In a professional context, the best thing about e-communication is that distance becomes irrelevant. It is also the worst. They say that words once spoken can never be taken back.
Workshop
The yearly confluence of development industry experts, serial entrepreneurs, academics, past E4SI fellows and the new batch of fellows happens in form of the Leadership workshop. This workshop is aimed at exchanging fresh insights in the social sector and learnings of the immersion experiences. Past speakers have included Gurcharan Das (Author & ex-Chairman,SKS), Dr. Harish Hande (Founder SELCO), Ms Laura Parkin (Co-Founder, Wadhwani Foundation & NEN), and representatives from Acumen Fund, Unitus, Ashoka, SONG Advisors (a Soros, Omidyar and Google.org Investment Fund) and IFMR Trust. The conference has representation from all stakeholders of development sector; Venture capitalists, strategy consultants, serial entrepreneurs, for profit and not for profit organizations and so on. The fellows share their valuable experiences and inspiring stories with each other multiplying the enrichment of everyone involved. Fellows have the opportunity to interact on a one to one basis with the speakers who never fail to influence their careers moves. The conference has the effect of breathing life into ideas and building working partnerships among the speakers and fellows. This conference is one of the key highlights of the fellowship with its ability to educate and inspire the gathering and shape many ideas into action.
You can catch some of the action here.
The complete list of speakers and their profiles
Laura Parkin
Laura is the Executive Director of the Wadhwani Foundation, where she leads the foundation's investments in non-profit programs. The overarching mission of the foundation is to create more economic opportunities for individuals in India. The foundation works in two areas: Developing business entrepreneurs and helping the disabled build livelihoods or achieve gainful employment.
Laura is also the Executive Director and co-founder of the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), the foundation's key program. NEN is the leader in entrepreneurship education in India, and the country’s largest community of new and future entrepreneurs. Since starting NEN in 2002, Laura and the NEN team have built the NEN membership to over 460 top tier institutes across 30 cities. NEN is helping develop a pool of over 1000 entrepreneurship faculty members, and reaches over 500,000 students. Prior to this, Laura was a Vice President at Ashoka, an organization that identifies and supports leading social entrepreneurs in over 40 countries. She is a serial entrepreneur, having founded four companies, and former venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners in Boston, Massachusetts, where she invested in health care companies. In the early 90's she successfully helped established a merchant bank in Moscow on behalf of the investment firm Aldrich, Eastman and Waltch. Currently, she is also an Advisor for Acumen Fund's Water Portfolio. Laura was born and brought up in Hong Kong, and holds a B.A. from Harvard University.
Harish Hande
Dr. Harish Hande is an engineer and a renewable energy entrepreneur with extensive grassroots experience in meeting the energy requirements of rural households. He is the co-founder of SELCO-INDIA of which he is the Managing Director. SELCO-India is a rural energy service based out of Bangalore, India. Since 1995, SELCO-India has installed over 95,000 solar lighting systems in rural households. His experience includes a large number of health, education and water related projects: over 500 small rural and urban health clinics, over 1000 rural and semi-urban schools and dormitories, and over 1500 irrigation and drinking water systems. He has been named the Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation. He has also been listed as one of 50 pioneers of change in India by India Today magazine in 2008. Dr Harish H Hande went to IIT, received a PhD. in Energy Engineering from the University of Massachusetts before going on to win the Ashden Award for sustainable energy as well as a leading green energy award from Prince Charles in 2005. Dr. Hande is on the board of many national and international organizations.
Gurcharan Das
Gurcharan Das is an author, management consultant and public intellectual. He is the author of The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma (Penguin 2009), which interrogates the Mahabharata in order to find the answer to ‘why be good?’ and the international bestseller, India Unbound, which has been published in 17 languages and filmed by the BBC. He writes a regular
column on Sundays for the Times of India and periodic guest columns for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Time and Newsweek magazines. He is a regular speaker to the top managements of the world’s largest corporations. Gurcharan Das graduated with honors from Harvard University in Philosophy and Politics. He later attended Harvard Business School (AMP), where he is featured in three case studies. He was CEO of Procter & Gamble India and Vice President, Procter & Gamble Far East between 1985 and 1992, and later Managing Director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide (Strategic Planning). In 1995, after a 30-year career in 6 countries, he took early retirement to become a full time writer. He currently consults with a number of companies on global corporate strategy, and is associated with a private equity fund. He has served on the juries of the McKinsey award for the best Harvard Review Article (2005) and $500,000 Milton Friedman prize (2004).
Vishal Vashisht
Vishal Vasishth is Founder and Managing Director of SONG Investment Advisors. Most recently, Vishal was the founder and CEO of Clean Partners, a business advisory and investment firm serving innovative businesses in the U.S. consumer space. In this capacity, Vishal worked on numerous projects in diverse areas, such as: a buyout transaction of prAna (a leading healthy lifestyle brand) with Steelpoint Capital Partners; strategic planning for a healthy, prepared-food startup funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures; buyout transaction for a healthy living resort/green real estate project, and helping to raise $5 million equity capital for an innovative, sustainable agriculture company.
Prior to this, Vishal was Vice President-Strategy and key executive for Revolution Living, LLC, a private investment holding company started by Steve Case (AOL) with $500 million of initial capitalization and a charter to invest in consumer-facing businesses in disruptive markets. In this role, he evaluated new investments and helped with post-investment management of the portfolio companies, which include: Flexcar (alternative transportation), Miraval (real estate/spa resort), Lime (digital media) and Gaiam (public company in the wellness space). Vishal also led the senior management team of Flexcar for an interim basis. Vishal also served as Chief Strategy Officer for Patagonia, Inc., assisting the CEO in developing the company's strategic direction, including restructuring and overseeing operations.
Vishal has worked as an advisor to Investor's Circle, an angel investor forum targeted toward the health and wellness/clean-tech space. He currently serves as an advisor to many emerging, innovative companies such as Good Magazine. He serves as the founding board of advisors for B Corporation, an innovative nonprofit venture. He is a Henry Crown fellow of The Aspen Institute and a Next Generation Fellow of The American Assembly. Vishal most recently helped launch a new energy and environment innovation award in conjunction with The Aspen Institute and National Geographic magazine.
Vishal earned a B. Tech degree in India, a Master's degree in Sciences from North Carolina State University and an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School of Management.
Brian Frazier
Brian has an undergraduate in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M and an MBA from University of Houston. He worked for seven years as an Engineers and Project Manager at Marathon Oil. For the last two years Brian has been heading operations at Ujjivan, one of the world's fastest growing microfinance institutions, building systems and streamlining processes, working toward increasing efficiency of the organization. Ujjivan has grown from 29,000 customers in August 2007 to 4 Lakh customers at present in mid 2009, under his leadership. Brian is married and has three children. He loves running and participates in marathons.
Pankaj Jain
Pankaj Jain is a corporate lawyer by profession and has chosen his career in the social development space. He currently works with the Acumen Fund as its India legal associate and is involved in working across agriculture, health, water, housing and energy portfolios as well as structuring transactions in the social development space. He is also a part-time, visiting faculty to various law schools in India. Prior to that, Pankaj worked as an associate with the Indian law firm AZB & Partners in New Delhi on a variety of corporate advisory and transactional matters. Pankaj received B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) degree from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, where he graduated as the university first rank holder and was a recipient of a number of honors. Pankaj was admitted to the Bar Council of Delhi in 2006, and is qualified to practice law in India.
Ayan Sarkar
Ayan Sarkar is an Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Company’s Business Technology Office in New York. Ayan focuses on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of global insurance companies. In his spare time, Ayan advises the management of education focused social enterprises including Pratham & E4SI.
In the past, Ayan has served as the CEO of the Spark Group, a for-profit, social startup focused on improving the quality of education at a grassroots level in India. Ayan has also advised Grameen Bank, a microfinance institution that won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006. Ayan holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and a B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur.
Bindu Ananth
Bindu Ananth as President heads the IFMR Trust which is a private trust that aims to ensure universal access to financial services, achieving its mission through its subsidiaries that include a rural finance company, a private equity fund, a guarantee company and a foundation.
Bindu Ananth worked with ICICI Bank in its microfinance practice between 2001 and 2005 and was Head of the new product development group within the bank's rural finance business in 2007. She founded the Centre for Microfinance, IFMR, and has published in the Small Enterprise Development Journal, the Economic and Political Weekly, the OECD working paper series and the IFMR working paper series. Bindu has a Master in Public Administration and International Development from John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Lily Paul
Lily Paul has been has been building and managing Ashoka Support Network in India as part of Ashoka's Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur team. She led a unique social marketing initiative promoting social entrepreneurship through David Bornstein's book 'How to Change the World'. Lily has also been building Ashoka's citizen base in India and helping social entrepreneurs collaborate with business and academia. Lily is a counsellor who works with families and has cofounder of ‘Chrysalis’, a training and counseling group that helps people through workshops on a variety of skills. Her previous experience includes a 5 year stint with a nationalized Bank and 7 years as a Sub-broker in a Stockbroker’s office.
Lily has also been involved in promoting art and has worked in Public Relations.
Esmeralda Megally
Esmeralda is an Associate at Commons Capital, a venture capital firm in the US, where she helps raise the first ever venture capital fund focused on global health. The initiative is supported by the Gates Foundation, and the aim is to invest in cutting-edge health technologies that have a market application in both developed and emerging countries. She obtained her MBA from MIT Sloan, where she mainly focused on finance and entrepreneurship. During her studies she served as co-president of the Sloan Entrepreneurs for International Development (SEID), a position which allowed her to advise MIT social entrepreneurs on their business strategies. While at MIT, Esmeralda co-invented Aerovax, a low-cost drug and vaccine delivery device for low-income settings. The invention, which was featured in Forbes.com, received the Award for International Technology at the MIT IDEAS competition in 2006, was finalist at the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship competition in 2006, and was awarded a Harvard Catalyst grant in 2009. She also holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Economics and spent 6 months at the MIT Technology Licensing Office to acquire deal making experience in the biotech/medical device field. Esmeralda is also an advisor to the Next Billion Network, a group at MIT that develops innovative mobile applications for the BoP. She is also the VP for Technology & Innovation at the India School Fund, a non-profit organization started at Harvard Business School to bring high-quality education and entrepreneurship to the poorest regions of India.
Ganesh Rengaswamy
Ganesh has more than a decade of experience in executing firm-level strategies and undertaking independent revenue and growth initiatives for investing firms, Fortune 1000 clients, start-ups, and high-growth companies. He has global experience in venture capital, growth investing, and entrepreneurial and operating roles across consumer technology, financial services, internet/mobile, and retail IT services.
Prior to joining Unitus in 2009, Ganesh was a co-founder of Travelguru.com—the online travel leader in hotels and vacations in India and South Asia— and launched India Investments for Greylock Partners, one of the oldest top-tier venture capital firms in the US. Previously, at Infosys Technologies, Ganesh managed mission-critical engagements for Fortune 500 clients and helped lead proposals of over USD 100 million. Before Infosys, he managed a private investment fund, where his most successful investments included Infosys and HDFC Bank. Ganesh is a frequent speaker in several entrepreneurial and investing forums including TiE Chapters, IITs and IIMs. He holds a bachelors degree in engineering from IT-BHU/IIT-BHU (India), an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a graduate degree in finance and systems strategy from IIM-Calcutta. Ganesh is also a management advisor to several start-up businesses.
Priya Naik
Priya has graduate degrees in Economics from Yale, in Public Policy from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and in Accounting from the University of Mumbai. She is also a Certified Public Accountant. She has worked at the Poverty Action Lab at MIT, USA, International Finance Corporation (IFC), USA, and Arthur Andersen in India. Along with Ayan, Priya won the runners up prize at MIT’s $100K Business Plan competition and spent the summer working with Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus at Grameen Bank in Dhaka. Recently she helped launch Genesis, a social innovation and entrepreneurship
competition at IIT Madras in India.
Dharen Chadha
Dharen is a strategy consultant who specializes in the emergent domain of corporate brand strategy. His work combines the best from the fields of business strategy, core vision, and brand strategy to provide organizations with a sense of unique identity which becomes a constant source of sustainable competitive advantage. Over the last 10 years, he has developed strategies for Asian Paints, Tata Steel, ITC, GMR, Hindustan Unilever, Pepsico, Titan, Wipro, Reebok, Deutsche Bank, P&G, etc. Dharen spent 10 years with the ad agency, J. Walter Thompson in their strategic planning function working first in India, then Asia Pacific and finally serving as Global Director of Strategic Planning. Dharen is a graduate of Jamnalal Bajaj Institute, Mumbai. He has published in the Economic Times, Business World, and The Times of India and has taught strategic marketing at IIM- Bangalore and IIM – Calcutta.