Besides being the first and the youngest woman to become the chief executive of a national newspaper, Shobhana is also a prominent statesperson. She is currently the Chairperson and Editorial Director at HT Media Limited, India’s largest listed media company, part of India’s illustrious Birla group.

In her career spanning more than three decades, she led the process of cultural transformation at HT Media, and converted it into a high quality, forward looking professional media organization. She pioneered the strategy fundamental to the company’s rapid growth and foray into education. Her efforts have contributed to the company winning global awards including the Best Media Company in India to Work For in 2012.

Shobhana has received many awards and recognition including The ABLF Sustainable Leadership Icon Award (2019) ABLF Dubai’s Highest Cadre Award, Officier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur (2016) French Republic’s highest civilian award in recognition of outstanding contribution to the world of journalism, Global Leadership Award (2015) by US-India Business Council, Media Person of the Year 2012 by IAA Leadership Awards in recognition of her Leadership, Foresight and Achievement, Businesswoman of the Year 2007 by The Economic Times, Entrepreneur of the Year 2005 by Ernst & Young and Global Leader of Tomorrow 1996 by World Economic Forum, Davos.

After receiving the Padma Shri for Excellence in Journalism, a National Award by the Government of India, she was the Presidential nominee to the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Parliament in India from 2006-2012. She is also serving as a Member India Advisory Board at the London School of Economics (LSE), Member, International Advisory Board, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University, Member – Board of Visitors, Columbia Journalism School, New York and is also the Pro Chancellor of Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. (founded by her grandfather)

She also served as a Member of the Parliamentary Committees on Energy, Women Empowerment, and Human Resource Development. Other leadership positions held by her include chairing the Audit Bureau of Circulation and the Press Trust of India. She has held Board level positions at Indian Airlines and Indian educational institutes.

Professor Souvik Bhattacharyya is the Vice Chancellor of BITS Pilani and Professor-on-Lien of IIT Kharagpur. He has been Dean and Deputy Director of IIT Kharagpur, Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University; he also held faculty position at University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

He completed his BME from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, MS from University of Cincinnati, and PhD from Texas A&M University, all in Mechanical Engineering.

Prof Bhattacharyya has over 250 publications in indexed journals and refereed conference proceedings; he is the co-author of the celebrated Heat Transfer text with J P Holman. He has served on various national committees of DST and SERB over the last 25 years and has been on the Research Council of CSIR-CGCRI. Currently he is a member of the Court of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Chairman of TARE, SERB, Member of the Senate, IIT Jodhpur and Member of Expert Advisory Committee of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies of DST, Expert Committee for FIST Program of DST, and Ministry of Education Committee to improve perception and ranking of Indian Higher Education Institutions.

Prof Bhattacharyya is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Science, India and West Bengal Academy of Science & Technology. An adored teacher of fluid-thermal sciences, he is a recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award (2013) of Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE).

Dr. Ranjan Banerjee has worked with leading FMCG companies like Asian Paints, Vadilal and HUL. He has consulted at CXO levels for corporations like BASF, Vodafone, Legrand, Pidilite, Mahindra etc. Before joining BITSoM, he was at SPJIMR as a dean and faculty member. He was the Founder-CEO of Renaissance Strategic Consultants. His doctoral thesis won a global award for the best dissertation in B2B Marketing from Penn State University, USA. He has also co-authored a best-selling book ‘The Made in India Manager’, Winner of 'Institute of Directors (IOD) Corporate Book Excellence Award' for the year 2021. Dr. Banerjee was awarded The IAC award for "Change Maestro and Institution Builder of the Year" in 2019. He has recently been nominated on the global boards of GMAC and UNPRME. He is the only nominee from Indian academia on both these boards.

Mr. Dilip Gaur is the Director of Aditya Birla Management Corporation Private Ltd (ABMCPL). Prior to his current role, he was the Managing Director of Grasim. He was the Deputy Managing Director and Chief Manufacturing Officer of UltraTech Cement Limited. He also headed Hindalco’s Global Copper Business. He was the Managing Director of Birla Carbon’s Egyptian business and President and Country Head of the Group’s edible oil & oleo chemicals business in Malaysia/Philippines..

Mr. Gaur joined Aditya Birla Group in 2004 after spending 24 years at Hindustan Unilever Limited in Foods, HPC & Specialty Chemicals Business. He was also a member of the Foods Management Committee.

He was awarded the Aditya Birla Group Chairman’s Outstanding Leader Award in 2011.

Mr. Gaur holds a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. He has completed the Advanced Management Programme (AMP) at Harvard University.

Bharat Puri is currently the Managing Director of Pidilite Industries Ltd. Starting his career with Asian Paints in 1982, he rose to eventually heading Sales and Marketing for the company. He moved to Cadbury India as Director of Sales and Marketing in 1998, and was appointed its Managing Director in 2002. In 2006, he was posted to Singapore in a Regional role. He then held senior leadership positions in Sales, Marketing and General Management, at the regional, and global level, culminating in his becoming Global President, Chocolates, Gum & Candy, for Mondelez International. Bharat has been a successful global business leader who has built, energised & led diverse teams across numerous geographies in both developed and developing markets.

Geoffrey Garrett is Dean, Robert R. Dockson Dean’s Chair in Business Administration, and Professor of Management and Organization at the USC Marshall School of Business. Previously he was Dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for six years. His previous administrative appointments also include service as dean of the business schools at both the University of Sydney (where he was also founding CEO of the United States Studies Centre) and UNSW Australia, and as founding dean of the International Institute as well as Vice Provost of International Studies at UCLA. Earlier in his career, he held academic appoints at Oxford, Stanford and Yale universities. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a winner of the Foreign Policy Association Medal and the Advance Global Australian Award. He is also on the board of Park Hotels and Resorts and has served on the advisory boards for the Indian School of Business, the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance and the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management.

Hari Menon is the CEO of BigBasket.com, a company he co-founded in December 2011 with a vision of setting up India’s finest online food and grocery company. He has received widespread recognition for his extraordinary contribution as an entrepreneur. Hari started his career with ORG Systems, subsequently moving on to work with many of the best and most respected names in the country, including TVS Electronics, Wipro Infotech, Planetasia.com and Integrated Data Systems. He was CEO of ‘Indiaskills’ – the Vocational Education joint venture between Manipal Group and City & Guilds (UK), as well. Hari’s entrepreneurial journey began in 1999 when he co-founded Fabmart, one of the pioneers in e-commerce in India and its physical extension – Fabmall, a chain of grocery stores in South India, which was acquired by Aditya Birla Group in 2006

Nishi Vasudeva, an Indian business executive, served as Chairman & Managing Director of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, a Fortune 500 company till March 2016. She is the first woman in India to head an organization in the Energy sector and among the very few globally to head an Oil company. Ms Vasudeva is the first Indian to be awarded the Platts “Global CEO of the year" in the Energy sector and has several other awards & recognitions to her credit. She was presented the SCOPE award in the Individual Leadership category by the President of India for Excellence and Outstanding Contribution to Public Sector Management. She has an Honours degree in Economics from Delhi University and is an alumnus of IIM Calcutta, with almost four decades of experience in the petroleum industry.

Preetish Nijhawan is a co-founder and partner at Cervin Ventures. He has worked in numerous companies including McKinsey & Company, Neon, and BMC Software. Preetish was also a co-founder of Akamai Technologies, after various roles at Intel Corporation in engineering and programme management.

Preetish earned a BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani, India, an MS in Computer Engineering from USC, and an MBA from MIT Sloan. He serves as a member of the Americas Executive Board at MIT Sloan and as a member of the Advisory Board to the Ming Hsieh School of Electrical Engineering at USC.

Raghunathan Rajagopal is Zale Centennial Professor of Business at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin. He is interested in how people’s judgments and decisions impact their happiness and fulfilment. Raj’s work has appeared in top journals such as The Journal of Marketing, The Journal of Consumer Research, The Journal of Marketing Research, and The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His work has also been cited in several mass media outlets, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review.

Revathi Advaithi is Chief Executive Officer of Flex, the global manufacturing partner of choice that helps a diverse customer base design and build products to improve the world. Ms. Advaithi currently serves on the Board of Directors of Uber and Catalyst.org. She is also a member of the Business Roundtable and the Catalyst CEO Champions For Change initiative. Ms. Advaithi was recognized as one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list for two consecutive years (2020, 2019) and named one of Business Today’s Most Powerful Women in India (2020). Ms. Advaithi has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India and holds an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.

S P Kothari is the Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting and Finance at the Sloan School of Management. Previously, he served as global head of equity research for Barclays Global Investors. He was named the Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis in March 2019. In this role, he oversees economists, data scientists, and other professionals who provide financial economics and data science in support of the SEC’s mission. Dr. Kothari joined the SEC from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a professor of accounting and finance and a former Deputy Dean. Kothari served on the Board of VVisions from 1998-2004 and is currently on the Board of FIA Global.

Tulsi Mirchandaney Nowlakha is the Managing Director and Accountable Manager for Blue Dart Aviation, India’s only domestic cargo airline and South Asia’s largest, with a fleet of six Boeing 757 freighters. Blue Dart Aviation is the only cargo airline that has sustained its operations in India for the past twenty two years. During her tenure, the company expanded its capacity with the induction of 4 additional, more fuel-efficient freighters. Her responsibility spans the organisation’s flight and ground operations, inhouse airframe line and heavy maintenance, and ground handling activities, with a workforce of over 1100 committed professionals. Tulsi has an MBA degree in International Aviation from Concordia University, Montreal, and has been felicitated by the Ministry of Civil Aviation for her contribution to Civil Aviation in the country.