Niraj Shah is the CEO and Co-founder of Wayfair, formerly known as CSN Stores, the leading online home goods retailer with 2012 sales in excess of $600 Million. Niraj has been included in the Boston Business Journal's 40 Under 40, and has won the Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Niraj Shah is a graduate of Cornell University.
Arindam Bhattacharya is a partner and managing director in BCG's New Delhi office and coleader of the firm's Global Advantage practice area. He is a core group member of the Industrial Goods and Operations practice areas and a coauthor of Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything.
Before joining the firm, Bhattacharya worked in the New Delhi and London offices of A.T. Kearney. He also worked for the Tata Economic Consultancy Service and Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick, U.K.
Bhattacharya earned his PhD and master's degree in manufacturing and engineering from the University of Warwick, a BA in engineering from IIT in Kharagpur, India, and an MBA from the IIM in Ahmedabad, India.
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.
Savneet Singh is the Founder of Gold Bullion International (GBI), a leading physical precious metals trading and management firm. GBI has created the first truly integrated solution that allows investors to order physical precious metals in the same manner as ordering a stock or bond. Currently the company has storage locations in New York, Utah, London, Hong Kong and Zurich. In founding GBI, Mr. Singh has been successful in recruiting a well known management team in addition to a Board that includes General Wesley Clark, Former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt.
Prior to GBI, Mr. Singh was an investment analyst at Chilton Investment Company where he covered investments in the technology, alternative energy and infrastructure space.
Prior to Chilton, Mr. Singh worked in the investment banking division of Morgan Stanley, where he worked on large financial sponsor and strategic company mergers and acquisitions.
Savneet Singh received his B.S. in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University.
Stephano Kim is a New York-based entrepreneur and angel investor. Stephano currently serves as president of AHAlife, a curated marketplace of unique products and content from all over the world. Prior to AHAlife, Stephano served as president of GraphEffect, a social media marketing platform, and prior that as president and COO of [x+1], an integrated digital marketing and data analytics platform. Stephano has also led investments in consumer technology and digital media for Advanced Technology Ventures, directed business development and strategy for AOL, and co-founded several start-ups along the way including Blackboard, the leading provider of e-learning enterprise software and services. Stephano also manages Springhouse Capital, an angel fund that has made investments in The Echo System, LifeCrowd, Tangoe, WeddingWire, DramaFever, ZocDoc, and Shareaholic, Retention Science and Chromatik. When not obsessing about startups and entrepreneurs, Stephano can be found in the playgrounds of the upper west side of Manhattan hanging from the monkey bars with his 2 daughters.
Lalana Janleka-Green is the Owner and President of Acorn Technology which she and her husband founded in 1993. Acorn Technology manufactures industrial drive control systems and has subsidiaries that manufacture marine electrical equipment (under the name METCO) and industrial HVLS ceiling fans (under the name Humongous Fan).
Acorn Technology has won the Weatherhead 100 Award (awarded to the 100 fastest growing companies in Northern Ohio) for four consecutive years with sales of over $5 million.
Lalana Janleka-Green is a graduate of Cornell University.
D. Teddy Zhang is the President and CEO of HUBS1. Zhang launched HUBS1 in 2005, introducing the next-generation global distribution system for the hotel market in China. The firm's web-based platform enables hotels to manage their booking process in real time. Hotels use the platform to adjust room rates, room types, availabilities and allotments, changes that are instantly reflected across all online and offline distribution channels.
Prior to founding HUBS1, Zhang was special assistant to the chairman and CEO of Thayer Lodging Group, a leading private-equity firm specializing in lodging investment. Zhang oversaw strategic planning and corporate finance at Thayer. Earlier, he held various executive positions for major international hotel chains including Accor, Marriott, and Hilton, both in China and the U.S.
Teddy Zhang graduated from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration and holds an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Tien Tzuo is the Chief Executive Officer at Zuora, Inc.
Tien was one of the "original forces" at salesforce.com, which he joined in 1999 as the 11th employee, when the company was still operating out of a house on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. In his 9 years there, Tien held a variety of executive roles in salesforce.com's technology, marketing, and strategy organizations, including building out the product management & marketing organization, serving as salsforce's first Chief Marketing Officer, and most recently as Chief Strategy Officer.
Tien personally oversaw the vision, direction, and design of the first 17 releases of salesforce.com's award winning product line, including overseeing the launch of salesforce.com and the AppExchange. In 2004, Tien was named CMO of the Year Finalist by the CMO Council and BusinessWeek Magazine. Tien is also widely recognized as one of the thought leaders in the software-as-a-service industry. His podcast on the Secrets of Salesforce is widely cited and has been downloaded over 250,000 times.
Tien Tzuo holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University and a master's in business administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Eswar Prasad is the Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy at Cornell University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was previously chief of the Financial Studies Division in the International Monetary Fund's Research Department and, before that, was the head of the IMF's China Division.
Prasad's research has spanned a number of areas including labor economics, business cycles, and open economy macroeconomics. His extensive publication record includes articles in numerous collective volumes as well as top academic journals such as the American Economic Review, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, The Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, etc. He has co-authored and edited numerous books and monographs, including on China, Hong Kong and India. His current research interests include the macroeconomics of financial globalization, monetary and exchange rate policies in emerging markets, and the Chinese and Indian economies.
Many of his research papers and quotes from his speeches have been cited extensively in wire service stories as well as prominent media outlets including the Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune and numerous other international and regional newspapers. He has contributed op-ed articles to the Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal Asia and various other newspapers. He has testified before the Senate Finance Committee and the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services (both on China), and his research has been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record. He was a member of the analytical team that drafted the 2008 report of the High-Level Committee on Financial Sector Reforms set up by the Government of India.
Eswar Prasad received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.