Martin Desmarais
Editor-in-Chief
IndUS Business Journal

Martin Desmarais is the editor-in-chief of the IndUS Business Journal, a national, monthly newspaper that covers the South Asian business community in the United States. He took over the reigns of the IndUS Business Journal in June 2002. Under his tenure, the paper has increased its coverage from a technology-focused newspaper to include in-depth reporting on health and medicine, franchise and hospitality and Indo-U.S. relations.

Prior to joining the IndUS Business Journal, Desmarais was the associate editor of India New England. Previously, he worked for the Natick Bulletin and the Brockton Enterprise and served as an adjunct faculty member in the communications department at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass. He also served as a media relations specialist with the Boston Breakers of the Women’s United Soccer Association.

He has a bachelor’s degree with honors in communication from Stonehill College and a master’s degree in media studies from The Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA.

Shahana Basu Kanodia
Partner
Edward Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP

Shahana Basu Kanodia is a Partner in Edward Angell Palmer & Dodge's Business Law Department and Chair of the firm's South Asia Practice Group. Shahana's practice areas include general corporate matters with a focus on cross border business transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity and other strategic investments.

Shahana serves on the Executive Board of the Yale Law School Association and is active in the Yale-India Initiatives, which includes the Yale CEO Summit and the India-Yale Parliamentary Leadership Program, amongst others. She also serves on the Steering Committees of the International Law Section and the M&A Committee of the Boston Bar Association and is a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society in England. Shahana was a member of the New England Finance and Steering Committee for President Obama and accompanied President Obama to India as part of his Presidential Business Executive Delegation in November 2010. She is a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs and serves on the Advisory Board of The Loomba Foundation and is also an Overseer of the Peabody Essex Museum.

Shahana received a BA in History with First Class Honors from Delhi University, a Tripos in Social & Political Sciences with First Class Honors from Cambridge University, an MA in Sociology with First Class Honors from the University of Chicago and a JD from Yale Law School.

Ravi Ramamurti
Distinguished Professor International Business and Director, Center for Emerging Markets
Northeastern UniversityProfessor Ramamurti obtained his B.Sc. (Physics) from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi University (1972), his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (1974), where he graduated at the top of his class, and his Doctorate in Business Administration from Harvard Business School (1982).Professor Ramamurti is a leading professor of international business and strategy and has been a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, CEIBS-China, IMD-Switzerland, the Fletcher School at Tufts U., and the Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania.

Professor Ramamurti has done research in or consulted with firms and governments in more than 20 emerging economies. He has been a consultant to the United Nations, the World Bank, USAID, and Fulbright. He has also consulted with several private firms in the U.S. and abroad, including Arthur D. Little, Bosch, Cognex, EG&G, EMC, Hasbro, KPMG International, Petrobras, Praxair, Reutgers, SK Group (South Korea), Steel Authority of India Ltd., Tata Group, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Wipro.

Sheikh A. Rahman, P.E.
President/CEO
SAR Engineering, Inc.

Mr. Rahman arrived in San Luis Obispo, California in the Summer of 1964 from Bangladesh to attend California Polytechnic State University and graduated in 1967 with a BS degree in mechanical engineering. He joined R.G. Vanderwiel Engineers in Boston, MA and worked as an engineer for five years. He left Vanderwiel Engineers 1972 and joined Scippican Consultants International in Cambridge, MA. He became a senior project engineer in charge of many large projects, including King Kalid Military City in Saudi Arabia. It was then an $8.5 billion dollar city project for 70,000 military personnel to live and work. The city was built with all modern facilities, including the world’s largest chilled water plant to fully air condition 2,000,000 sq. ft. of residential, commercial and industrial complexes.

Mr. Rahman opened his office, SAR Engineering, Inc., in Quincy, MA in 1981, which grew over the years to100 employees, worked on the U.S. Embassies in Bangkok, Thailand, Pretoria, South Africa, and Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has also worked extensively on the Central Artery/ Tunnels projects in Boston, MA, the Dear Island sewage treatment facility in Winthrop, MA, a winery and an underground opera theater in Napa Valley, California. Mr. Rahman has recently completed the design of seven large underground command centers for the Ministry of Defense of Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Rahman is a registered professional engineer, practicing in many states in the USA and Overseas. He was a consultant/ lecturer at Harvard University, MIT, and Roger Williams University for many years. He is a Board of Director of Quincy Medical Center Health and Education Foundation and a Board of Director of the South Shore Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Rahman lives in Norwell, MA with his wife Catherine and their three sons, Steven, Michael, and John.

Lesley M. Varghese
Senior Associate, South Asia Group
Nixon Peabody LLP

Lesley Varghese is an attorney practicing in the South Asia and Financial Restructuring & Bankruptcy practice groups at Nixon Peabody LLP. Nixon Peabody LLP is a Global 100 law firm—one of the largest in the world—with approximately 700 attorneys collaborating across major practice areas in 17 cities across the U.S. and in European and Asian commercial centers. They are widely respected for the depth of their industry knowledge and for being responsive, efficient, and easy to work with.

Lesley concentrates her legal practice on financial restructuring, bankruptcy, and business litigation. She has experience representing a variety of clients in bankruptcy courts throughout the United States, including investors, trustees, lenders, and terminated employees and executives. Lesley has also advised lenders and investors on insolvency aspects of structured and traditional project finance transactions, negotiated and litigated conflicts arising under lending and investment agreements, and counseled officers and directors on their fiduciary duties. As a member of the Firm's South Asia Practice Group, Lesley has counseled U.S. clients on foreign direct investments in India and related compliance issues. Lesley’s international insolvency experience includes advising clients on enforcement options in cross-border transactions and international insolvency proceedings.

Lesley is President of the Board of Trustees of the North American South Asian Bar Association Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that develops and funds public interest projects in the areas of domestic violence, immigration, hate crimes, family law, and labor or workers’ rights. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Boston Higashi School, an international school for children and young adults with autism.

Lesley is an active member of the Boston Bar Association, and serves as co-chair of the Law and Policy Committee of the Bankruptcy Section. In addition, she represents the Firm on the Associates Advisory Committee of the Boston Lawyers Group, a consortium of more than 45 law firms, corporate legal departments, and government agencies dedicated to promoting diversity within Boston’s legal community.

Ram Srivistav
CEO & Co-founder
Cognika

Ram Srivastav helps his clients develop strategy and improve operations. He has helped build cross-functional, cross-cultural teams to deliver unprecedented bottom-line results in his leadership roles and enterprise transformation; change management and operations improvement consulting engagements.

Ram’s over 27 years of experience includes ten years in CEO / Board level positions in companies ranging from joint ventures of large multinationals in India to start up companies in the US. He was the CEO of Schlumberger Industries India Ltd., CG Schlumberger Electricity Management Ltd. and Dabhol Power Company in India and Cognika Corporation, Cognika Intelligence and Defense Solution and other start ups in the US.

Over the last ten years as a management consultant in the Ram has provided leadership, strategic direction and operations improvement in consulting projects for clients including cc-Hubwoo, Smith & Nephew Endoscopy, Boston Scientific, St. Gobain, Exelon, ConEd and International Trucks & Engines. Ram has supported post merger integration, helped define strategy for formation of alliances, joint ventures and mergers for companies in varied industries. He has identified significant operational cost savings for his clients and helped organize and train them to sustain the savings in their operations.

Ram’s industry experience includes – Utilities / Energy Companies; Independent Power Projects; Oil & Gas Exploration; Construction; Gas / Water / Electric Metering; Medical Devices / Health Care; and Plastics and Automotive manufacturing.

Ram is an alumnus of Columbia University Graduate School of Business, NY (Columbia Senior Executive Program) and IIT, Delhi (Directors Gold Medal).

Ram has worked and lived in China, India, Indonesia, Brunei, Egypt, UK, France and USA. He presently lives in Brookline, MA with his wife and three children.

Gavin Parrish
Senior Consultant for Global Services
Control Risks

Gavin Parrish is a Senior Consultant for Global Services and is based in Houston. In this role, he is responsible for a variety of global consulting engagements, account management and business development, working with new and existing clients in a wide range of industries to identify areas of need and implement risk management strategies. These engagements include political risk assessments, investigations and crisis management tasks. He specializes in Compliance related engagements, including anticorruption work centered on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

Prior to joining Control Risks, Gavin worked as a corporate attorney in New York, São Paulo and Miami for the law firms of Cleary Gottlieb and White & Case. He represented issuers, underwriters and placement agents in global and domestic public offerings of debt and equity, crossborder IPOs, private equity investments, joint ventures, 144A and Reg S offerings and exchange/tender offers. He served as lead counsel to the underwriters in the OGX IPO in 2008 – the then largest IPO in Brazilian capital markets history and Latin Lawyer Corporate Finance Deal of the Year (2008). Gavin also counseled companies on general corporate governance issues, SEC reporting obligations and anticorruption compliance. In 20052006, he served a law clerk to the Honorable Harriet O’Neill of the Texas Supreme Court.

Gavin has been a member of the New York Bar since 2004. Gavin has a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and Spanish from the University of Texas, a Master of Arts in International Economics and Latin American Studies from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School in New York City, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. In 1997, Gavin was a Fulbright Scholar in Argentina. He is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish.

Shiva Ganapathy
Managing Director & Co-founder
Marco Polo Asset Management

Shiva Ganapathy is co-founder of Marco Polo Asset Management (MPAM), an integrated investment management platform based in New York City with the capability to originate, structure, distribute and manage products across multiple asset classes.  Prior to MPAM, Shiva served as Senior Managing Director at Structured Asset Management Company NY, dealing with credit and hedge fund portfolios.  And even earlier, he was Managing Director with Citigroup Global Markets, NY. Over a period of 18 years with Citi, Shiva held several key positions across diverse markets (Asia, Europe, the United States) in trading, sales, structuring, balance sheet and portfolio management. Shiva is an alumnus of Tepper School of Business (Carnegie Mellon University) and the London School of Economics.

Srividya Subramanian
Patent Specialist
Nixon Peabody LLP

Srividya Subramanian joined Nixon Peabody LLP in 2008 as a patent specialist. She focuses her practice on the preparation and prosecution of patent applications in the biomedical and biotechnology fields. She has extensive research experience in the study of autoimmune diseases, asthma and allergy, genetics, genomics, molecular biology, and the generation of mouse models of human disease.

Prior to joining the firm, Dr. Subramanian’s scientific research was in immunology, with a specialization in autoimmune diseases, immunogenetics, and allergy and asthma. Dr. Subramanian has first and co-author primary research publications in several journals, has authored book chapters, and has been selected to present her research at international meetings in immunology. She has also been the recipient of awards, including the first Eliot Golding Award in Immunology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and travel scholarships.

Ms. Subramanian is active in the Volunteer for Partners for Youth with Disabilities as well as the Network of South Asian Professionals. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and her M.Sc. from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science.

Dr. Ramesh Hariharan
Global Director and Geographic Expansion Leader
Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics

Ramesh Hariharan is a Global Director and Geographic Expansion Leader at Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics. Prior to Novartis, he was a Senior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, which he joined after his MBA. At McKinsey, he served Pharmaceutical, Biotech and Private Equity clients in U.S., Germany and U.K., spanning a range of Commercial, R&D and Business Development issues for 4+ years. Ramesh’s educational degrees include a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay, Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and MBA from MIT Sloan ’04.

Pravin R. Chaturvedi, PH.D.
Founder & CEO
IndUS Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Dr. Chaturvedi is the Founder & CEO of IndUS Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an emerging pharmaceutical company, focused on the discovery and development of novel small molecule drugs for the treatment of cancer, diabetes and infectious diseases, which he spun out from San Francisco-headquartered Napo Pharmaceuticals in 2010. He also remains the President and Chief Scientific Officer of Napo Pharmaceuticals, and has led Napo’s global scientific and operational efforts. Prior to founding IndUS Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Chaturvedi was the founding President & CEO of Scion Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on the discovery and development of new drugs targeting ion channels for the treatment of central nervous system (CNS), cardiovascular (CV) and urological disorders. Prior to Scion, Dr. Chaturvedi, spent several years at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where he was the Head of Lead Evaluation and participated successfully in the discovery and development of several new antiviral, oncology, immunosuppressive and anti-inflammatory drugs. Prior to Vertex, Dr. Chaturvedi was in the preclinical group at Alkermes, where he participated in CNS and oncology product development and prior to that, he was in the Product Development group at Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert Company, where he worked on the development of new drugs for the treatment of oncology, epilepsy, pain and cognition. Dr. Chaturvedi has been associated with the discovery and development of several novel drugs for the treatment of a variety of diseases. Over his career, Dr. Chaturvedi has been a part of the teams that led to the commercialization of five marketed drugs and has been associated with the discovery, development and advancement of several additional drugs that are currently undergoing clinical evaluation. He is a serial entrepreneur and has cofounded two biotech start-up enterprises and has been associated with three other biotech start-ups. Dr. Chaturvedi holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from West Virginia University and a Bachelor’s in Pharmacy from the University of Bombay.

Hemant Taneja
Managing Director
General Catalyst Partners

As a Managing Director General Catalyst Partners, Hemant invests in both new and existing technology businesses. His areas of special interest include clean energy, emerging economies, healthcare, and consumer internet.

Before joining General Catalyst in 2002, Hemant was founder and CEO of Isovia, a Boston-based mobile software and applications company acquired by JP Mobile (MOT) in 2001. Hemant is also the co-founder & Chairman of NECEC.org, a non-profit, focused on advancing New England's clean energy economy to global leadership and currently co-teaches “Founders Journey” at MIT, a course that he designed with the goal of de-mystifying entrepreneurship for engineers.

Hemant is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning an M.S. in Operations Research, an M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, a B.S. in Mathematics, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and a B.S. in Biology & Biomedical Engineering.

Romil Sheth
Senior Associate, Urban Designer
Sasaki Associates, Inc.

Romil is a lead urban designer in Sasaki’s International planning and urban design practice. Based in Watertown, Massachusetts, Sasaki is an inter-disciplinary firm engaged in nearly all aspects of design: urban design, landscape architecture, architecture, interior design, civil engineering and graphic design. Throughout his career, Romil has worked on a diverse range of project types that include design for urban districts, new communities, campus environments, and urban waterfronts in India, UAE, Singapore, South Korea, and Jordan. His award-winning work encompasses architecture, urban design, and urban conservation while incorporating extensive research on vernacular urban systems and typologies in India. Prior to joining Sasaki, Romil worked as a director and principal designer with the firm of Rahul Mehrotra and Associates (RMA) in India.

Romil graduated with a Master’s in Urban Design and Architecture from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a Bachelor’s in Architecture from CEPT, Ahmedabad. He regularly serves as a studio design critic at MIT and Roger Williams University, and he is an avid photographer who has held a number of exhibitions at various cities in India.

Vivek Soni
Managing Partner
Boston Cleantech Partners

Vivek works with investors and management teams to build successful cleantech businesses in the US and in India. He is an Advisor to the A.T.E. Group (India) companies in the cleantech sector. He serves on the Board of Directors of A.T.E. Private Limited, HMX Systems Private Limited, A.T.E. Envirotech Private Limited and EcoAxis Systems Private Limited. Vivek also serves as a Venture Advisor to an international, late stage, cleantech Venture Capital fund.

Prior to founding Boston Cleantech, Vivek was Chairman and Chief Technology Officer at Navitas International, a special purpose acquisition company formed for the purpose of acquiring an operating business in India in energy, water and transportation sectors. From 2001 to 2004, Vivek served as President, Corporate Technology Strategy and Services at the Aditya Birla Group, one of the largest industrial groups in India. Prior to joining the Aditya Birla Group, Vivek was Director, Science & Technology, at Polaroid Corporation, where he worked from 1987 to 2001. Vivek started his career in 1985 at Shell Development Company, a Royal Dutch/ Shell Group Company in Houston, TX. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India. He has attended the Executive Development Program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Vivek is a Charter Member of TiE-Boston. He is also member of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge and has been associated with several professional organizations. He has an excellent network in the financial, business and technical communities in the US and in India.