Neeta Revankar is the CFO and member of the Board of Directors at Sasken Technologies Ltd (formerly Sasken Communication Technologies Ltd). As an active member of the leadership team, Neeta has been instrumental in helping Sasken drive Fiscal discipline and profitability since inception. She successfully led the company’s IPO in 2005. She has earned a reputation in the industry as a leader who has been committed to establishing and maintaining the highest standards of transparency in financial management, reporting and corporate governance at Sasken.
She has been a part of meetings of the Sasken Board and audit committee since 2000. Her elevation to the board in 2010 is a testimony to her sharp business acumen and leadership. Recently, she vigorously defended a breach of contract by a licensee and led the company to successive settlements via international arbitrations.
Neeta has held additional responsibilities between November 2008 and 2013 including HR, IS-IT and Global Operations. During this period she established HR as a strong business partner by reinforcing the core pillars of trust, transparency, parity and equity.
She is a qualified Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary. Besides, she has participated in the Program for Global Leadership (PGL) in 2001 and the Advanced Management Program (AMP) in 2007 of the Harvard Business School and more recently participated in the Women on Boards program at the Harvard Business School in 2016.
Besides playing a stellar role as CFO here at Sasken, Neeta has also won laurels from external accredited CFO forums. She was conferred the India CFO Award 2005 for ‘Excellence in Finance in SME’ by IMA India in recognition of her contribution towards enhancing the strategic scope of the finance function and her exemplified excellence in the domain.
Neeta is part of the CFO Board, which is a community-led initiative of senior CFOs in the country. One of the primary objectives of the CFO Board is to help provide a reasoned, long term and unbiased view on a few, critical policy issues to government and to help effect policy change through dialogue, information and insights, best practices and international benchmarks. She is passionate about promoting Alternate Dispute Resolution in India, as a means to cost effective dispute resolution and reduction of the backlog in the judiciary.
Nirmala Menon
Founder & CEO, Interweave Consulting
Nirmala Menon is the Founder and CEO of Interweave Consulting. She is an HR professional with global experience of over 30 years across multiple industries. Educated in India and the US, combined with her exposure to international work experience has made D&I a personal area of interest. Her last corporate job was with IBM as the Employee Relations and Diversity leader for India where she gained wide and varied experience in the area of Diversity and Inclusion management, including opportunities to work on and facilitate interventions in several locations – Asia Pacific region, Ireland, Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Nirmala is listed as a Subject Matter Expert by SHRM India and is an active member of Nasscom’s D&I Steering Committee. She was also a representative in the informal international advisory group of the UN Global Compact & the UNIFEM to finalise the Women’s Empowerment Principles.
An alumnus of XLRI India, Nirmala holds an additional masters in HR from Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. She is also a certified coach from the International Coaching Academy
A storehouse of energy, Nirmala is full of ideas and a stickler for quality. Her endless zest and passion for her work sets the culture for Interweavers!
Nirupa Shankar
Director, Brigade Enterprises Limited
Nirupa is a Director of Brigade Group\'s Hospitality division, Brigade Hospitality & a Director of Brigade REAP. She oversees the operations & strategy for the company\'s self-managed assets, which include convention centres, serviced apartments, lifestyle membership clubs, banquets and event management. She also asset manages the group\'s hospitality ventures, such as the Sheraton Grand Bangalore Hotel at Brigade Gateway and Grand Mercure Bangalore, in addition to eight new projects in the pipeline.
Nirupa conceptualised and successfully launched a unique lounge bar atop the World Trade Centre-Bangalore, called HIGH Ultra Lounge, the highest point for food and beverage in South India.
Apart from her role in hospitality she is involved with the group\'s overall business development and strategy. She is part of new initiatives related to human resources, IT and innovation. She is the brain child behind the Brigade Real Estate Accelerator Program, the first of its kind in India.
Prior to joining Brigade she worked as a Senior Business Analyst with Ernst & Young LLP out of the New York, Washington DC and North Carolina offices. She has bachelors in Economics from the University of Virginia and a Masters of Management in Hospitality from Cornell University. She is also a Six Sigma Black Belt.
She has been identified as one of CNBC\'s \"Young Turks\" and was listed in Hotelier India\'s Top 50 Power List 2014. She is the only woman advisory board member for the \"Hotelier India\" publication.
She has been awarded the Young Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, 2014 at the Infra & Realty Sutra Awards, Rising Star Award 2015 - South Asia by the International Society of Hospitality Consultants, Restaurant Owner of the Year - India 2016 at the Hospitality Leaders\' Industry Choice Awards
She is a member of YPO.
Nirupa is an avid tennis fan, enjoys reading, travelling, outdoor activities and writing. Her articles have been published in a number of hospitality magazines and newspapers such as the Hindu and Economic Times.
Pallavi Singh
Head Marketing, MG Motor
A marketing professional, with extensive experience in the premium market segment related to Business Strategy, Customer Experience and Communication. Her specialties are Brand Management, Positioning, Market Development, Communication.
Pallavi was former director, marketing, Harley-Davidson India, before joining MG Motors. Singh had joined Harley Davidson in December 2009, and served the company in various roles.
Prior to joining Harley, She was with Yamaha, where she was involved with ground-level consumer research across India and Thailand, and also helped launch variants such as R1 and MT-01 in the local markets.
She is an MBA in Marketing (Majors) and HR (Minors) from Birla Institute of Management & Technology.
Poonam Bagai
Founder, CanKids
Poonam Bagai, colon cancer survivor, is the founder President of CanKids…KidsCan, and the Vice Chairperson of Pallium India, Joint Secretary Indian Cancer Society, Delhi Branch and Member Cancer Sahyog, an emotional support group of survivors and caregivers. She supports Forum for Breast Cancer Protection and has acted in a film on Breast Self Examination. She is also alumni of American Cancer Society University.
Poonam had colon cancer in November 2000 when living in Warsaw Poland. She completed her treatment in November 2001 and returned to India.
She loves children and is passionate about making a difference to the causes of Childhood Cancer and Palliative Care in India. She is a single mother who lives in the National Capital Region (NCR) of Delhi and has two boys of her own, 16 and 13, who study at the British School, New Delhi.
Her motto also the motto of CanKids: “Because I am Able…Because I Can” (In Hindi “Kyonki Hum Saksham Hain…Kyonki Hum Kar Sakte Hain)
Preeti Reddy
CEO, Kantar Insights
Preeti Reddy has been named the president of global market research agency, IMRB where she currently serves as the Senior Vice-President.
She has close to three decades of experience in research and consulting, working with leading Indian and multinational companies. She joined IMRB in 2009 when she was appointed CEO of LMRB in Sri Lanka. Preeti has also headed Mindscape – the strategic consumer consulting division of India’s leading consulting firm, Technopak and has been a Senior Vice President with TNS – one of the largest marketing information groups in the world. Preeti has earlier worked with the BAT group in India and in management consulting with Besant Raj Consultants. She holds an Honours degree in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India
Preeti Vyas
CEO, VGC
Experienced Chairperson with a demonstrated history of working in the design industry. Skilled in Conceptual Design, Digital Strategy, Typography, Creative Concept Design, and Web Design. Strong business development professional graduated from National Institute of Design. Steering a talented team to produce a cutting edge strategic and creative portfolio including branding and communications for iconic Corporations like Aditya Birla Group ( A two decade old association), House of Hiranandani, Fosters, IndusInd Bank, Phoenix (Palladium Constructions), The Times of India and more. Thereby positioning VGC amongst top ranked Design agencies in India by Economic Times.
She is Founder and Chairwoman of an Integrated Design Consultancy, Vyas Giannetti Creative that is ranked among the top 4 Design Houses in India by the Economic Times and is featured in the Brand Trust Report, 2012.
Also the Founder of Designomics, an initiative that promotes the use of Design in business to create value and boost the ROI.
Chief Mentor at the Designomics Live Academy, an institution that takes education out of the classroom and into India\'s leading Design houses.
Pritha Venkatachalam
CEO, The Bridgespan Group
Pritha is a Partner in Bridgespan’s Mumbai office. She has advised governments, donors, foundations and philanthropies, multilateral organizations, nonprofits, and the private sector on a wide range of global development challenges. Her experience includes public policy formulation, design and implementation of global development interventions, strategy and financial advisory, and evaluation of programs.
She has been a Research Scholar at the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics where she published on innovative financing of infrastructure at the sub-national level, and municipal finance systems in India and Tanzania. She has also written on immunization and health financing, and presented at seminars and workshops on public health issues.
Prior to joining Bridgespan, Pritha established and led the New Delhi office of Dalberg Global Development Advisors, where she co-led the Global Health and Nutrition practice area. Previously, Pritha was a Director at Cambridge Economic Policy Associates (CEPA) UK, where she worked for almost a decade. She set up CEPA\'s first international office in New Delhi and directed development mandates in Asia and Africa across public health, agriculture and infrastructure sectors. Pritha’s earlier responsibilities include being a financial specialist at the World Bank on urban infrastructure projects, and a Senior Consultant at Accenture in London and New Delhi.
She holds a Masters in Development Management from the London School of Economics and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore including an exchange program at Melbourne Business School. She is a recipient of the Citibank Leadership Award.
Priyadarshini Narendra
Head of Brand Solutions, HT Media
Priyadarshini is passionate about putting the strategic pieces of consumer insights and market trends together to identify new, disruptive opportunities for business growth. This ability has been extensively honed across her career of multidisciplinary experience - marketing and brand strategy, advertising, research, management consulting, consumer trend spotting, market and consumer trend forecasting, innovation and new products.
She has worked with clients across multiple sectors including:
FMCG - f&b, home care, personal care and beauty, durables, mobile phones, ecommerce and retail automotive, insurance etc.
She has substantial experience in leading growth organisations, having successfully set up new divisions or businesses in the B2B service space and turned them into successful ventures - involving visioneering, P&L responsibility, client management, thought leadership, building and leading teams. Ability to work across an array of business issues – from Blue Ocean strategy to portfolio planning, business and product innovation, business growth, brand positioning, new brand launch, integrated marketing communications etc - with multinational and Indian clients and brands in various stages of development, from nascent to mature. She also led multi-country projects in trend mapping and innovation.
Her areas of expertise include: Tracking and forecasting market and consumer trends for business and marketing strategy development, Brand strategy, Innovation, Client Relationship Management.
Purnima Sahnimohanty
Head Corporate Communication, DuPont South Asia
Purnima Sahni Mohanty is a senior communications leader with more than 25 years of experience in setting up, spearheading and executing world class communications programs for Fortune 100 Companies.
She helped in the building of the corporate citizenship program for GE in India to become a benchmark and a role model in preserving the environment, promote education, facilitate healthcare plus many more initiatives which gives back to the communities in which we live and work. She currently works for DuPont as Director and head of communications. Her past work experiences include being director of communications for Samsung, GE, Alcatel and Oracle.
Ramya Venkatraman
CEO, CENTA
Ramya Venkataraman is the founder and CEO of Centre for Teacher Accreditation (CENTA), which aims to recognize teaching excellence and create a career pathway for the teaching profession through its CENTA Standards, a competency framework, its CENTA Teaching Professionals’ Olympiad, a unique national competition for teachers, and its CENTA Certificates and Micro-Credentials, a set of in-depth practical, modular certificates for teachers.
Ramya Venkataraman holds a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.
Rema Harish
CEO, IIMPACT
Rema Harish has worked in Advertising and Media for 28 years across India and the APAC region after completing her PGDM from IIM Ahmedabad. She has worked with many prestigious agencies like JWT, MindShare and MediaCom during her career where she has managed large client facing teams across multiple geographies – India, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Australia and ASEAN countries.
Rema is a trained Trainer, Facilitator and Leadership Coach and has performed Learning & Development roles in the same organisations along with her operational responsibilities. Having had the benefit of a world class education and gender agnostic encouragement from her parents and family she is passionate about spreading the benefits of education to girls from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.
She is a management professional attempting to contribute to the education of the girl child.
Reshma Anand
CEO, Hindustan Unilever Foundation
Reshma Anand is founder and CEO of Earthy Goods. A business school graduate, she switched from a mainstream corporate career with Unilever to use her skills and make a difference to micro entrepreneurs making handcrafted products in India\'s villages. Earthy Goods was set up with the aim of addressing the challenge of fair and viable market access often encountered by resilient entrepreneurs and artisans in India\'s villages.
She started her career with the FMCG giant Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL). Her 6-year stint at HUL gave her a sound foundation in sales, market research, new product development and marketing across some of the leading consumer product brands in India. Her next assignment was with a start-up where she spearheaded marketing, business development and fund raising at Development Alternatives. Entrusted with the task of setting-up franchised tele-centers in UP, MP and Punjab, she came face to face with issues faced by Indian entrepreneurial ventures-in private and developmental sectors.
Reshma has had an unconventional career path and varied experience combined with a deep understanding of rural markets. She was selected as a TED India fellow in 2009. She is a Fellow of second class of the Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Rubeena Singh
CEO, iProspect
Rubeena has over 17 years of rich experience in Business & Product Development, Digital Marketing, Relationship management and Advertising sales. Her stints in TV, Print and now Digital, both from a publisher and agency POV have broadened her outlook on the media industry. My strength lies in building and scaling up businesses and managing them successfully on the back of strong, motivated teams, business relationships and efficient processes.
Currently she is the CEO of iProspect India, India’s premier and largest performance agency. Part of Dentsu Aegis Network.
Previously, she was COO of moneycontrol.com, and was responsible for Business Strategy, Marketing, Sales, Operations and P&L. She was able to double revenues in 3 years by ensuring that the product was always ahead of the curve, building and putting in place motivated, loyal teams and building enduring relationships with clients.
Prior to this, she headed Forbes India, Forbes Life and launched ForbesIndia.com. Under her watch, despite a shrinking market for magazines, Forbes was able to increase its revenue 5 fold in 3 years.
Before Forbes, she was the television brand turnaround specialist for Network 18. During her 9 year stint with the company, she increased the contribution as well as yield from the BFSI sector across the network - CNBC TV18, CNBC Awaaz, CNN IBN,IBN 7,IBN Lokmat. The launch of CNBC Awaaz in 2005 was amongst the myriad responsibilities she was entrusted with during her TV stint at Network 18.
She started her career with the STAR Group, where she had the opportunity to work across brands of the STAR bouquet- STAR Plus, Star News, NGC, Channel V in multiple roles, which included re-launch of Channel-V and Star News Hindi.
Rukmini Banerji
CEO, Pratham
Trained as an economist in India, Dr. Rukmini Banerji completed her BA at St. Stephen’s College and attended the Delhi School of Economics. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and earned her PhD at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Banerji worked as a program officer at the Spencer Foundation in Chicago for several years before returning to India in 1996 to join Pratham as part of the leadership team. There, she led the organization’s research and assessment efforts, which has included the internationally acknowledged Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) since 2005, and served as director of the ASER Centre in New Delhi for ten years.
In 2008, she was the inaugural recipient of the Maulana Abul Kalam Shiksha Puraskar Award conferred by the Government of Bihar, India. Over the years, she has represented Pratham and the ASER Centre in various national and international forums and is a member of committees both in India and abroad.
She writes frequently on education in India and enjoys creating books and stories for children.
Originally from Bihar, she now lives in New Delhi.
Rumjhum Chatterjee
Group Managing & Director HR, Feedback Infra
Ms. Rumjhum Chatterjee co-founded Feedback Infra Private Limited (formerly Feedback Infrastructure Services Private Limited) in 1990 and serves as its Managing Director and Head of Human Capital. She is the Chairperson of the Feedback Foundation Trust. She has been nominated as the Chief Compliance Officer for the Feedback Infra Group. She serves as a Director of Feedback Infra Private Limited.
She started her career with Indian Market Research Bureau and has been involved in the growth and evolution of Feedback Infra since the start up days. She holds key responsibilities in the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and served as the first woman Chairperson for CII Northern Regional Council from 2016 to 2017 and has served as the Chairperson for the Delhi State Council for October 2009.
She has been an Additional Independent Director of Somany Ceramics Limited since September 1, 2018. She is a member of the HRD committee and the National Committee for Women\'s Empowerment. She also serves as the Vice Chairperson of the Governing Body of Help Age India and is a Trustee of 3E Education Trust (HDFCSchools). She has deep interest in women\'s empowerment. She served as the Chairperson of CII Women Exemplar Program for from 2015 to 2017 and has been part of the Jury of the Selection Committee of the same program since its inception. She is educated in Psychology from the Calcutta University.
Shalini Gaba
Director Human Resources, SOS International
Shalini Gaba is a qualified HR & OD Professional with 19 Years of experience in Human Resource, thought leadership, Change management, and Organisation Development leader thriving through Human Resource strategy to support business deliverable. She has excelled in transitional leadership engagement, a term that she had coined due to specific work done around building organisation framework and people, structure for organisations built from Start-up-Growth trajectory. Her interactions and proximity to work done with CEO’s in more than a decade career has contributed to her grooming of being an unconventional Business partner enhanced further through my previous background in operations, sales, quality and L&D.
Her diverse profile is also supported by her interface across various industries like ITES, Sales, Education, Media, Retail, and Hospitality and currently placed in Health care industry.
Across 19 years of her experience, for the last 10 years she had been in leadership roles to perform as a strategic business partner based out of diverse and global markets in Asia, Europe and US. The role has evolved through navigation and work experience in matrix organisation going through Merger and acquisition, start-ups and matured organisations as well.
She also supports social causes and have managed projects on CSR, Diversity and Sustainability within the organisation and also as contribution to the society.
Women leadership is a subject that inspires her and she is currently engaged in projects specifically around building this echo through various paradigms of life.
Shobhini Mukerjee
Executive Director, J-PAL South Asia
Shobhini Mukerji is the Executive Director of J-PAL South Asia’s regional center, hosted by the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR). Shobhini is based in New Delhi and provides strategic, technical, and administrative oversight to the pan-India research and multi-sector policy and training engagements in the South Asian region. She works closely with donors, policymakers, civil society partners, and research institutions to promote collaborations to increase the use of evidence in decision-making and scale-ups of successful social programs. She has extensive research and evaluation experience, ranging from designing and managing large scale primary data collection and analysis, to providing advice to organizations and governments on research design, monitoring, and evaluation strategies. Her research includes recently published papers on primary education interventions in India found to be highly impactful and at the stages of being scaled up across several Indian states.
Prior to J-PAL, Shobhini worked at Pratham, a pan-India non-profit initiative working towards universal quality primary education for the underprivileged. She is on the Board of Directors at CARE India, a large non-profit in India focusing on empowerment of women and girls through programs in health, education, livelihoods, and disaster preparedness and response. Shobhini holds a master’s degree in social research methods from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) with a concentration in development economics and social policy.
Shveta Raina
Founder and CEO, Talerang
Recognized as one of India Inc’s Rising Women Leaders (2015) by the Economic Times Corporate Dossier and Spencer Stuart India, Shveta Raina is one of those women who inspire all of us at JobsForHer to achieve our full potential and refuse to settle for second-best.
Shveta started her career in 2007 at McKinsey\'s New York office, where she worked on client engagements. In 2009, she switched tracks and was a part of the start-up team of Teach For India.
Shveta then graduated from the Harvard Business School (HBS) with 2nd year Honours (top 15% of the graduating class) and was also a recipient of the Horace Goldsmith Fellowship for Social Enterprise. She led an independent research project at HBS to find a solution to India’s employability crisis, which grew into a business-plan and finally into her start-up, Talerang.
As Shveta explained in an article written by her in the Education Times, she found that even graduates from recognized educational institutions in India face major gaps, resulting in them being unprepared for their careers. Organisations and students in the research set identified six common areas that need to be worked upon before students graduate and pursue their first job. This is irrespective of their career path, and outside core technical knowledge.
Shweta Jain
VP- Luxury, Key Accounts, DIAGEO India Private Limited
Shweta has an extensive premiumisation strategy, cross cultural team management and new product development experience on various consumer product genres.
Through her professional journey, she has always been drawn to roles that allow her to learn, create, contribute and impact. Influencing consumer behavior, understanding insights that drive it & implementing strategies and plans to nurture it, and that keeps her on her toes.
Eclectic experience across advertising, commercial comms & account management arenas define the early foundations of her work life.
Previously, she was also Head of Marketing at Willaim Grant & Sons where she leads the expansion of WGS India/IMEA portfolio as the big growth driver globally. Defining the vision of extending the brand portfolio & footprint in one of the highest growing Premium Spiritsmarket in the world. She is an MBA in Marsketing from IMS – DAVV.
Supria Dhanda
Country Manager, Western Digital (acquires SanDisk)
Supria Dhanda is the Country Executive responsible for India strategy which involves architecting a Go To Market strategy, raising profile of Western Digital Company in India and evolving a strategic charter for government Relations. The role is centred on developing a Business Strategy with People at the core whilst earlier roles focused on chartering People Strategy with Business as the focus.
She was also Co-Founder and Director, Entrepreneurial Venture and is passionate about training the youth in job-specific skills and grooming them in live skills thus contributing effectively to making them employable.
She is an MBA in Human Resources from Goa Institute of Management and earned her PhD in Organizational Behaviour from XLRI and finished her B.A (honors in mathematics) from St. Stephen’s College.
Swati Rustagi
Senior VP and Chief People Officer, Max Healthcare
Swati Rustagi is responsible for designing and implementing differentiated, best in Class People & Leadership practices for the 15000 people of Max healthcare with a view to enabling them to succeed both professionally and personally. With the support of her team, Swati is reinvigorating leadership and talent practices to create the most truly human work environment, fueling MHC’s differentiation in the market and ability to improve the way the patient care is delivered. She has a very strong background in HR, Executive Leadership & Change Management and is a strong advocate for inclusion and diversity.
Swati brings with her over 17 years of experience across FMCG, Financial Services & healthcare sectors. She has worked with leading organizations like Hindustan Unilever, DSP Merrill Lynch, Johnson & Johnson & Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Limited.
Prior to joining Max Health Care, she was the Global Head of Human Resources at Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, managing the HR function across 32 countries & 10,000 employees. Swati has many accolades to her credit, including winning “HR Professional of the Year” award in 2013 at the World HR Congress forum. In the same year, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Limited won the HR organization of the year award as well.
In her previous roles, she has worked across various HR areas including Talent Management, OD & Learning, Change Management, M&A, HR business partnering, Total Rewards. She has also done various business stints as part of the experience.
Swati is an Economics graduate from Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai University and holds a post-graduate qualification in Human Resources from TISS Mumbai. She is a Dorab Tata scholar and holds several certifications such as OD certification from NTL USA, certification in ISO 9002 Audit, Total Productivity Maintenance Instructor from Japanese Institute of Plant Management, Coaching Skills certification from Hay group as well as an Executive Coach certification from ICT.
Tuhina Sunder
Regional Directors, office and Human Resources, Ford Foundation
Vaishali Neotia
Co-Founder & CEO, Merxius
Vaishali Neotia is an engineer, entrepreneur, speaker, and revolutionist. She is also the Co-founder and CEO of Merxius, a company that solves real world business problems using Extended Reality (Augmented, Virtual, Mixed). Its flagship product RED enables enterprises to leverage the power of these technologies to improve their business processes.
Merxius is a Boeing HorizonX startup and partner at Facebook’s India Innovation Hub and has received awards and honours from Global Entrepreneurship Summit, IBM, Tata Elxsi, IET, UKTI Tech Rocketship, Aegis Graham Bell Awards, Nasscom, and Wadhwani Foundation among others.
Vaishali is an alumnus of La Martiniere, Osmania University, Indian School of Business, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Startup Leadership Program and Sonder Connect.
She was selected for mentorship by the US State Department under Ms. Dina Powell, President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation.
Vaishali is a regular speaker on technology, innovation, augmented and virtual reality, entrepreneurship and diversity. She is regularly quoted in newspapers and magazines including Forbes. She is a mentor for various initiatives including Girls in Tech, US Exchange Programs, Sheroes and Startup Leadership.
She was a board member of the GS-ISB-10000 Women alumni and president of the Hyderabad chapter. She has previously chaired the Women in Engineering committee at VLSID, been a committee member at Grace Hopper conference and HYSEA SME, and is a member of Fortune Most Powerful Women, Vital Voices, U.S Exchange Alumni, COWE, CWE, ALEI and WeConnect International networks.
Vaishali Nigam Sinha
Founder and CEO Director, ReNewPower
Ms. Vaishali Nigam Sinha has been Chief CSR, Communications and Social Responsibility Officer of ReNew Power Ltd. (formerly ReNew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd.) since May 2018. She served as a Director of ReNew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd. She also served as Senior Vice President of Investment Banking at Macquarie Capital Advisors from 2008 to 2010. She oversaw the execution of landmark transactions in the industrials sector.
Prior to joining Macquarie, she served as Head of Investment Banking at Daiwa Securities in India from 2006 where she managed debt issues totalling USD 750 mm and promoted the India franchise primarily to Japanese investors and corporate houses. She advised EXIM, IRFC and ICICI amongst other leading Indian corporates. She also led Prudential\'s entry and business development efforts for setting up the Asset Management platform in Asian countries, including the development of an entry strategy for India.
She earned a degree in Bachelors of Arts from Delhi University and a Masters in Public Policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York. While at Columbia, she received the prestigious American Association of University Women scholarship. After graduating, she started her career on Wall Street as an investment banker at J.P Morgan. After stints in New York and London, she returned to India in 2003 where after several years in banking, she became a social entrepreneur. She is currently the Chair, Regional Committee on CSR at CII Northern region. She is also the co-chair, CII Task Force on Arts, Heritage & Culture.
She is an active member of the Women President Organization. She has been nominated as a member of CII NITI Aayog – Cleaner Air Better Life Initiative Task Force. Vaishali is a strong advocate of equal participation of women in economic activities especially at the grassroots. She is a recipient of the CSR Leadership Award 2015 at the National Awards for Excellence in CSR and Sustainability and prestigious Women Leadership Award at CMO ASIA, Singapore.
Valerie Pinto
CEO, Weber Shandwick
Valerie has over 18 years of experience in the field of communications and image management. She has been a strategic counselor to fortune 500 companies and C-suite executives on shaping their reputation with influential stakeholders.
She has been nominated as top 40 professionals under 40 by Campaign Asia Across media advertising digital and PR in 2015. Recently she was also the jury president for the PR category at Spikes Asia. She is the secretary of PRCAI, a public relations agencies association in india
As the CEO of Weber Shandwick in india, Valerie is tasked with the role of building profile for the brand in with a focus on content first approach. The key focus is to change the game and raise service standards not just within the company but in the PR industry as a whole.
Prior to joining Weber Shandwick, she was with Perfect Relations, where she relentlessly built the agency to become one of the largest Public Relations consultancies in India with over 400 professionals and 200 prestigious clients. Under her leadership, the firm grew to become a force to reckon with in business sectors such as Consumer and lifestyle, corporate and finance, technology, litigation management, crisis communications and digital PR.
Prior to working with Perfect Relations Valerie held a communications role in UTV India. She started her career as a sales and marketing professional with Taj Group of Hotels, Cadbury’s India and Standard Chartered Bank.
Valerie holds a post graduate degree in communications from Xavier’s Institute of Communications. She has been a topper in Economics from Mumbai University.
Vandana Nadig Nair
Founder & Director, Cocoon Consulting
Vandana is closely involved in conceptualizing and designing niche products in the areas of organizational effectiveness, senior management impact and leadership capability building. She mentors design teams within CoCoon as they craft new tools and products, works closely with this team and the clients through the first few rounds of deployment, thereby enabling the institutionalization of the product / productized solution into our repertoire. Some of these include – IMPRINT (a Stakeholder Feedback process for Top Teams), LiA (A Leadership in action coaching process that intertwines coaching, shadowing and stakeholder feedback) and a three-Stage HR School (to equip HR professionals form 1 – 4 years, 5 – 8 years and 9 – 14 years experience with key functional and business partnering knowledge and skills, leveraging workshops, action learning projects and evaluation).
She also provides strategic inputs to various client assignments and designs and facilitates impact and effectiveness-enhancing initiatives for their Client Organizations. With over 21 years of experience, Vandana started as a freelance HR consultant with various companies in the United States after which she returned to India to work with Hindustan Lever Limited, where her focus was Management Development and Training. She then moved on to head HR for a young IT start-up, where her mandate was to put in place all key HR systems and processes. Then the entrepreneurial bug bit and she set up CoCoon Consulting!
She holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from the Central Michigan University, USA.
Vidhya Srinivasan
Executive Director & CFO, PUMA India
As member of the leadership team, she helps in understanding business environment, develop a clear business strategy and execution plans and a comprehensive business plan. Subsequently working with the management plan in achieving the desired outcomes.
She has over 17 years of post qualification experience in the areas of Strategy, Business Planning, Commercial, Finance & Accounting Management.
She is an IIM, Ahmedabad Graduate and also a Charted Accountant. She has rich and diverse experience in companies like AF Ferguson, AT Kearney and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals. Previously, she was with Glenmark Pharmaceuticals as Vice President, Finance.
Vidya Srinivasan
Senior Vice President – Infrastructure, IT & Risk, Genpact
In the past Ms. Srinivasan was Principal at Ballarpur Industries Ltd., Principal at American Express Co. and Senior Vice President-Infrastructure & Logistics at Genpact India Pvt Ltd. She received a graduate degree from Campus Law Centre.
She handled the activities of the division which includes Healthcare, Educational, Environmental and Employability Projects that ensure under-privileged youth employable.
As a part of student relations, she was dealing with enabling students to be involved in nation-building activities and conduct organized Interactive sessions for membership comprising of Young Entrepreneurs, Directors, Business Leaders and Professionals with experts from various backgrounds. She was responsible for managing monthly newsletter, finances and raising sponsorships. She was also involved in guiding and mentoring the activities of a peer, identify gaps in the business processes of all functions in the organization and create solutions, implement these solutions after considerable evaluation with business heads.
Systematic approach to improving the business processes – involving all support functions.
Standardizing common processes as a means of furthering development.
She is interested in working with an NGO and especially with Children. Arts & Cultural Initiatives are of her interest as well.
Zoya Brar
Co-Founder, Core Diagnostics
Ms. Zoya Brar is a Co-Founder of Core Diagnostics Private Limited. She is a Delhi based entrepreneur active in the Indian healthcare delivery ecosystem. She worked at Google in various roles in business development and customer outreach.
She worked in WLC College in business development and HR roles. She also has considerable experience in the Not-for-Profit sector working both as a hands-on individual contributor as well as in management and governance. She serves as a Director of Core Diagnostics Private Limited.
She holds a Degree in Sociology from Lady Shri Ram College and has completed Advanced Training in technology roll-out strategies from National University of Singapore.