Speakers

Nirj Deva is the first person in history to be born in one continent (Asia), to be elected to parliament in another continent (UK) and then elected to represent that country as a member of a multi-national Parliament (the European Parliament). He became in 1981, Chairman of the Bow Group, a leading British political think-tank.

In 1985, he was honoured as the first Asian to be appointed by Her Majesty The Queen as a Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London. In 1992 he was elected to the United Kingdom Parliament, as the Conservative Member for Brentford and Isleworth (1992-1997). Nirj has subsequently been a Member of the European Parliament for the past 12 years, elected in 1999 from a Constituency of 7.5 million voters in the South East of England. Appointed Vice President of the Development Committee in 2009, he remains a Member of the South Asia Delegation and of the Subcommittee on Human Rights.

He is a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Society of Arts, Hon. Life President of the EU-India Chamber of Commerce, and Patron of the International Monarchist League. His phenomenal work on International Development led to his nomination for the post of Secretary General of the United Nations to succeed Kofi Annan in 2006.

In 2011, Nirj was awarded MEP of the Year for Development. In 2012, Nirj has been honoured with the prestigious Priyadarshni Academy award for his services to international development. In 2012 he was nominated by a major political group and came second in the election to be the President of the European Parliament, beating the liberal candidate into third place.

Gaurav is Transformation Leadership for Excellence (TLEX), UK Director and Trainer. He has conducted self-development and stress management programs for 10 years across Europe, USA and Middle East. He is an engineering graduate from IIT-Mumbai and an MBA from Cornell University.

Gaurav worked in different positions in the banking industry for 12 years in Mumbai, New York and London and brings his own corporate experience to the seminars.

Born and raised in Basel, Switzerland, Christoph has served since 2006 as Managing Director for the International Leadership Symposium of the World Forum for Ethics in Business. As a leadership expert and personal development coach, Christoph has delivered leadership programs in more than 50 countries over 15 years.

This rich experience of diverse cultures and an understanding of global social economic and political scenarios has helped him to establish several public-private partnerships for social development. Since 2009 he acts as CEO for the TLEX Europe (Transformational Leadership) Seminars. Some of the organizations which he has worked with include: Harvard Business School, Accenture, Beiersdorf, Boston Consulting Group, General Electric, Microsoft, Shell and the World Bank Group.

Christoph currently serves on the Boards of a number of Non-Governmental Organizations internationally such as the International Association for Human Values. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy (MPP) from the Humboldt-Viadrina School for Governance and graduated with honors from the Basel Business School, Switzerland.

Rob Goffee is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the London Business School, where he teaches on the world renowned Senior Executive Programme. An internationally respected teacher and facilitator, Rob is also the Faculty Director for Executive Education at London Business School. He has taught executives from some of the world’s leading companies, including Unilever, Nestlé and Sonae.

He also consults to the boards of a number of FTSE 100 companies. In addition, he consults with a number of large corporations on organisational change, corporate culture, board governance, and management development. Together with Gareth Jones, Rob founded CMA, a consultancy focused on organisations where creativity is a source of competitive strength. They offer substantive analysis, vivid examples, and pragmatic solutions to managers and executives who wish to explore the company’s ‘character’ and turn that into the foundation for long-term, sustainable success.

Rob Goffee was ranked in the Thinkers 50 2007, the global ranking business thinkers. Prof. Rob Goffee has published eleven books and over seventy articles. His books include Entrepreneurship in Europe; Women in Charge; Reluctant Managers; and Corporate Realities.

With Gareth Jones, he has co-authored The Character of a Corporation (1998); Why Should Anyone Be Led By You? (2006); and Clever: Leading Your Smartest and Most Creative People (2009).

Goffee and Jones latest book (published November 2105, Harvard Business Press) is “Why Should Anyone Work Here?”.

Ashish Goyal is an enthusiastic individual, who is passionate about people and service. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from Cardiff University in 2014. During his time at University, he served as co-president of the Asian Society – this team made a big difference assisting a number of charitable organisations and substantial fundraising.

On completion of his Degree, Ashish secured a position at PwC (Price Waterhouse Copper) in London. In 2015 he joined the family-run awarding winning Hallmark Care Homes -a leading specialist care provider established in 1997, operating 17 care homes across England and South Wales. He left the city life as he felt that he could have a larger impact working within the care sector. Ashish is currently leading on a recruitment project, as well as working alongside a range of teams at care homes and increasing his knowledge and perspective of the business and the care sector. He has recently been appointed Director of Fun and the job description is in the title.

Ashish is the Vice President of the Hemraj Goyal Foundation Leadership Team – a family led foundation which raises money for those from disadvantaged areas of society. Most recently, fundraising for the Lily Foundation, where a sum of £20,000 was donated to support entrepreneurship training to those who have been victims of physical and sexual abuse in New Delhi. Ashish has a desire for connecting with individuals and engaging with them in a way which makes every person feel ‘special.’

A writer, independent consultant and economist by training, he graduated from the University of Oxford, taught at Warsaw University in Poland in the early 1990s, and has worked as a freelance journalist. He consults for governments, international organizations, companies and nonprofits on harnessing the tools of business to achieve social impact.

He is a member of the advisory boards of the Impetus Trust and the B Team, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Mr. Green served as a senior official in the U.K. Department for International Development, where he managed British aid programs to Russia and Ukraine and headed the communications department.

He is co-author of “Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World” and “The Road from Ruin: A New Capitalism for a Big Society”, his TED talk had nearly a million views.

Michael Izza became CEO in 2006 and the organisation has grown significantly with over 146,000 members and 23,000 students worldwide. The organisation has offices in Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia and China.

Mr. Izza regularly speaks on issues facing the professional and business community and engages with media, politicians and regulators around the world. Prior to joining ICAEW, Mr. Izza held a number of C-suite positions in the private sector in FMCG, retail and support services. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant at Coopers & Lybrand, having graduated in law from Durham University.

Leo Johnson is a Partner in PwC’s Sustainability & Climate Change team, and the co-Founder of the sustainability advisory firm Sustainable Finance, now part of the PwC group. He is the co-author of “Turnaround Challenge: Business and the City of the Future” (Oxford University Press, 2013) and the lead author of PwC’s “Low Carbon Economy Index”. Leo is Co-Presenter for the Radio 4 series: “Future Proofing” and the Presenter of the BBC World News programme “One Square Mile”.

Leo is a Visiting Business Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise & Environment at Oxford University, Formerly with the Technical and Environment Department of the World Bank’s IFC, he is a Judge for the FT Boldness in Business Awards, and a Trustee of the New Economics Foundation and Green Alliance.

Alongside speeches ranging from Campus Party to TEDx, he has commented and written guest columns for the Wall Street Journal, Evening Standard, FT and Huffington Post. He is the co-Founder of the Prix Pictet—a Prize for Photography around sustainability issues for which Kofi Annan is the Patron.

Rajita is a humanitarian, an educationist, a writer, a leadership coach and a global leader. She is the President of the World Forum for Ethics in Business and a Board member in a number of non-governmental organisations at an Indian national and international level. She helps organisations globally to achieve excellence in governance, finance and administration. She is committed to create global advocacy to inspire individuals and corporations to embrace an ethical way of life. She has been instrumental in leading a number of action-oriented initiatives towards this goal.

Apart from global responsibility of WFEB, her key current projects include the launch of the prestigious Sri Sri University in India, global design and roll out of the Transformational Leadership for EXcellence program that enables leaders to unleash their full potential and overseeing the administration of over 510 educational institutions that reach education to over 6,000 children (including schools, a college of journalism, a college of Ayurveda and an MBA school). Of these 421 are free schools reaching free education and mid day meals to 43,450 children in 12 states of India.

Her expertise lies in leading large, multicultural, multi country, diverse teams to unleash their full potential and fulfill their vision. She is a certified leadership coach and has trained CEO’s, current and ex Heads of Governments, Parliamentarians among others to sharpen their leadership skills towards creating increased public value. She travels the world addressing various international fora to advocate the message of excellence, ethics and human values.

Before committing her life to society five years ago, Rajita was a banker for 18 years with Citi. She held many international leadership positions in her career, last of which was Asia Pacific Head for Customer Advocacy and Training for the Retail Assets Business where her portfolio responsibility was annual revenues of 750 million US dollars, 16,000 employees and over 800 branches across 12 countries.

Considered an expert in her field of Leadership training and coaching, she designed 85 management exercises and learning tools. She has won 17 awards for professional excellence in her field and has done training and development for over 100,000

Born in 1962, Jan Muehlfeit grew up in Czechoslovakia. He received a computer science degree from the Czech Technical University and later on completed executive development programs at Wharton, LSE and Harvard. His personal mission: “I help individuals, organizations and countries around the world to unlock their human potential”.

Jan has proven record in building successful teams and organizations in his almost 22 years long career in Microsoft, where he served in different executive positions. In his last role (2007-2014) he was as Chairman Europe, Microsoft Corporation. Based on his global experience he created a rather unique methodology to find personal uniqueness for individuals and teams, personal vision, and how to implement vision through individual uniqueness.

Jan is teaching his course globally both in private and public sector. This methodology which roots are in positive psychology is based not only on his own experience, but also the experience of many of the top individuals in the global world of business, politics, as well as sport, with whom he had the honor to meet, work and spend time worldwide for many years. Jan coaches top executives from different countries and continents and he works closely in the coaching and mentoring field with INSEAD, Cambridge, Gallup, and SeedCamp.

Jan is also a Senior Strategic Adviser for Atlantic Bridge Venture. He has been serving in different advisory boards of several European governments in the field of ICT, national competitiveness and education. He is involved in an advisory capacity in different projects of WEF, OECD and EC.

Mr. Milind V. Pendharkar has a long and successful career in finance and business management, more than 30 years of experience, a major portion of it is with American Express Middle East/ Saudi Arabia in all-round financial management.

He received his education from Commerce Graduate (Mumbai, India), ACA (India), ACMA (UK) and MBA at Sheffield Hallam university (UK). Mr. Pendharkar has been working as chief financial officer & head of operations at American Express Saudi Arabia since 2001.

Also, he is a faculty of Art of Living since 2004. Moreover, Mr. Milind V. Pendharkar is a president of the board in Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia and has been overseeing ten Indian Community Schools with over 50,000 students since 2010.

Dr. Sanjay Pradhan is the Vice President of the World Bank Institute (since October 2008). Prior to this, he was the Director, Public Sector Governance for the World Bank. He was responsible for providing the strategic directions for the World Bank’s global work on improving public sector governance and combating corruption. He earlier served as the World Bank’s Sector Manager, Public Sector and Poverty Reduction for the South Asia region. Prior to that, he was responsible for managing the bank’s unit supporting governance and public sector reform in 26 countries.

Dr. Pradhan was a Principal Author of the World Development Report 1997, The State in a Changing World. He presented the WDR in 20 countries, including press conferences, high-level seminars, and presentations to heads of state and Parlia­ment, including the British House of Commons. He is the author of numerous publications, including articles, books and policy papers.

Dr. Pradhan completed his PhD from Harvard University (1988), and his Bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, Harvard University (1982).

Ashok Vaswani is the CEO for Personal and Corporate Banking, covering Retail, Wealth and Corporate banking. Ashok joined Barclays in 2010, managing the credit card business across the UK, Europe and the Nordics, becoming chairman of Entercard. He went on to manage Barclays in Africa and Barclays Retail Business Bank globally. Ashok represents Barclays as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Barclays Africa Group Limited and is a member of the Business in the Community (BITC) International Leadership Team, he also sits on the advisory boards of a number of institutions such as FICO, Rutberg & Co and is Founder Director of Lend-a-Hand, a non-profit organisation focused on rural education in India.

Ashok has previously served on the advisory boards of S. P. Jain Institute of Management, Insead Singapore and Visa Asia Pacific. Prior to Barclays, Ashok was a partner with a J P Morgan Chase funded private equity firm – Brysam Global Partners, which was focused on building retail financial service businesses in emerging markets. Ashok has demonstrated a passion for building and managing businesses across the globe. He started his career in Mumbai, India and since then, has worked and lived in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the US. Ashok spent twenty years with Citigroup. His last position at Citigroup was CEO, Asia Pacific. Ashok was also a member of the Citigroup Operating Committee, the Citigroup Management Committee, and the Global Consumer Planning Group.

Ashok graduated from Bombay University, Sydenham College, College of Commerce and Economics and has post graduate degrees from both the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the Institute of Chartered Secretaries of India. He was born in India, is married to Veena, with a grown up daughter who is working in San Francisco.

Baroness Verma was born in Amritsar India and came to UK just before her first birthday. Her family have a long association with Leicester, Baroness Verma was educated at local Leicester schools and Higher Education sites. She married Ashok in 1977 and has two children. Baroness Verma started her first business at the age of nineteen. Throughout her adult life she has been involved in social and community activities, taking up issues on gender violence, activity development for young people and campaigns of fighting discrimination and inequalities.

In 2001 she was selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate. In 2006 Baroness Verma took her seat in the House of Lords and a few weeks later she was offered the role of an opposition whip. This made her the first woman of South Asian origin to sit on the front benches of either Houses of Parliament. In 2010 Baroness Verma was invited to be in the Coalition government as a government whip responsible for Higher Education, Government Equalities Office, Cabinet Office and International Development. In 2012 she was made a Minister in the Department for Energy and Climate Change. In 2015, she was made a Minister for International Development, covering a larger portfolio of responsibilities, including inclusive societies, UN agencies, EU agencies and the Commonwealth agencies.

Baroness Verma has been a strong and vocal champion of raising the visibility of women and minority communities and she is the patron of a number of organisations and champions the need for inclusive societies. Baroness Verma has been awarded a great number of awards for her business, political and community work. In her limited spare time, she likes to spend it with her family and friends. A keen viewer of thrillers and a reader of historical romantic novels, she hopes one day to write her own book.