Dr Saundarya Rajesh is a social entrepreneur who has won several accolades and awards such as #100Women Achiever, #Web Wonder Women, Winds of Change 2019 Award, Women Transforming India Award, Golden Aviator Award, Asia’s most Innovative Diversity & Inclusive Leaders Award and so on. Dr Saundarya irrevocably changed the game for the Indian Women Professionals, by introducing the concept of “Career Intentionality” and “Career Re-entry” to Corporate India. Dr Saundarya’s work in the space of gender diversity & inclusion in the workplace, is unparalleled in India. An inspiring speaker, an author, and a very sought-after D&I strategist, Dr Saundarya’s vision is to see young girls from underprivileged families create empowering white-collar careers for themselves. This she influences through Project Puthri, an initiative that instils “Career Intentionality” in the minds of 10,000 under-privileged girl children. Her book, The 99 Day Diversity Challenge book published by SAGE has won several acclaims from industry leaders and has been designed to develop diversity and inclusion mind set in any organization or even individual within the proverbial 99 days. 

Vasudha is a seasoned leader with 21+ years of varied experience across the US and India, playing several technology leadership roles at global organizations including Providence, Microsoft, Intel, and Alliance Global Services. She has extensive experience championing the design and development of high-availability enterprise solutions with widespread impact. 

At Providence India, as VP – Engineering, Vasudha Bommireddy drives the transformation of technology that supports corporate functions, such as HR, Finance, Supply Chain, and Real estate. Her teams build technology solutions for employee-facing experiences & tools across these verticals easing the way for caregivers across the organization. 

Vasudha’s notable achievements across her tenure include building a tech platform for the smooth onboarding process for new hires with focus on Day 1 employee experience and delight; and delivering a next generation invoicing platform to support new Azure business models and defense/government solutions in a private secure cloud.  

Vasudha is recognized as a transformational leader with a problem-solving approach, open to bold ideas executed with realistic planning and sharp business acumen. Well-versed in nurturing cross-cultural global teams, Vasudha provides leadership and strategy to teams in offshore engagements through engineering best practices, effective hiring, and strategic vendor engagements. 

Vasudha is a passionate advocate of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and a business sponsor for DEI at Providence India. She is an alumnus of Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology, India and holds a master’s in computer engineering from Santa Clara University, CA. 

Radhika is an HR practitioner with deep expertise across various facets of the function. She has 13+ years of dedicated HR experience across large multinational organizations in Technology, Telecom & Pharmaceutical industries. She is currently leading the Diversity (DEI Function) , Organization Design & development (OD) and Culture at Tata communications globally. Prior to this role, she was the Business partner HR head for a product and technology vertical at Tata Communications. She is passionate about driving data-backed business led people practices and change management. 

Dr. Ramesh is a global professional with over two decades of global experience spanning across Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI). He is passionate about growing profitable and sustainable business at scale, nurturing talent, driving innovation, continuous learning and partners with clients to shape their market presence and business transformation through world – class teams and capability. He is currently working with Backbase as GM - Country Head (India) & Global Partner Success Leader and is based out of Hyderabad. Prior to this, he worked with Capgemini as part of the Global Financial Services (FS) SBU Leadership team as a Vice President and Head of India, Asia-Pacific and COO for Global FS Banking & Insurance Practices. He was also the FS Co-Sponsor for Diversity & Inclusion in India and a Core Member of the Global Fintech Board & India Board. 

Dr. Ramesh is associated with the prestigious Schulich School of Business,York University as an "Executive in Residence" and is an accomplished speaker at various industry and academic forums on financial services, sustainability, innovation and education. He works actively with the start-up community as a mentor and is on the boards of prominent business and engineering schools as an advisor and guest speaker. 

With over 24 years of experience, Satish Rajarathnam is a seasoned Human Resources professional who has held various HR leadership positions across multiple industries. Satish has continually been at the helm of strategic resourcing, organization change management, HR Business consulting & Agile transformation, as well as leadership and talent management.

Satish is associated with several industry groups and associations such as SHRM, Agile Leadership, LEGO serious Play, PCMM, Six Sigma, ISABsIndia and NFNLP, among othersfrom which he hasreceived certifications marking him a qualified practitioner. At Mphasis he is currently responsible for Global Staffing & Talent Transformation and Heads HR for the portfolios. In his previous role with Cognizant, he was responsible for Global Banking & Financial Services people strategy, aligning HR interventions to business priorities, and functioned as a strategic business advisor to the executive management.

Satish’s leadership experience spans across organisations such as Cognizant, HCL Technologies, and Siemens. He has also been the recipient of awardssuch as Forbes Top 30 Talent Leaders of 2023, Asia’s 100 HR Power leaders, Global Achievers Award 2022, Indian Achievers Award 2021, the Top 100 HR Tech Minds Award, Top 50 Aspiring Researchers award and the HR Excellence Award, from the Government of Rajasthan and Higher & Technical Education, Maharashtra. Outside his experience with HR, Satish has built a reputation as a TEDx speaker. As an entertainer and an illusionist & Mentalist, he has worked on over 1300 performances in association with various corporate houses and international workgroups. As part of giving back to the society he is associated with Udavum Karangal an Orphanage at Chennai and as a Corporate Advisory Board member with Chandigarh University.

Satish has authored a book on AI, co-authored 2 books on HR and has 8 patent applications published. He is a research Scholar from Swiss School of Management, Geneva, and a postgraduate in General Management from the Indian School of Business (ISB) and National University of Singapore (NUS).

Umasanker Kandaswamy (He/Him/His)

Co Founder – Sr Vice President – Sales & Relationships

Umasanker Kandaswamy holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Madras, is an Electronics & Communication Engineer and has done an MDP from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. With over 25 years of experience in Recruitment Consulting, Umasanker is a prolific headhunter, with over 3500 closures in his career, comprising of top management, senior management and reporting-to-board positions.

Umasanker has spearheaded large mandate recruitment projects for a variety of industries. Sourcing of any kind comes naturally to Umasanker – he manages IT sourcing with as much versatility as Non-IT. Is currently managing the All India Marketing & Sales for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion consulting across sectors.

A popular problem faced by recruiters then (and now) is that candidates do attend interviews, but either do not accept the offer or do not join as agreed. To counter this, the team lead by Umasanker devised a robust data capturing mechanism called the “Dialogue Box”. This helped the team leverage both structured and unstructured data that emerged during candidate interactions. By employing data-driven profiling methods, the team was able to ensure a very high candidate selection rate and high interview-to-joining conversion. Today, this data analytics process, under Umasanker’s stewardship, has been scaled up using artificial intelligence and machine learning. Over the past 18 years, the team has profiled and researched over 15,00,000 resumes, drawing their career trajectories and analysing reasons for offer acceptance or decline. Research and Analytics has played a big role in our journey as a service provider of choice for talent requirements of discerning organizations.

Every year, Umasanker has, as a personal goal, been training young generation in the path of Leadership and has been invited by many colleges to be the Chief Guest to address the young graduates & post graduates. His passion for people is equalled only by his passion for music and cricket – Umasanker is a great singer and is a fast bowler.

• 26 years of Experience in Operation, Commissioning and Licensing Companies in Oil and Gas sector 
• Chief Technical Advisor-KBR ( Gurgaon) Leading the Control Systems Department 
• Ex General Manager Reliance Industries-Instrumentation Department ( Nagothane-Maharashtra) 
• Started Career as Management Trainee in Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited 
•  Alumni – Jadavpur University – Kolkata -1996 pass out 
• BSc: Physics, BTech: Instrumentation and Electronic Engineering 
• Believe in personal drive, energy, and a self-motivation.  
• Passionate on leading, developing, engaging and innovation. 

Manya joined FIL in Jan 2020 and comes with rich experience in leading Digital Business Transformations across Consumer Products & Financial Services industries. Manya is currently driving the transformation agenda with an objective to deliver best-in-class Customer Experience, driving 6 key shifts - Focusing on Customer Outcomes, Solving Business Problems, Embracing latest technologies, Agile and iterative development, Cross-Functional Teams and keeping Innovation at the centre.   

Prior to joining Fidelity, Manya was working as Director with Publicis Sapient, as India Delivery Lead for one of the biggest FMCG clients leading digital marketing solutions globally. Manya is personally very passionate about building Sustainable Digital Solutions and works towards driving shift in individual and corporate behaviours. She has played multiple leadership roles in different business domains with customer-centricity and innovation at the core of it. ?Manya holds a degree in Bachelor of Computer Engineering and an MBA in Information Technology and holds a certification in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 

Dipanwita’ s charter comprises of spearheading Cargill’s corporate responsibility and sustainable development practice area for the Asia Pacific region and interventions related to WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene) globally. She leads a team of practice area experts that works towards bringing on intersections of food and nutrition security, diversity, equity & inclusion and sustainability by engaging with key stakeholders- communities, customers, NGO partners, government, industry bodies, academia, multilateral agencies and advocacy platforms for the key markets of Cargill in Asia Pacific.  

She is passionate about the causes of education and gender equity and plays a key role in advancing the diversity and inclusion agenda at Cargill as a leader of Cargill Women’s Network for Asia Pacific and India. As an active member of the WILL Forum, she advocates for equal opportunities for women at workplace and holds a WILL Forum certification for “Women in Boards”. She serves on the Governing Board at United Way Delhi Chapter in India. She also serves as a core member of associations like BRICS Women Business Alliance, Della Leader’s Club Global CSR & Philanthropy Committee and Social Responsibility Sectional Committee of Bureau of India Standards.  

Dipanwita was recently honored as one of the Top 20 Sustainability Champions in India and has been awarded as one of the 101 Most Talented CSR Leaders in a global listing in 2019.  

A wellness enthusiast, she practices mindfulness and conscious nutrition, trains for strength & conditioning, mentors young people and loves to travel, trek, hike and dive in her spare time.  

Anju leads Research based solutioning at Avtar. Working across the length and breadth of DEI metrics for companies. She leads Corporate India’s largest diversity analytics exercises – Working Mother & Avtar 100 Best Companies for Women in India and Most Inclusive Companies Index. In her career spanning 13 years, she has co-authored several papers on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion that have been published in Journals of National and International repute. 

With 20 years of functional experience in Sales, Marketing and Training from organisations like Citibank, ING Vysya, Maruti Udyog, Able Ventures  enables  Lakshmi deliver sessions on Customer Orientation, People Development,Resource Management , Compliance ,Improving Sales Quality ,Psycho Metric Analysis ,Team Building ,Professionalism, Communication and ,Presentation Skills.?

 She  brings in the experience of training  organisations on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion sensitising the importance of  challenges faced by Marginalised groups and help the organisations identify and be more inclusive in their approach. ?

Range of programs delivered by her includes DEI sensitisation, Non-Conscious Bias and Intentional Career Pathing for Mid and Leadership level Women .?

 With a certification in POSH ,she brings  expertise in delivering sessions to help organisations be POSH Compliant. Her certification in Design Thinking helps her in identifying the problems of clients and ideate and curate content accordingly. Clients with whom she has associated closely are Google, Accenture, Cognizant, TCS, HCL, Saplabs, SBI,LIC,Royal Sundaram, Austrade, Thoughtspot to name a few.?

As Business Unit Lead - Super Specialties, International Business & Market Access, Janssen India - Jayashri oversees portfolios in Oncology, Immunology, Neurosciences, Dermatology, Metabolics, Reimbursed business, International business, and the Market Access function. 

Jayashri joined Johnson & Johnson in 2010 as the Director of Strategy Planning for India and went on to hold a variety of roles with increasing responsibilities, including leadership roles at a regional and country level. 

With over 23 years of experience in healthcare, Jayashri believes in building credible teams as well as building and establishing functions and capabilities and delivering strong results across industries like Pharmaceuticals, MedTech, Healthcare delivery and Healthcare consulting across various markets in Asia Pacific. 

Prior to joining J&J, Jayashri was associated with Bayer Pharmaceutical as Head - Strategy & Corporate Development. Jayashri is a B.Pharm graduate from Institute of Chemical Technology and has completed her MBA. 

Merlyn heads the Deliver Excellence, Process Transformation and Learning & Development Units at Persistent Systems. She is focused on ensuring that best in class engineering practices and capabilities are the hallmark of all that we deliver to our clients. In her role she leads the change on workforce planning and transformation, skill development of existing talent and onboarding of talent to support new businesses and competencies. 

Prior to joining Persistent Systems, Merlyn has held senior positions in leading organizations – UBS, HSBC, Accenture, Cognizant and TCS where she led large global delivery teams, developed solutions across technology stacks and consulting assignments across banking, insurance and healthcare domains. 

Merlyn is passionate about championing Diversity and Inclusion and has led programs to support enhanced accessibility and several gender-based initiatives. 

Suman Mitra a post graduate in Human Resource. Past 28 years have worked in Employee Relation, Human Resource, OD intervention, Talent strategy and end to end HR. He has worked with Multinationals like Hindustan Unilever, Bosch Limited and Indian Companies like Tractors India Limited(TIL). He is currently attached  with Saint-Gobain India in the capacity of Head - Human Resources &  Administration based out of corporate office of Saint-Gobain, Chennai driving Talent Strategy, Diversity, Capability Development, Sustainability and CSR topics
etc.

He has done business partnering role for supply chain HR, Sales & Marketing HR  and strategic ER/IR roles in various parts of the country and also took lead role in South East Asian countries on HR/IR matters comprising of Bangladesh, Srilanka and Nepal. A specialist on Human Rights matter on topics related to OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development ) and its applicability in India on employment & Human Rights matters. A Certified Coach, Trained in Design Thinking on HR, published various article on HR topics and well known 
professional in the Industry. He is passionate about “DEI” and driven the topic at different companies.

Attached with various non-government organisation in various capacities in CII, NIPM, NHRDN, BCIC in multiple capacities as follows :
• Co-convenor and Convenor of HR/IR Sub-committee of CII-Karnataka in 2019, 2020 & 2021
• Member of Diversity forum of Bangalore Chamber of commerce & industry
• Member NHRDN and in advisory council of NHRDN, Kolkata chapter
• Member of NIPM
• Shared his experience on HR topics in IGTC (Indo-German Training Centre)
• Taken part in CII as guest speaker in multiple occasions in various CII forums, EFSI and ACMA (Automobile Companies Manufacturing Association

Kannan was Senior Director HR with PepsiCo for over 21 years till March 2018, including 8 years in Vietnam & APAC. Prior to PepsiCo, he had 12 years’ experience working in manufacturing, service and Indian MNC. Kannan is the recipient of the PepsiCo Harvey C Russell – Diversity and Inclusion Award in 2004 and 2014. Chairman’s Award for Corporate Social Responsibility in 2006 and Chairman’s Award for business performance in Vietnam in 2014. He is also a Marshall Goldsmith & Hogan Certified Coach.