Kaleem Kamboj

Professor of Design Strategy and Managerial Entrepreneurship
Parsons School of Design – The New School

A serial entrepreneur, successfully orchestrating Start-ups, plus elevating organizational performance through skillful restructuring, Kaleem builds and leads top-performing teams focused on collaboration and exceeding goals in the areas of operations, marketing, and comprehensive development.

An expert in the identification, analysis, and resolution of diverse operational issues, continuously maintaining top performance while offering superior programs and services. Kaleem specialises in R&D, AI, Data Science, Strategic/Tactical Planning, Competitor Analysis Marketing Strategies, Policy/Procedure Development, Problem Resolution, Project Planning, and Risk Management.

Kaleem is recipient of the Faculty Award in 2000 from The Parsons School for Design, where he is faculty since 1998. He has co-authored and published several papers on Design and Organizational Management. At Parsons, he is currently Assistant Professor, teaching Game Theory by Design and Global Professional Practices.

Dr. Emma Jefferies

Organisational Consultant
HM Revenue & Customs

For Emma, empathy and curiosity are her life passions. Being dyslexic she knows the importance of creating a supportive environment where people can thrive.

She led on spreading a WE (Workplace Empathy) mindset in the UK government (and beyond) to support inclusion and wellbeing agendas, implementing innovative empathy programs and supports organizations to build community to spread empathy and curiosity skills through small behaviour changes embedded in everyday work life.

Emma has also co-written 2 books on organisational transformations using Design Thinking, and worked as an organizational designer, user researcher and service designer to decode changing customer expectations across 5 nations.

Yu-kai Chou

Gamification Designer & International Keynote Speaker
Octalysis Group

Yu-kai Chou is an Author and International Keynote Speaker on Gamification and Behavioral Design. The Original Creator of the Octalysis Framework, and the author of Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards, he is currently President of The Octalysis Group and the Founder of Octalysis Prime, a Gamified Mentorship Platform.

One of the earliest pioneers in Gamification, Yu-kai was rated #1 among the “Gamification Gurus Power 100” by RISE, plus awarded the “Gamification Guru of the Year” Award in 2014, 2015 and 2017 by the World Gamification Congress and the Gamification Europe Conference. He has helped a variety of companies, from seed stage startups to some of the biggest Fortune 500 global companies . He has been a regular speaker/lecturer on gamification and motivation worldwide. His work has affected over 1 Billion users’ experiences across the world.

Alok B. Nandi

Managing Director-Partner of Spread Design BV / Past President of IxDA
Entrepreneur Strategist Author Speaker Educator

Born in Congo, raised in Zaire, based in Brussels, with a background that combines Engineering, Management and Film Studies, Alok Nandi is Partner and Managing Director at Spread. Alok deploys innovation and design scenarios in multiple sectors.

As a creative entrepreneur and intrapreneur, he has followed the waves of digital transformation, designing for the web since 1994 and then leading design teams for the digital presence of publishing companies in Belgium and France (Casterman, the publisher of a.o. Tintin; groupe Flammarion).

Alok has been engaged in various EU funded R&D programs to explore storytelling with technologies, a.o. AR & VR installations for museums and public places. This made him the co-founder of a spin-off specialised in interactive set-ups.

Dr Raveendranath Nayak

Director & Professor
Manipal Institute of Management – MAHE

Professor Dr. Raveendranath Nayak has extensive experience in teaching, research, consulting and management, which includes a career of eight years in India followed by twenty years in Australia. He is currently Director of School of Management, Manipal.

His Ph.D. thesis on Corporate Sustainability earned in Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia won him the 2007 Professor John O. Miller award for the most distinguished Ph.D. thesis in the University. In his immediate previous academic position in Federation University, Australia, he was the Chair of the Academic Progress Committee and the Coordinator of International Engagement.

Deepak Menon

Partner Design & Research Director
Microsoft + Angel investor, ex-Chief Product Officer @ Myntra | Xoogler

Deepak leads the Product Design and Research teams in the Experience & Devices (E+D) and Artificial Intelligence & Research (AI+R) divisions at Microsoft India. His team helped define ‘What is productivity for billions of mobile-only users’, leading to product innovations like Kaizala and Microsoft Office. An alumnus of The Ohio State University, USA, Deepak was also responsible for designing and defining the Ribbon interface for Microsoft Office.

Deepak is the driver for the award winning Microsoft Centre for Information work. He has actively engaged with the Google leading User Experience teams (India, Seattle), besides being the Chief Product and Customer officer at Myntra where he has successfully led multi functional teams.

Sonia Manchanda

Founding Partner – Spread Design And Innovation I Project Director – Dream:In
A Strategic Design Project recognised as a Global Game Changer

Sonia is a design strategist, design thinker and a communication designer. An alumni of the National Institute of Design, she is founding partner at Spread Design and Innovation where she leads massive transformational projects. She is also the creator of Dream:in, a global open innovation and design thinking initiative that has been recognised as a global game changer. Sonia’s work bridges the space between design and learning to successfully deploy design as a tool for socio-economic transformation.

For over the last 20+ years, Sonia has led multiple interdisciplinary teams breezily through tough challenges – in the business design, branding, experience design and learning design spaces – converting practice into learning systems, blending practice and academics seamlessly; thinking through and demonstrating the highest level of craft.

Sonal Dabral

Former Chief Creative Officer South and South East Asia, Vice Chairman India
Ogilvy

With over three decades of experience in designing brands, communication and creative leadership, Sonal, an NID alumnus, has led agencies to creative glory in three diverse markets across Asia. First transforming Ogilvy into a top creative body in the Asia Pacific. Then heading Bates followed by a successful stint at DDB Mudra.

Over the years, Sonal, a popular Speaker has shared his insights and ideas on Creativity, Advertising and Storytelling at major festivals, events and conferences at major global events.

Avnish Sabharwal

Managing Director
Accenture Ventures

Avnish is an innovator, strategist and a technology evangelist with 25 years extensive experience and track record around market making, growth hacking, corporate innovation, digital transformation and leadership development for Top 500 Fortune clients in both mature and emerging markets. I have applied these capabilities across various industries, with a particular focus on the automotive and industrial sector.

He has a successful track record of building new practices and service based organizations from inception and making them sustainable and high performing businesses by implementing strong management and leadership best practices backed with world class systems, processes and controls.

In his current role at Accenture in India he heads Innovation, Investments, Acquisitions, Strategy and Deal Origination. Prior to Accenture, he worked with IBM’s Global Business Services in India and the United Kingdom for almost a decade in various leadership roles. He has served in the Indian Armed forces for seven years and has performed the role of Aide-de-Camp of the Governor of Madhya Pradesh.

Satyaki Raghunath

Chief Strategy and Development Officer, Bangalore International Airport
ACI World, IT Standing Committee Member | Advisor | Digital Strategist | Board Member

Satyaki is the Chief Strategy & Development Officer at BIAL. He has almost two decades of experience in working with public and private sector investors and operators of aviation and transport infrastructure advising on business, finance, strategy, regulatory and project delivery related initiatives across the world. During this time, he has had extensive experience with aviation system planning across major cities viz. Chicago, Dubai, Houston, Istanbul, London, New Delhi etc.

Prior to joining BIAL, Satyaki was with GMR Airports Ltd as Chief Innovation Officer for the airport sector across the group. Before this he held leadership roles at London Stansted Airport, Dubai Airports, where he was Head of Master Planning and at LeighFisher, a specialist global airport advisory firm.

Biju Damodharan

Sr. Manager, UX Design & Research
Amazon India

Biju is the Manager of Design at Amazon where he leads the UX design and research for Amazon India. Prior to Amazon, he was Senior Manager of Design at Yahoo! India R&D, leading design for Yahoo! Small Business.

Biju has spent 14 years in designing and leading design teams that crafted User Experience Design for Online Communication Products, Enterprise Business Applications, Network Management Products and Online Products for Small Business.