Ahmet Ümit is Turkey’s most popular and best-selling author especially known for his mastery of crime fiction, as reflected in many of his bestselling novels. Drawing upon the unique political and historical background of his home country, Ümit delves into the psyches of his well-wrought characters as he weaves enthralling tales of murder and political intrigue.
Ahmet Ümit was born in 1960 in the city of Gaziantep in southern Turkey. He moved to Istanbul in 1978 to attend university. In 1983 he both graduated from the Public Administration Faculty of Marmara University and wrote his very first story. An active member of the Turkish Communist Party from 1974 until 1989 Ümit took part in the underground movement for democracy while Turkey was under the rule of a military dictatorship between 1980-1990. In 1985-86 he illegally attended the Academy for Social Sciences in Moscow. Ümit worked in the advertising sector from 1989-1998 and is currently employed as cultural advisor at the Goethe Foundation in Istanbul.
Arayamparambil Vasavan Anoop, better known as A.V. Anoop, is an Indian entrepreneur, social worker and film producer. He is the managing director of AVA Group of Companies, a consortium of ayurvedic, herbal and food products. AVA manufactures the bestselling Ayurvedic brand soap, Medimix, and Melam masala as well as popular ortho-balm, Sanjeevanam. The group is also the owner of Sanjeevanam Ayurveda Hospital. In 2007, Dr Anoop launched AVA Productions, which engages in production of varied feature films, documentaries and short films. The banner has bagged various awards, regionally, nationally, and internationally, most recently the Kerala Film Critics Award.
Pankaj Setia consults and conducts executive education programs with leading organizations and government institutions. His opinions on various aspects of digital transformation and leadership have appeared in leading outlets, such as the Business World, Outlook, and Forbes India, amongst others. He is often quoted by leading national dailies, such as Economic Times, Indian Express, and many others. He teaches graduate-level courses on the leadership of digital organizations, strategic management of digital innovations, and digital transformation at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). He has previously taught for many years at Michigan State University and the University of Arkansas in the US.
His research has been published in the top information systems and business journal such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Journal of Operations Management, amongst many others. Over the last ten years, based on his publications in the top two leading IS journals (on the Financial Times top 50 journal list), he has featured among the top 100 researchers in the field of Information Systems world wide. His research has been presented at conferences across the world.
He has been invited to give research talks or keynote speeches by universities from different countries, such as India, the US, Chile, and Singapore. He is serving or has served as the chair of the Information Technology track at the Decision Sciences Institute Governance, Digital Strategy and Value track at the International Conference on Information Systems, guess associate editor at MIS Quarterly, Associate editor at the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, the editorial board of the Decision Sciences Journal, amongst other such service assignments.
Lt Gen YK Joshi, Former Northern Army Commander, is the Director General of the Center for Contemporary China Studies in the Ministry of External Affairs.
Nasir Zaidi is the author of the Amazon bestseller From Invisible to Invaluable, a book about professional success. He also started a company called VoiceSpace, which gives professionals a private way to get help with stress and work decisions.
With twenty-eight years of experience in the financial world, Nasir is an expert at improving how businesses work. He has a Six Sigma Green Belt, which means he is skilled in using data to find and fix problems. He is also on the board of a luxury travel company called Lushescapes. Through mentoring and social media, he connects with more than 1,00,000 professionals.
Nasir is married to Farhat, who is a student success coach. They are the parents of Saamish, who is a doctor in the UK, and Insia, who works in e-commerce in Dubai. He is currently working on two books: one that explores techniques for achieving professional mastery and another on the principles of Zen living.
