Sangeet Chowfla, President & CEO, Graduate Management Admission Council

Forum: Engaging New-Generation Students & Employees

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Sangeet Chowfla is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Graduate Management Admission Council®, the nonprofit education organization of leading graduate business schools and owner of the Graduate Management Admission Test® (GMAT®). He became President of the worldwide association in September 2013 and Chief Executive Officer in January 2014.

Sangeet has more than 32 years’ experience in P&L Management, General Management, Product Management, International Business Development and Venture Capital investment, gained in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, India and the Middle East. His particular area of expertise is the management of high-growth enterprises, the creation of high-performance teams, and the internationalization of businesses.

Most recently, Sangeet was EVP-Global Markets and Chief Strategy Officer at Comviva Technologies where he managed the company’s customer-facing Market Units (SAARC, Africa, MENA, LATAM, Europe/Americas). Previously, Sangeet managed the company’s Mobile Solutions unit, comprising all the product businesses, and was responsible for establishing Comviva’s operations in Africa and Latin America. During his tenure, Comviva’s overall revenues quadrupled to approximately $100 million, while international business grew 12-fold with a customer base of 110 mobile operators in 85 countries. As CSO, he advised the board on long-term strategy and direction.

Previous to his work at Comviva, Sangeet was a partner with Timeline Ventures in San Diego (2001-2006), participating in the acquisition and turnaround of Del Mar Datatrac (mortgage software). Sangeet was the lead investor and Executive Chairman of Technocom, leading the company’s Series A round of financing.

Earlier in his career, Sangeet held various management positions at the Hewlett-Packard Company over an 18-year period including sales and marketing management positions in Athens, Germany and Singapore. In 1995, Sangeet moved to San Diego, California, where he was Vice President and General Manager of HP’s Inkjet Media Division, which he grew from a startup to $300 million in revenues.

Sangeet took his BA in Economics from St. Stephen’s College at Delhi University and his MBA, with focus on marketing and finance, from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University.

A global citizen, Sangeet has worked and lived in India, Dubai, Greece, Germany, Singapore and the United States.

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Robert A. Brown, PhD, President, Boston University

Wed 10/1, 2pm – 3pm EST
Forum: Producing Research with Impact

Dr. Robert A. Brown, a distinguished chemical engineer, has served as president of Boston University since 2005. During his tenure, Boston University produced and has begun executing its first strategic plan, Choosing to be Great, which focuses on strengthening the quality of undergraduate and graduate programs, attracting world-class faculty members, and facilitating their research and scholarship. Significant progress has been made toward these goals, as evidenced by enhanced quality of the incoming undergraduate class, increased ranking of the University and, in 2012, the University being invited to join the Association of American Universities, which includes the 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada. Also in 2012, the University launched its first comprehensive fundraising campaign to raise $1 billion by 2017; to date, the University has raised over $700 million. The campaign already has led to important new academic initiatives including the Kilachand Honors College, a unique discovery-based approach to fulfilling the general education requirement for our most talented undergraduate students, and the Pardee School for Global Studies within the College of Arts and Sciences.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Brown also is a director of the DuPont Company, a trustee of the Universities Research Association, a director of the American Council on Education, and has served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology for President George W. Bush. He also serves as chairman of the Academic Research Council of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Singapore, is a member of Singapore’s Research Innovation and Enterprise Council, and is a trustee of The King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC).

Before coming to Boston University, Dr. Brown held a number of leadership positions at MIT, including provost, dean of the School of Engineering, and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering. He has published more than 250 papers in areas related to mathematical modeling of transport phenomena in materials, and he served as executive editor of the Journal of Chemical Engineering Science from 1991 to 2004. He was named an honorary citizen of the Republic of Singapore in 2005 and in 2008, was honored as one of the top 100 Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. He and his wife Beverly have two grown sons.

See other Boston University VIPs: Ken Freeman, James Post, Michael Salinger, N. Venkatraman

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Della Bradshaw, Business Education Editor, Financial Times

Wed 10/1, 6am – 7am EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Della Bradshaw is the FT’s Business Education Editor and is responsible for all our business education coverage online, in the newspaper and in our magazines. She established the business education section in 1995 and devised and launched the first FT business school rankings in 1999. Before this, she was the Technology Lead Writer for the FT. She has previously lived and taught in Italy, Turkey and Japan.

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Douglas L. Becker, Founder, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Laureate Education Inc.

Wed 10/1, 4:30pm – 5:30pm
Forum: Increasing the Value of Management Education

Douglas L. Becker is chairman and chief executive officer of Laureate Education, Inc., the world’s leading network of higher education institutions. Mr. Becker has led the company since 1991, when it was known as Sylvan Learning Systems. Mr. Becker built Sylvan Learning Systems into the K-12 tutoring leader, with nearly 2,000 learning centers and 200,000 students before branching out into higher education in 1999. The Sylvan tutoring business was sold in 2003 to allow Laureate to focus on higher education.

Today, Laureate Education is a trusted global leader in providing access to high quality, innovative institutions of higher education. The Laureate International Universities network celebrates it’s 15th anniversary this year and has since grown to include over 850,000 students at more than 75 campus-based and online institutions in 29 countries throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. President William J. Clinton, 42nd president of the United States, serves as the Honorary Chancellor of the Laureate International Universities network, a role in which he offers advice on social responsibility, youth leadership and increasing access to higher education.

Mr. Becker is deeply committed to community service. He is the board chair of the International Youth Foundation, which has invested more than $200 million to improve conditions and prospects for young people in close to 80 countries. With Mr. Becker’s guidance, IYF expanded its YouthActionNet® program, which supports young social entrepreneurs around the globe. Mr. Becker also supports many civic groups in Baltimore, Maryland, his hometown.

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Andréa Backman, PhD, Senior Vice President & Dean, Jack Welch Management Institute

Wed 10/1, 12pm – 1pm EST
Forum: Increasing the Value of Management Education

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Anant Agarwal, PhD, CEO of edX, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT

Wed 10/1, 11am – 12pm EST
Forum: Cultivating Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Anant Agarwal is the CEO of edX, an online learning destination founded by Harvard and MIT. Anant taught the first edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, which drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He has served as the director of CSAIL, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. He is a successful serial entrepreneur, having co-founded several companies including Tilera Corporation, which created the Tile multicore processor, and Virtual Machine Works.

Anant won the Maurice Wilkes prize for computer architecture, and MIT’s Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He holds a Guinness World Record for the largest microphone array, and is an author of the textbook “Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits.”

Scientific American selected his work on organic computing as one of 10 World- Changing Ideas in 2011, and he was named in Forbes’ list of top 15 education innovators in 2012. Anant, a pioneer in computer architecture, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the ACM.

He hacks on WebSim, an online circuits laboratory, in his spare time. Anant holds a Ph.D. from Stanford and a bachelor’s from IIT Madras.

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Richard Straub, PhD, President & CEO, Peter Drucker Society Europe, Senior Advisor IBM Global Education Industry, Director of Corporate Services & EU Affairs, EFMD

Wed 10/1, 9am-10am EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

In his 32 years with IBM Dr. Richard Straub has held key international executive positions such as Deputy General Manager for PC Europe and Global Chief Learning Officer. Since 2006 he has started a new career working with non-profit organizations – as part time executive and as social entrepreneur. He is currently executive committee member at the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) and Secretary General of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG).  In addition he holds a strategic advisory role for the IBM Global Education Industry.
 
In 2008 he founded the Peter Drucker Society of Austria and in 2010 the Peter Drucker Society Europe as non-profit organizations. He is the president of both. The Peter Drucker Society has as its mission to be a catalyst for the improvement of Management as a vital role in modern society. As the crystallizing yearly event the Drucker Society organizes the Global Peter Drucker Forum in Vienna – the sixth edition will be held in November 2014. 

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