Bruce Nardulli is the Director of the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute and a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation. Nardulli's efforts focus on strengthening RAND's relationships in Asia and across the Middle East to provide evidence-based, objective policy research for the region. Established in 2003, the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute analyses complex policy problems and helps implement enduring solutions for clients across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. The institute is a collaborative undertaking of the RAND Corporation and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development, a private, nonprofit organisation dedicated to developing and utilizsing human potential throughout the greater Middle East. Nardulli has more than 20 years of experience at RAND and currently serves on the RQPI Board of Overseers, which is co-chaired by Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missned and Michael Rich, RAND Executive Vice President. Originally from Pittsburgh, Pa, Nardulli earned a Bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University, a Master of Arts degree from Kings’ College, the University of London, and his Doctorate from Ohio State University.

Rajendra Pawar is a well known face in the Indian IT sector. Recognising skilled manpower to be a very important prerequisite for the survival of the fledgling Indian IT industry, Pawar helped pioneer the IT training segment to fuel its growth. A visionary entrepreneur, he also ignited the fire of free enterprise, using the revolutionary franchisee model of education. His contributions to the software business are no less significant. Recognising his pioneering and entrepreneurial work, Ernst & Young conferred on Pawar its prestigious Master Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1999.

His valuable contributions to the IT industry in India also earned him the “IT man of the Year” award, instituted by IT industry journal, Dataquest. A respected opinion leader, Pawar has spearheaded several IT industry initiatives. His role within the Indian Prime Minister’s Task Force for IT and Software Development and his contributions to the FICCI and CII IT committees, have established him as an industry guru. Pawar is a part of a panel of six experts in the newly constituted Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development, chaired by the Prime Minister of India. The expert panel includes luminaries from the world of business, academia and the Government. The National Council has been conceived as a vision-setting apex body for addressing the challenging task of large-scale skills development in the country. Pawar’s inclusion in this August Panel is a recognition of his immense individual contribution as also that of the organisations’ in the “employability” space.

Nagarajan Vittal, an upright IAS officer of the 1960 batch has been a bureaucrat of high integrity. His contribution as Secretary of Telecommunication and Department of Electronics, to bring the government and the industry closer was remarkable. As head of the Public Enterprises Selection Board, he initiated policy changes which made the selection process transparent and time-bound. Vittal’s motivation wherever he had worked was to make life easier for the people and ensure that the schemes were implemented in right earnest. As the Development Commissioner of Kandla Free Trade Zone, he ensured that exporters were not harassed by cumbersome procedures. He has been a frequent contributor to newspaper columns and has produced three books. His theme mainly focusses on declining standards of governance and soaring corruption.

Fred Kipperman is a fellow in the Kauffman RAND Institute for Entrepreneurship Public Policy (KRI) and the Associate Director of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice. KRI is dedicated to assessing and improving legal and regulatory policymaking as it relates to small businesses and entrepreneurship in a wide range of settings, including corporate governance, employment law, consumer law, securities regulation and business ethics. The Institute was founded in 2004 (as the Kaufman-RAND Center for Regulation and Small Business) with funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Institute research seeks to: examine the effects of a wide range of public policies and other forces on small businesses and entrepreneurs; measure the effect of public policies on small businesses, job growth and economic activity; and identify approaches that achieve policy goals while limiting unintended negative consequences for entrepreneurship.

Kipperman is an attorney licensed to practice law in Texas and Arizona. He was recently named as one of the top legal consultants in the United States by Lawdragon and was awarded as one of the nation’s top three public service counsels by the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel. He graduated from the University of Arizona with degrees in Business Administration and Entrepreneurship as well as Law.

Krishna Kumar is a Senior Economist at RAND and a Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public Policy, where he leads the Rosenfeld Programme on Asian Development. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. Kumar’s research spans the areas of Economic Growth & Development, International Economics, and Macroeconomics. He has researched the role of economic openness on education and growth, higher education policies in the US, the effect of tax reform on US economic growth, international capital flows, reasons for US-Europe productivity differences, the effect of the Green Revolution on recipient and donor countries, cross-country determinants of firm size, poverty traps in sub-Saharan Africa, policies to revive the stagnant sub-Saharan African economies, and the role of social capital in economic development. His completed and ongoing research at RAND is focussed on comparing the Indian and Chinese education systems, comparing Indian and US Affirmative Action policies, analysing the labour markets for anesthesiology, and studying public policies that promote entrepreneurship in India. His research has been published in journals such as, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of Development Economics, and B E Journals in Macroeconomics (Advances), Review of Economic Dynamics, and Macroeconomic Dynamics.

Kumar has prior experience in the American and Indian software industries. He has taught Global Economics and Macroeconomics at the USC Marshall School of Business, and teaches at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business (where he was chosen for a best teaching award by the Class of 2006 executive MBA students) and at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, India (where he was chosen by students as the Professor of the Year by the Classes of 2005 and 2006). He teaches a graduate level course in Macroeconomic Development at the Pardee RAND Graduate School (where he was chosen as the Professor of the Year in 2008).

Shamika Ravi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance at the Indian School of Business. She has worked extensively on issues surrounding microfinance, risk and insurance, and welfare and poverty. She is a Fellow of the Microfinance Management Institute in Washington, DC and has also worked as a Consultant for the World Bank's Development and Research Group. Ravi has written extensively on various aspects of microfinance, including the role of financial literacy, access to credit and responses to risk, and the cost of micro-credit. She has participated in a number of high-level conferences and seminars and was recently featured in an online business school session on microfinance organised by the Financial Times. She has a PhD in Economics from New York University, and Master's and Bachelor's degrees in Economics from the University of Delhi.

Liz Brown is a Doctoral Fellow at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her dissertation research focusses on low-income entrepreneurship in both developed and developing country-contexts. Brown is developing three papers on this topic. At RAND, she is an author on several papers related to corporate governance in China and executive office reform in the US. Prior to beginning her doctoral work at RAND, Brown focussed on economic development in Silicon Valley where she led the research and production teams on the annual Index of Silicon Valley report from 2000 - 2005. Brown earned an MA from Stanford University in International and Comparative Education and has extensive experience in US regional economic development.

Evan Feigenbaum is senior fellow for East, Central, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Initially an academic with a PhD in Chinese politics, his work in both government and the private sector has since spanned all three major regions of Asia.

From 2001 to 2009, he served at the State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state for India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Maldives, as well as South Asian regional economic and security affairs (2007-09), deputy assistant secretary of state for the former Soviet republics of Central Asia (2006-07), member of the policy planning staff with principal responsibility for China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia (2001-06), and as an adviser on China to Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, with whom he worked closely in the development of the US-China senior dialogue. During the intensive final phase of the initiative from July to October 2008, he co-chaired the coordinating team charged with moving the US-India civil nuclear agreement through the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and to Congress, where it became the US-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act. He received the Department’s superior honor award five times.

Prior to government service, Feigenbaum worked at Harvard University (1997-2001), where he was lecturer on government in the faculty of arts and sciences and executive director of the Asia-Pacific security initiative and program chair of the Chinese security studies program in the John F Kennedy School of Government. He also taught at the US Naval Postgraduate School (1994-95) as lecturer of national security affairs and was a consultant on China to the RAND Corporation (1993-94).

His publications include two books: China's Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age (Stanford University Press, 2003; Chinese edition published as Zhonggong Keji Xianqu, Taipei, 2006) and Change in Taiwan and Potential Adversity in the Strait (RAND, 1995). His articles have appeared in journals, edited volumes, and the opinion pages, including The New York Times, International Herald-Tribune, International Security, Survival, Washington Quarterly, China Quarterly, Russia in Global Affairs, Far Eastern Economic Review, and elsewhere.

Reuben Abraham is a Professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions at the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad. He serves on the global Board of Directors of the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF), which aims to catalyse growth in emerging markets. Under the aegis of SEDF, he has helped set up a unique India-focussed SME early stage fund with Google and Omidyar Network as co-investors, which he is a senior adviser to. He serves as an adviser to several companies, including a financial services company; a large real estate company; and three start-up companies. A TED Global Fellow in 2007, he now serves on the TED Fellows selection committee, and is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. Before ISB, Abraham did his MA, MPhil and PhD from Columbia University in New York. During his time at Columbia, he was an Associate Fellow in Global Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, and also a Fellow at the Public Policy Consortium. He was a Sloan Foundation/CITI Telecommunications Fellow in 2000.

Neeraj Sood, PhD, is an economist at RAND, Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His prior work at RAND has focussed on the economics of innovation, HIV/AIDS policy and healthcare financing. His recent research includes estimating the impact of regulations in OECD countries on the pace and level of pharmaceutical innovation, analysing an alternate mechanism for promoting R&D, empirically evaluating the effect of new HIV treatments on risky sexual behavior and prevalence of HIV, and examining the role of increased health infrastructure availability on achieving universal childhood immunisation in India. Sood’s research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and books and also covered by various popular media outlets. He is also the Managing Editor of the online journal forums for Health Economics and Policy.

Arnab Mukherji has a PhD in Policy Analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School. The unifying theme for much of Mukherji's research has been an investigation of how individuals make decisions in a wide range of settings and how public policy may be used constructively to make systemic and behavioral changes that alter individual and societal outcomes. Mukherji teaches core and elective courses in public policy, statistical methods and microeconomics. Recently, he has been working on obesity trends, instructional time in primary schools in India, socio-economic changes in selected states of India spanning three decades and on entrepreneurship in SME firms in India.

Manish Sabharwal is currently the Chairman and Co-founder of Teamlease Services, India’s largest temporary staffing firm. The four year old firm now has over 80,000 employees in 870 cities locations across India. Earlier he Co-founded India Life, an HR outsourcing company in 1996 that was acquired by Hewitt associates in 2002. Consequently he was Managing Director of Hewitt Outsourcing (Asia) in Singapore.

Sabharwal serves on the Prime Ministers Council for Skill Development and was a member of the Planning Commission steering committee on labour and employment for the Eleventh five year plan. He is an MBA from The Wharton School, US.

Anand Sudarshan heads education business initiatives of Manipal Education and Medical Group, a leading player in education and healthcare in India. He is based in Bangalore.

Prior to his current position, Sudarshan was President, Adea International (a wholly owned subsidiary of Adea Solutions, Inc, Dallas TX), responsible for all global (non-US) business of the IT Services and Solutions company. He had taken on this position after successfully leading Netkraft Private Limited as CEO to a merger with Adea Solutions, Inc in July 2004. In 1989 Sudarshan co-founded The Microland Group and for about 14 years was part of the team that built it into one of the leading privately held Indian technology companies. At various times, he was responsible for defining the strategy and technology roadmap of the group, establishing the infrastructure services business, and managing its software company as CEO. From 1985 to 1989, Sudarshan served in several capacities at Computer Point India Limited, a pioneering computer retail and training chain. He started his career at Nelco, a Tata Group company, in June 1984.

Sudarshan is a Charter Member of TiE, IFPUG member, a life-member of the Computer Society of India, Jury Member of Polestar Foundation and CIO Awards, and is an active member of CII. He has a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, University of Madras (earlier known as the Regional Engineering College, Trichy), and a MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Shantanu Prakash is the Chairman and Managing Director of Educomp Solutions Limited. Prakash founded Educomp Solutions Limited in 1994, a few years after acquiring an MBA degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Prakash’s vision has been to transform the teaching-learning process through the use of technology and best practices. He is also the Founder and Managing Trustee of the Learning Leadership Foundation (LLF), an organisation dedicated to bringing best practices in education to under resourced schools. He is also the Co-founder and Chairman of Lakshya Digital Pvt Ltd - a pioneering game development studio, based out of New Delhi, India.

Prakash is a charter member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), an organisation that connects entrepreneurs. He is a frequent speaker in education and business conferences worldwide.

Parth Shah is President of the Centre for Civil Society, a think tank for public policy solutions within the framework of rule of law, subsidiarity, and competitive markets. Shah's research and advocacy work centres on the themes of economic freedom (law, liberty and livelihood campaign), choice and competition in education (fund students, not schools), property right approach for the environment (terracotta vision of stewardship), and good governance (new public management and the duty to publish).

Shah has received BPharm and PhD in Economics and has taught Economics at the University of Michigan at Dearborn before returning to India to start the Centre for Civil Society. He has published academic articles in the areas of development economics, welfare economics, business cycle theory, free or laissez-faire banking, and currency board systems. He is the youngest Indian member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

V Raghunathan is the Chief Executive Oficer of GMR Varalakshmi Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of the infrastructure major, the GMR Group. He was the Managing Director of GMR Industries Ltd from Jan 2007 to June 2008; Professor of Finance & Accounting at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad from 1982 to 2001, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bocconi, Milan in Italy since 1990.

Raghunathan is or has been on the board of various banks, merchant banks, stock exchanges, corporates, and educational institutions and has been a member of several national level committees of the Ministry of Finance, SEBI, BSE, NSE and other professional bodies. He was also the Chairman of the MBA Programme and the Chairman of Finance and Accounting Area at IIM, Ahmedabad for several years in the past.

He has written nearly 400 papers and articles, 6 books and several monographs and published cases in the field of capital markets and corporate finance. His latest book, Games Indians Play (Penguin, Dec 2006), is a best seller. He has been a consultant for several Indian and multinational companies and banks and has given lectures extensively in India and abroad. He writes a regular guest column for The Economic Times and MINT. Raghunathan has also held regular columns with The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Financial Express, Business Today, Dalal Street, and a few other magazines.

Sushil Handa is Founder and CEO of the Ahmedabad-based Claris LifeSciences, a manufacturer of sterile parenteral preparations, life-saving medicines and hospital products, focussing on delivery systems for treatment of critical diseases. An international company set up in the year 2000 on an 85-acre plot and market leader in the critical care segment in India, Claris operates in more than 60 countries through its subsidiaries, offices, and marketing and distribution network. A first-generation entrepreneur and management graduate with a finance background, Handa launched Core Healthcare, the biggest manufacturer of intravenous fluid in the country in the late 80s and 90s. At its peak, Core had a market capitalisation of Rs 1,500 crore.

Nikhil Gandhi is a first generation entrepreneur, hailing from a respectable Gujarati family. He has gained 20 years of experience in maritime equipment supply and in port and allied infrastructure development activities. Gandhi started the first joint venture Railway project with the Government of India- Pipavav Railway which is over 283 km and now serves as a lifeline to the Saurashtra region and pioneered the concept of Special Economic Zones in the country and was the first promoter of the largest SEZ project in India near Mumbai. From supplying equipment and accessories to the Mumbai Port, Indian Navy etc, Gandhi grew to indigenisation of hi-tech equipments required for the armed forces and other public sector enterprises, and then to developing infrastructure projects. For his commendable initiatives towards and excellence in infrastructure development and entrepreneurship, he has received several awards including first IDFC award for excellence in infrastructure and nominations to chair seminars and sessions on related topics. He has also represented the infrastructure sector on several high-level committees of industry and trade organisations in the country.

Professor Jonathan Zasloff teaches Torts, Land Use, Environmental Law, Comparative Urban Planning Law, Legal History, and Public Policy Clinic - Land Use, the Environment and Local Government.

Zasloff has a keen interest in world politics; he holds a PhD in the history of American foreign policy from Harvard and an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University. Much of his recent work concerns the influence of lawyers and legalism in US external relations, and has published articles on these subjects in the New York University Law Review and the Yale Law Journal. More generally, his recent interests focus on the response of public institutions to social problems, and the role of ideology in framing policy responses.

Zasloff has long been active in state and local politics and policy. He recently co-authored an article discussing the relationship of Proposition 13 (California's landmark tax limitation initiative) and school finance reform, and served for several years as a senior policy advisor to the Speaker of California Assembly. His practice background reflects these interests. For two years, he represented welfare recipients attempting to obtain child care benefits and micro-businesses in low income areas. He then practiced for two more years at one of Los Angeles' leading public interest environmental and land use firms, challenging poorly planned development and working to expand the network of the city's urban park system. Zasloff currently serves as a member of the boards of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (a state agency charged with purchasing and protecting open space), the Los Angeles Centre for Law and Justice (the leading legal service firm for low-income clients in East Los Angeles), and Friends of Israel's Environment.

To be updated soon

Venkat Ramaswamy has previously worked with the Spartek Emerging Opportunities Fund and ICICI, where he worked on project-based lending to large corporates, analysing and evaluating investment decisions. He subsequently managed the Spartek Fund that focussed on making equity investments in small and emerging companies. He brings with him significant experience and expertise on client relationships to Edelweiss. Ramaswamy holds an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and is an Electronics Engineer.

William Inboden is Senior Vice-President of the Legatum Institute. Most recently he served as Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council at the White House, where he worked on a range of foreign policy issues including the National Security Strategy, democracy and governance, contingency planning, counter-radicalisation, and multilateral institutions and initiatives. Prior to that, Inboden worked at the Department of State as a Member of the Policy Planning Staff and a Special Advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom.

Inboden is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy magazine’s Shadow Government. He was also a Civitas Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and has worked as a staff member in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. He has lectured widely in academic and policy settings, and received numerous research and professional development fellowships. He is the author of book, ‘Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment’, published by Cambridge University Press. Inboden received his PhD, MPhil, and MA degrees in history from Yale University, and his AB from Stanford University.

Som Mittal is President of NASSCOM, the premier trade body and the “Chamber of Commerce” for the IT – BPO industry in India. In this role, he is responsible for representing the Indian IT – BPO software and services industry to multiple stakeholders. His key responsibility areas include enhancing India's leadership position in the global offshore IT-BPO and work towards further growing the market by enabling industry to tap into emerging opportunity areas and to strengthen the domestic market in India.

Over the years, NASSCOM has earned the reputation of being a strategic advisor to the various stakeholders of the industry. NASSCOM’s varied strengths include creating and influencing government and public policy, international trade development, research and market intelligence services, and access to an international network through 17 MoU’s and linkages with 40 industry associations.

Initiatives on education, strengthening cybersecurity, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship are also focus areas. NASSCOM also endeavours to narrow the digital divide in India through NASSCOM Foundation (NF).

Mittal assumed office of the President, NASSCOM in January 2008. He has a rich and wide ranging work experience of over 30 years in corporate India, he has been a part of the Indian IT industry for the past 18 years. Before joining NASSCOM, he was heading the Services business for Hewlett Packard in Asia Pacific and Japan.

In addition to chairing NASSCOM in 2003-04, and being part of the NASSCOM Executive Council for several years, Mittal has been closely associated with other industry bodies like MAIT and CII. He has played an active role in the formulation and implementation of Karnataka’s IT policy. He has been on the CII National Council for several years and part of the Chief Ministers IT Task Force in Karnataka. He is also the Founding member of the IIIT, Bangalore and the Board if IT Education Standards.

Mittal holds a BTech from IIT, Kanpur and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. Additionally, he has attended executive programmes at Harvard and IMD.

An illustrious academic, renowned worldwide for his research and teaching capabilities, M R Rao has earlier taught at New York University, the University of Rochester, and the University of Tennessee. He has held various positions at IIM-Bangalore, including those of Dean and Director. His current teaching and research interests are in the areas of Optimisation, Corporate Finance and Financial Derivatives. Rao has a PhD in Industrial Administration from Carnegie-Mellon University. He has completed two Masters degrees – Master of Science in Industrial Administration, from Carnegie-Mellon University and Master of Engineering (Industrial), from Cornell University.

Sushil Handa is Founder and CEO of the Ahmedabad-based Claris LifeSciences, a manufacturer of sterile parenteral preparations, life-saving medicines and hospital products, focussing on delivery systems for treatment of critical diseases. An international company set up in the year 2000 on an 85-acre plot and market leader in the critical care segment in India, Claris operates in more than 60 countries through its subsidiaries, offices, and marketing and distribution network. A first-generation entrepreneur and management graduate with a finance background, Handa launched Core Healthcare, the biggest manufacturer of intravenous fluid in the country in the late 80s and 90s. At its peak, Core had a market capitalisation of Rs 1,500 crore.

Manish is currently the Chairman and co-founder of Teamlease Services, India’s largest temporary staffing firm. The four year old firm now has over 80,000 employees in 870 cities locations across India.Earlier he co-founded India Life, an HR outsourcing company in 1996 that was acquired by Hewitt associates in 2002. Consequently he was Managing Director of Hewitt Outsourcing (Asia) in Singapore.

Sabharwal serves on the Prime Ministers Council for Skill Development and was a member of the Planning Commission steering committee on labour and employment for the Eleventh five year plan. He is an MBA from The Wharton School, US.