Rajiv Gupta is Chairman, President and CEO of Rohm and Haas, which specializes in making cutting-edge specialty chemicals that are used in products as diverse as paint and computers. During this lecture, he shares thoughts on the importance of engineering to industry and the world.
Rajiv Gupta received his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and received his Masters in Operations Research & Industrial Engineering from Cornell University.
Ratan Tata is the chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, India's largest and most successful business conglomerate. Under Tata's leadership, total revenues of the Tata Group have increased more than sixfold, to over $22 billion this year(2006).
The Tata Group now has over 90 operating companies, employing about 220,000 people in seven business sectors. It operates in more than 40 countries and exports to 140. Some of its biggest holdings are Tata Steel, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, India's pre-eminent hotel chain, and Tata Motors, an automobile manufacturer whose products include the first car designed in India. The family business began as a textile mill, launched under British colonial rule in 1860 by Tata's great-grandfather. Tata joined the Tata steel division in 1962 and became chairman of the conglomerate in 1991.
Tata earned a bachelor of architecture degree at Cornell University in 1962 and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School in 1974-75.
<p>Ted Teng was appointed president and chief executive officer of The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd., in September 2008. In his position, Mr. Teng oversees and directs all aspects of business strategy, operations, and performance growth for the premier luxury hospitality organization. The company, which represents over 450 predominantly independent hotels, provides global sales, marketing and distribution services through an expansive network of worldwide sales and reservations offices. Based at the company's headquarters in New York, Mr. Teng also holds a seat on the board of directors.</p> <p>Since joining The Leading Hotels of the World, Mr. Teng has developed and begun executing a detailed five-year business plan which focuses on strengthening the brand and driving increased revenue to member hotels. Within the plan, he has also asserted the crucial importance of dedication and adherence to quality, in the firm belief that by elevating the overall level among the collection, all hotels will benefit. Taking as his motto "Preserve, Enhance, and Invent," he seeks to honor and uphold the more than eight-decade-old traditions of the organization, while innovating to achieve greater strength and success in the future.</p> <p>Immediately before joining the organization, Mr. Teng was the principal and chief executive officer of Prime Opus Partners, LP, a hotel investment and operations firm he founded in 2006. In 2005/2006, he served as executive-in-residence and was actively involved through various volunteer leadership roles at the School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University.</p> <p>Throughout his 30-year career in the hospitality industry, Mr. Teng has been responsible for the growth of some of the most prominent brands in the world. For five years he was president, chief operating officer of Wyndham International, Inc., where he oversaw the core branded hotel products, as well as the company's third-party management operations, comprised of over 200 properties generating USD 2.5 billion in annual revenue.</p> <p>He also served as president, Asia-Pacific, for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., immediately following the merger of Starwood Lodging, Westin, and Sheraton. He oversaw the integration of that company's branded hotel operations in the region, and was responsible for the operating and financial performance of over 70 hotels and resorts in 17 countries. New projects executed during Mr. Teng's tenure included the St. Regis in Shanghai, the first international W in Sydney, the highest quality Four Points Hotel in Sydney, the Sheraton in Sapporo, and the Westin Kyoto.</p> <p>Prior to the Starwood merger, Mr. Teng was the president of Asia-Pacific for Westin Hotels, where he was credited with having achieved significant growth in the number of hotels, including the launch of notable new flagships in Sydney, Melbourne, Guam, Kuala Lumpur, Awaji Island, Taipei, and Shanghai. Before coming to Westin, he was with ITT Sheraton, where he served for 14 years in a variety of senior and strategic capacities in operations, finance and development in North America, Hawaii and Asia. Most notably, Mr. Teng successfully negotiated the first ITT Sheraton equity investment in China in a multi-use project that included today's St. Regis Beijing.</p> <p>Ted Teng is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. He has an MBA from the University of Hawaii. Born in Shanghai, China, he grew up in Hong Kong and emigrated to the U.S. at age 13. He became an U.S. citizen at age 18. </p>
Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi banker and economist. A former professor of economics, he is famous for his successful application of the concept of microcredit, the extension of small loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. Yunus is also the founder of Grameen Bank.
In 2006, Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In the prize announcement The Norwegian Nobel Committee mentioned: "Muhammad Yunus has shown himself to be a leader who has managed to translate visions into practical action for the benefit of millions of people, not only in Bangladesh, but also in many other countries. Loans to poor people without any financial security had appeared to be an impossible idea. From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost through Grameen Bank, developed micro-credit into an ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty."
Yunus himself has received several other national and international honors. He is the author of Banker to the Poor and a founding board member of Grameen Foundation.
Muhammad Yunus completed his BA and MA in economics at Dhaka University. He was offered a Fulbright scholarship in 1965 to study in the United States. He obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University.
Gururaj Deshpande is an Indian American businessman and social entrepreneur, who is best known for co-founding the Chelmsford, MA based internet company Sycamore Networks in 1998 and the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT. He is also founder of the Deshpande Foundation.
He started his career working at Codex Corporation, a Motorola subsidiary in Ontario, Canada which manufacturers modems, before moving to the U.S. in 1984. Later he co-founded Coral Networks, a router developer, in 1987, he sold the company, two years later for $15 million.
In 1990, Deshpande co-founded Cascade Communications, whose products were very important in the early internet, initially serving as its president and later Executive Vice President, he hired Dan Smith as CEO. He sold Cascade to Ascend Communications for $3.7 billion in 1997. Subsequently, with help of MIT researchers, he launched Sycamore Networks in 1998. Sycamore Networks went public in October 1999, and soon raised a market cap of $18 billion, and his 21% shareholding, briefly made him, one of the richest Indians in the world, and in 2000, he featured on the Forbes 400 listing of Richest Americans.
In 2000, he founded Networking and Telecom equipment products company, Tejas Networks, along with US-based ASG-Omni in Bangalore.
In July 2010, he was appointed as the Co-Chairman of National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a group set up to support US President's innovation strategy.
Xiaoping Chen is the Manager and CEO of Wuhan Chemical Industries Supply and Marketing Co. He has been working for multinational businesses in China for his whole career.
Xiaoping Chen graduated from Hubei University.
K.L. Wong is a Managing Director of Merrill Lynch (Asia Pacific) Ltd. He is in charge of Merrill Lynch's investment banking businesses in Hong Kong, including assisting clients with strategic and corporate finance advisory and execution. He is the leader of the Merrill Lynch team advising the Hong Kong Government on the privatisation of MTR Corporation and the team leader in advising the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited in relation to the proposed merger between The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited and The Hong Kong Futures Exchange Limited.
Prior to joining Merrill Lynch in 1993, he worked in CS First Boston (H.K.) Limited, Standard Chartered Asia Limited, Chemical Bank and Export Credit Insurance Corporation Limited.
K.L. Wong is a graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Anil K Rajvanshi has been the director of the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) at Phaltan, Maharashtra, India since 1981. NARI is a private non-profit NGO working in rural India. It does pioneering work in the areas of agriculture, renewable energy, animal husbandry and environmentally sound sustainable development.
Rajvanshi is also the trustee and honorary secretary of NARI. He has concentrated his efforts for last 25 years on how to use modern science and technology to achieve environmentally sound rural development. Rajvanshi's research has spanned a whole spectrum of areas affecting the lives of rural population including cooking and lighting, small power generation, water purification and effluent treatment through the use of renewable energy in environmentally sound way.
Anil Rajvanshi was born and raised in Lucknow, India. After obtaining B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from I.I.T. Kanpur in early 1970's, Dr. Rajvanshi went to USA to pursue a Ph.D. degree in the University of Florida at Gainesville, U.S.A. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 1979 with specialization in solar energy and then taught at the University of Florida for two and half years before returning to India in 1981 to join NARI.
Martin Tang is currently chairman of global executive-search firm, Spencer Stuart, in Asia.
Prior to joining Spencer Stuart, Tang ran another international executive search firm in Hong Kong. He was an executive director of Techno-Ventures (Hong Kong) Ltd., a leading venture capital firm from 1986 to 1988. Early in his career, he was with the Bank of America in San Francisco and Taiwan. He then worked as an executive director of the publicly listed South Sea Textile Manufacturing Co., Ltd., in Hong Kong and Indonesia.
Martin is a trustee of Cornell University, a member of the MIT Corporation and the 112th president of the MIT Alumni Association. Martin has been appointed by the Hong Kong government to a number of positions, and is currently a member of the University Grants Committee and the Professional Services Advisory Committee of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council.
Martin Tang holds a B.Sc in electrical engineering from Cornell University and an M.Sc from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.