Our speakers

Ed Rogers, Principal Owner, Mayjer Enterprises LLC

Dr. Rogers, as a professor taught strategy and entrepreneurship before joining NASA in 2003. For seventeen years he served as the Chief Knowledge Officer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland until his retirement from government service in 2020. During his tenure with the government, NASA expanded its knowledge management pro-gram across the agency based in large part upon Dr. Rogers’ successful model developed at the Goddard Space Flight Center.  

For over ten years he has been a visiting faculty member at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India where he teaches a popular MBA course on Managing Complexity.  Through various ISB Executive Education programs he has also taught numerous executives in India and the US practical ways to improve their decision-making ability in complex situa-tions. He has advised corporate and government leaders on how to shape their organizations for learning and uncover thinking patterns that can inhibit innovation and collaboration.

At NASA he built a set of knowledge management practices that strategically support the Agency’s missions including the simple yet effective Pause and Learn (PaL) process, which allows project teams to reflect on their experience and improve organizational learning.  He developed an internal case study methodology and used it to create over 50 NASA-specific case studies for use in training sessions and workshops. He designed an internal leadership course at Goddard called the Road to Mission Success which helps employees across organi-zational boundaries better understand how the Agency works, promotes knowledge sharing and ultimately strengthens collaboration across technical disciplines.

Dr. Rogers received a B.S. in Agronomy from the Ohio State University, a Master’s in Inter-national Business from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. from Cornell University focusing on game theory applications to collaboration in high tech firms. In his spare time, he enjoys singing, playing the saxophone and ballroom dancing. Dr. Rogers lives near Char-lottesville, Virginia where he continues to speak and consult on how to foster organizational learning and improve executive decision-making ability and is a frequent speaker for MBA classes, business conferences and Federal Agencies in the Washington, DC area.

Edward I. Altman, Professor of Finance, NYU Stern School of Business

Professor Edward I. Altman, Professor of Finance, NYU Stern School of Business. Dr. Altman is also Co-Founder and Senior Advisor to the SME Credit Analytic Firm, Wiserfunding, Ltd.

Edward I. Altman is the Max L. Heine Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business, New York University. He is the Director of Research in Credit and Debt Markets at the NYU Salomon Center for the Study of Financial Institutions. Prior to serving in his present position, Professor Altman chaired the Stern School's MBA Program for 12 years. He has been a visiting Professor at the Hautes Etudes Commerciales and Universite de Paris-Dauphine in France, at the Pontificia Catolica Universidade in Rio de Janeiro, at the Australian Graduate School of Management and MacQuarie in Sydney, University of Western Australia in Perth, Luigi Bocconi University in Milan and CEMFI in Madrid. Dr. Altman was named to the Max L. Heine endowed professorship at Stern in 1988.

Dr. Altman has an international reputation as an expert on corporate bankruptcy, high yield bonds, distressed debt and credit risk analysis. He was named Laureate 1984 by the Hautes Etudes Commerciales Foundation in Paris for his accumulated works on corporate distress prediction models and procedures for firm financial rehabilitation and awarded the Graham & Dodd Scroll for 1985 by the Financial Analysts Federation for his work on Default Rates on High Yield Corporate Debt and was named "Profesor Honorario" by the University of Buenos Aires in 1996. He is currently an advisor to the Centrale dei Bilanci in Italy and to several foreign central banks. Professor Altman is also the Chairman of the Academic Advisory Council of the Turnaround Management Association. He received his MBA and Ph.D. in Finance from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame in 2001, President of the Financial Management Association (2003) and a FMA Fellow in 2004 and was amongst the inaugural inductees into the Turnaround Management Association’s Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2005, Prof. Altman was named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Finance” by the Treasury & Risk Management magazine. He also received an Honorary Doctorate from Lund University, Sweden in May 2011.

Professor Altman was one of the founders and an Executive Editor of the international publication, the Journal of Banking and Finance and Advisory Editor of a publisher series, the John Wiley Frontiers in Finance Series. He has published or edited two-dozen books and over 150 articles in scholarly finance, accounting and economic journals. He was the editor of the Handbook of Corporate Finance and the Handbook of Financial Markets and Institutions and the author of a number of recent books, including his most recent works on Bankruptcy, Credit Risk and High Yield Junk Bonds (2002), Recovery Risk (2005), Corporate Financial Distress & Bankruptcy (3rd ed., 2006) and Managing Credit Risk (2nd ed. 2008). His work has appeared in
many languages including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

Dr. Altman's primary areas of research include bankruptcy analysis and prediction, credit and lending policies, risk management and regulation in banking, corporate finance and capital markets. He has been a consultant to several government agencies, major financial and accounting institutions and industrial companies and has lectured to executives in North America, South America, Europe, Australia-New Zealand, Asia and Africa. He has testified before the U.S. Congress, the New York State Senate and several other government and regulatory organizations and is a Director and a member of the Advisory Board of a number of corporate, publishing, academic and financial institutions. He has been Chairman of the Academic Council of the Turnaround Management Association since 2002.

Dr. Altman is Chairman Emeritus and a member of the Board of Trustees of the InterSchool Orchestras of New York and a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of American Finance.

Ekhlaque Bari, CIO, Jubilant Foodworks

Ekta Bahl, Partner, Samvad Partners

Elavarasu A K, Vice President & CISO, Mphasis

Elavarasu has around 24 years total IT experience with 21 years in Cyber Security. Currently, he is the global CISO for an IT services company for the past 4+ years. Prior to that he was driving the implementation of Cyber Security roadmap including setting up SOC, Incident response and various Cyber Security technologies and processes for the same company. In the past, he had worked with Standard Chartered Bank, Microsoft, Nokia, IBM, and Tech Mahindra. In his prior engagements, he had provided Cyber Security consulting to several Fortune 500 companies across US, Europe, and APAC region. In his previous roles with other companies, he was responsible for Threat management for a bank, managed Information security for factories worldwide and performed Security governance activities at the enterprise level.

He holds an M.B.A. from Anna University and B.E. from Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT). His industry certifications include CISSP, CISA, CISM, and CBCP.

Elizabeth Venkataraman, Executive Vice President - Marketing, Products, Digital & Ecommerce, Kotak Life Insurance

Elizabeth Venkatraman heads the marketing function at Kotak Mahindra Old Mutual Life Insurance Limited (KLI), and is responsible for brand management (through Above the Line initiatives), sales support (through Below the Line initiatives), product development, e-insurance business and corporate communication.

Elizabeth is known for her methodical approach to work and life. Her approach to build marketing campaigns around crucial, yet, little explored consumer insights has helped propel even comparatively smaller budget campaigns to clearly differentiated winning propositions vis-à-vis industry. KLI’s ‘Chotu Kya Banega’ campaign (2009-10) was built on the insight that new age parents appreciated the independence their children required to choose vocations of their choice, while the ‘Another You’ campaign (2011-12) leveraged working class affinity towards supplementary income. She is also credited with the company’s ‘Faiday ka Insurance’ tagline which aligned Kotak Group’s core strength of investment expertise to insurance. Her team is also credited with the design and development of several innovative products in the new business environment, which evinced significant customer interest.

Elizabeth has been with Kotak Mahindra Group since 2004, and assumed her current responsibility in 2014. In her immediate prior assignment, she headed the marketing function at Kotak Securities, where she was instrumental in conceptualizing and developing Kotak Securities’ much acclaimed ‘Customer Contactability’ programme. She has close to two decades of experience spanning across diverse segments, including computer hardware, automobiles, FMCG and banking.

Outside of work, she is a doting mother and homemaker. She is also a movie and travel buff, and, while not exploring offbeat locations, she is known to attend first day first shows with her teenaged daughter, Mandira and husband, Venkat.

She holds an MBA (Marketing) degree from Narsee Monji Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.

Emily Harrison, Founder and Executive Director, Innovaid Advisory Services Pvt Ltd

Emily Harrison is the founder and Executive Director of Innovaid Advisory Services - a group of international consultants who provide strategic advice and management services to celebrities and corporates on their philanthropy and corporate social responsibility in India.

Australian born, Emily grew up on a remote cattle station in Western NSW and dedicated her career to rural and remote community development.  She spent 10 years working in local and state government on grassroots community development projects across outback NSW and Queensland in a number of roles.

Emily first came to India in 2007 as a Team Leader with Australian Volunteers International. She led teams of volunteers on community development projects in remote villages inTamil Nadu where she fell in love with India and made the decision to move to Bombay and singlehandedly start her own company - Innovaid Advisory Services.

Under her leadership, Innovaid has grown into a burgeoning, boutiquecompany working with an impressive list of celebrities, including cricket legends Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, Steve Waugh and Brett Lee, sporting heroes Abhinav Bindra and Mir RanjanNegi, Bollywood stars Priyanka Chopra, Shah Rukh Khan, Rahul Bose, GulPanag, Shiamak Davar and Anupam Kher. She has also advised a host of corporates such as Bajaj Auto, Mahindra Swaraj, Ultratech, Shaadi.com, Rajasthan Royals, Hutch Vodafone and Tata AIG.

Through this work, Emily was selected as one of Advance's 50 Current & Emerging Female Leaders in Australia, she received the ‘STAR ENTREPRENEUR AWARD’ for her Innovative Leadership in CSR Innovation and was shortlisted as ‘Global Australian of the Year’ in the  Social Innovation category.

She is a long-term visiting faculty at the SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, is the first ever woman Chair of the Australia New Zealand Business Association in India, and is the official Charity Advisor to the hit National Geographic television series 'Wheel2Wheel - Season 2 (India)'.

Eric Lange, Product VP, Flipkart | @Flipkart

Eric Lange serves as VP of Customer Experience at Flipkart, where he is responsible for ensuring a high quality experience for customers from end-to-end. Eric is a Silicon Valley veteran with 23 years of experience in both product management and engineering from companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. He has a degree in computer engineering from Case Western Reserve University and an MBA from Duke University.

Eric Savage, Co-founder & CEO, Unitus Capital

Eric moved to India in 2007 to help set up Unitus Capital (UC), an impact focused investment bank, and has led the company in raising well over US$1.4 billion for various impact businesses.  He has had the privilege of working with many innovative companies that do life changing work in the fields of financial inclusion, affordable health care, renewable energy, affordable education, women empowerment and agriculture. Unitus Capital has been ranked the #1 Indian investment bank by Venture Intelligence in 2013, 2014 and 2015.  Previously, Eric ran Citigroup’s Asian investment banking franchise in the Power & Infrastructure sectors, and helped secure and execute multiple landmark equity, debt and M&A transactions, totaling many billions of dollars. Eric was based in NYC and Hong Kong for 14 years with Citigroup/Salomon Brothers. Eric also headed Salomon’s utilities sector equity research and was selected to Institutional Investors’ All-Asia research team.

Eric is a graduate (cum laude) of Duke University and of Harvard’s Kennedy School, where he received the Lucius N. Littauer Fellow Award, the program’s top honor.  Eric serves on the boards of a number of leading companies, funds and educational institutions. In 2014, Eric was named Indian Expat Entrepreneur of the Year by Expat Entrepreneurs Circle, and, in 2016, was awarded the Indira Gandhi Sadbhawana Award for his contributions to the impact investing sector.  He is a highly sought after speaker, particularly in the impact investing world.

Eric Vas, President, Bajaj Auto Ltd

Eric Vas is an alumni of the College of Engineering Pune, and the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Mr. Vas started his career as an officer of the Tata Administrative Service (TAS) and spent 18 years with the Tata Group. From 1999 Mr. Vas has been associated with the automobile industry when he joined Tata Motors Ltd.  Mr. Vas currently works at Bajaj Auto Ltd. where he has, over the past 11 years, held various leadership roles. Presently, Mr. Vas leads the Urbanite Business (electric Chetak) of Bajaj Auto Ltd.