Rakesh Godhwani calls himself a nobody. After spending amazing formative years in great organizations in the high-tech space like Wipro, Intel and Qualcomm-doing different roles in sales, product marketing and business development-Rakesh realized that his passion lay in helping others reach their maximum potential and fulfil their dreams.
Rakesh currently heads IIM Bangalore Alumni Association, coaches entrepreneurs and leaders in the hi-tech sector, teaches Managerial Communication and Communication for Leaders at IIM Bangalore, does yoga, cycles his way to work, earns a fraction of what he used to but lives a million times better. Rakesh’s first book Plunnge was released in July, 2011. More details can be found on www.plunnge.com or www.facebook.com/plunnge. His second book Seek: Finding Your True Calling was published by Random House India in 2013.
He is an alumnus of KREC (now NITK) Surathkal, class of 1997 and of IIM Bangalore PGSEM, class of 2004. Rakesh is currently pursuing his PhD from Cardiff Metropolitan
University which is expected to finish in 2015.
You can follow his blog at rakeshgodhwani.wordpress.com.
Rheea Mukherjee’s work has been published in Scroll.in, Southern Humanities Review, LA Times, Huffington Post, Out of Print, LIT magazine, and Bengal Lights, among others. Her previous fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart and was a semi-finalist for the Black Lawrence Press award. Rheea holds an MFA in writing from California College of The Arts in San Francisco. She co-founded Bangalore Writers Workshop in 2012 and currently co-runs Write Leela Write, a Design and Content Laboratory in Bangalore.
Lathika George is a Mumbai-born Syrian Christian from Kanjirappally in Kerala. She often refers to herself as ‘an accidental cookbook writer’, since a fortuitous meeting with a publisher in New York led to the writing of her cookbook memoir. A landscape designer, environmentalist and organic gardener, she also writes about travel, design and the environment for several publications. Her column on organic gardening, The Essential Kitchen Garden, is a monthly feature in The Hindu Metro Plus. Her next book, Mother Earth, Sister Seed, will be published by Penguin Random House in 2017.
Sam Pitroda (Author)
Sam Pitroda is an internationally recognized telecom inventor, entrepreneur, development thinker, and policy maker who has spent fifty years in information and communications technology (ICT) and related global and national developments. Credited with having laid the foundation for India’s telecommunications and technology revolution of the 1980s, Mr Pitroda has been a leading campaigner to help bridge the global digital divide. He was also the founder and first chairman of India’s Telecom Commission. Recently, Mr Pitroda served as adviser to the Prime Minister of India on public information infrastructure and innovation, with the rank of cabinet minister. In addition, Mr Pitroda is a serial entrepreneur having started several companies in the United States. He holds over fifteen honorary PhDs, close to 100 worldwide patents, and has published and lectured widely in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia.
David Chanoff holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD in English and American literature from Brandeis University. He has written on literary history, foreign policy, refugee issues, education and other subjects for such publications as the American Scholar, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Journal of American Education. Dr Chanoff has authored and co-authored eighteen books, including several on the Vietnam War and the Holocaust.
Mathangi Subramanian, Ed.D., is a writer, educator, and activist. She previously served as senior policy adviser to former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, an assistant vice president at Sesame Workshop, and a public school teacher in Texas and New York. She has received numerous honors, including a Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship and a Jacob Javits Fellowship.
Kiran Desai is the bestselling author of two novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss, which won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Rajorshi is the author of five novels and a collection of short fiction. Or the Day Seizes You was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award in 2006.
Scott Hartley is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He has worked for Google, Facebook, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, and the White House as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. He holds three degrees from Stanford University and Columbia University. He is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and has traveled to over seventy-five countries.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his non-violent campaign to end the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Since March 1959, His Holiness has been living in exile and currently resides in Dharamsala, India.
