Archives: Authors

1893 – 1952 Hailed as the “father of Yoga in the West,” Paramahansa Yogananda is regarded as one of the great spiritual figures of our time. Born in northern India, he came to the United States in 1920, where he founded Self-Realization Fellowship, to disseminate his writings and teachings worldwide. Through his best-selling classic, Autobiography of a Yogi, and his numerous other books, he has introduced millions throughout the world to the spiritual principles of yoga meditation and the universal truths underlying all world religions.

Gargi Rawat is a senior news anchor and environment reporter who has worked with NDTV 24×7 for the last two decades. She was educated at the Welham Girls’ School, Dehradun, and St. Stephen’s College of Delhi University. For many years she has been a regular face on the channel and has filmed several documentaries and environment-related programmes. She worked on the first-ever news show on wildlife in India, Born Wild, and anchored its Hindi version, Safari India, for the Hindi channel NDTV India. Gargi has also been editorial head for some of the best-known environmental campaigns carried out by
NDTV, including ‘The Greenathon’, ‘Save Our Tigers’, ‘Protecting India’s Coastline’ and the ‘Banega Swachh India’ campaign. She received widespread acclaim for her award-winning documentary series on the state of the river Ganga. This is her first book.

Ravi Kant has nearly fifty years of corporate experience across industries. He spent fifteen years at Tata Motors, where he was the CEO and managing director and later vice chairman of the board.

Prior to Tata Motors, he was a director, consumer electronics and on the board of Philips India. He has also worked in senior positions at LML Ltd, Titan Watches, Kinetic Engineering, Hawkins and Hindustan Aluminium.

He is currently on the board of Kone Ltd, Helsinki, one of the top elevator companies in the world, and Hawkins Cookers Ltd, a well-known consumer durable company. He is also the chairman, advisory board of Akhand Jyoti and is associated with two start-ups in the cancer field (Karkinos, India and MedTherapy, USA).

Ravi studied at Mayo College Ajmer, did BTech Hons at IIT, Kharagpur, and M.Sc. in management techniques in industry from Aston University, Birmingham, UK. He was an industrial professor at the University of Warwick, UK, and a distinguished professor at IIT Kharagpur. He was the chairman of IIM Rohtak, IIIT Allahabad and has been associated with NID Ahmedabad and business schools at IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, NUS Singapore and CEIBS, Shanghai.

Harry Paul is a charismatic, energetic speaker and bestselling author.

Harry is the co-author of seven business books including FISH! A Proven Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results, one of the bestselling business books of all time with well over six million copies sold and translated into thirty-five languages. For many years, his books have been on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Business Week, Amazon.com and Wall Street Journal.

Harry’s articles and interviews have been published in several Indian publications including the Economic Times, Business Standard, Outlook Business, Smart Manager and Business Today.

Dr Ross Reck is a leadership consultant, author and speaker. He is the author/co-author of several books including The Engagement Formula; Turning Your Customers into Your Sales Force; The X-Factor; Destination Work; REVVED!! An Incredible Way to Rev Up Your Workplace and Achieve Amazing Results and The Win-Win Negotiator. His popular weekly newsletter is in its eighteenth successful year of publication.

He received his PhD from Michigan State University in 1977. From 1975 to 1985, Dr Reck served as professor of management at Arizona State University. During his tenure at ASU, he was the only two-time recipient of the prestigious ‘Teaching Excellence in Continuing Education’ award and was identified by the university as an ‘Outstanding Teacher’.

Ashok Alexander studied at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, the Delhi School of Economics and the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He went on to have a long career with McKinsey & Company in New York and India. In 2003, he left that firm as a senior partner to create an ambitious HIV/AIDS prevention programme in India named Avahan, for the Gates Foundation. This initiative is credited with having averted over 6,00,000 HIV infections. In 2013, Ashok was a senior fellow at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, teaching a course on leadership lessons from Avahan.

Ashok now nurtures his own NGO, The Antara Foundation, which works in the field of maternal and child health. It is a grassroots operating entity working in remote rural areas of three Indian states-Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. When time allows, he chases his passion for painting and chess, both of which he has pursued at the national level. His first book, A Stranger Truth, describes his work with Avahan and won the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2019.

Priya Nair Rajeev is associate professor in Organizational Behavior and heads the Centre of Excellence for Social Innovation, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode. Trained in participant-centered learning from Harvard Business School, she is PhD in management studies from IIT Madras. She is a recipient of the Highly Commended Award 2011 in the Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards in the Management and Governance category and a gold medallist and university rank holder at the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate levels. Earlier, she was the chairperson of Executive Education programs including the satellite campus at Kochi and the chairperson of the Organizational Behavior and Human Resources area. She has more than twenty-one years of research and teaching experience in her field. A prolific trainer, she has conducted several management development programmes for corporates like Reliance Industries, RPG Group, John Deere, Bharat Electronics Limited, Defence Research and Development Organisation, as well as for the Ministry of Ayush, Indian Army and Naval Officers Wives Association. She has to her credit several published articles in international journals and two co-authored books including Indian Cases in Organisational Behaviour published by Pearson (forthcoming). Her areas of interest include managing emotions, leadership and personal growth, social innovation and women in management.

Simy Joy holds a PhD from Case Western Reserve University, USA and is a fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK. She served as a faculty member at the University of East Anglia, UK and as a faculty fellow at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK), where she was a founding member of the Centre of Excellence for Social Innovation. Her research interests include institutional and organisational sources of inequality, exclusion and injustice; and social innovations, social enterprises, socio-tech enterprises and micro-enterprises that attempt to engender equality, inclusion and justice. Her work has won awards from the Academy of Management, British Academy of Management, Academy of Management Learning & Education Journal, and the Family Firm Institute. Her co-edited and co-authored books include Socio-Tech Innovation: Harnessing Technology for Social Good, Managing for Social Justice: Harnessing Management Theory & Practice for Collective Good, Being an Impact Champion: Enacting Corporate Social Consciousness, and Indian Cases in Organisational Behaviour (forthcoming). Prior to her PhD, Simy Joy worked in the Indian finance sector in the areas of training and development, organizational restructuring, and change management.

Arjun Mohan is a leading edtech specialist who has played an integral role in the Indian start-up ecosystem helping the rise of several edtech start-ups. Formerly, the CEO of upGrad India, Arjun has been integral in scaling the company to dominate higher edtech and working professional courses globally. He was previously the Chief Business Officer (CBO) at Think & Learn Pvt Ltd (BYJU’S) and was responsible for setting up their India Marketing and Sales teams and scaling business globally. He holds board positions at several companies like Sharekhan BNP Paribas Pvt Ltd, ASAP Kerala and is also the member of the board of advisors of NIT Calicut EEE Dept. Arjun is a gold Medallist and MBA from Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode and an Electrical & Electronics Engineer from National Institute of Technology, Calicut. He lives in Bengaluru with his wife and two beautiful kids.