Neil S. Braun, JD, Dean, Lubin School of Business, Pace University

Tues 9/30, 10:30am – 11am EST
Forum: Evaluating Policy & Rankings

Neil S. Braun is the Dean of Pace University’s Lubin School of Business in New York since July 2010.  His first initiatives there included the creation of the Center for Global Governance, Reporting and Regulation and a professional certification program for financial institution compliance executives. He has previously been President of the NBC Television Network, Chairman and CEO of Viacom Entertainment, an internet and environmental entrepreneur, a film producer and corporate attorney. Braun serves on the board of directors and the audit and governance committees of IMAX Corporation(NYSE),  He is the Chairman of the Audit Committee for national anti-hunger organization Share Our Strength and is President of the Board of the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. He is an active member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and was chosen by that organization in 2012 as “one to watch.” Braun currently serves on the AACSB’s Business Practices Council and the Committee on Accreditation Policy.

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Ken Freeman, Allen Questrom Professor and Dean, Boston University Questrom School of Business

Chat: Tues 9/30, 3:00 – 3:30pm EST; Weds 10/2 8:00-9:00am

Bringing Industry and Academia Together to Create Value

Kenneth W. Freeman joined Boston University as the Allen Questrom Professor and Dean of Boston University Questrom School of Business in 2010.

Serving more than 3,400 students and 46,000 alumni, the Questrom School of Business pursues the vision “Creating Value for the World.” The School has transformed its undergraduate and MBA curricula, with a focus on ethics and global citizenship, and sectors that are dramatically impacting the world economy—health and life sciences, digital technology, sustainability and social enterprise.

Ken began his career at Corning Incorporated in 1972, progressing through the financial function before leading several businesses. He joined Corning Clinical Laboratories in 1995, and the company was spun off from Corning as Quest Diagnostics Incorporated soon thereafter. He led the dramatic turnaround of Quest Diagnostics as chairman and chief executive officer through 2004. Exceptional value was created for shareholders by executing a dramatic financial turnaround, establishing industry leadership, demonstrating effective growth through acquisition, and driving organic growth. Quest Diagnostics provided the third highest five-year shareholder returns among the Fortune 500 (1999-2003) and in 2004 was named to the Business Week 50. Market capitalization increased from approximately $350 million at the time of the spin-off to more than $9 billion.

A study of global business leadership conducted at INSEAD and published in the January 2013 issue of the Harvard Business Review named Ken one of the 100 best performing CEOs in the world.

Ken joined Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), in 2005 and served as a managing director and partner until his appointment as Dean at Boston University. From 2010 through 2013, he was a senior advisor to KKR, serving on the firm’s portfolio management committee.

Ken is currently a director of Lake Region Medical and the Graduate Management Admission Council. He has previously served on the boards of HCA, Masonite (chairman), TRW (lead director), Dow Corning Corporation, Ciba-Corning Corporation, Fleet Bank of New York and the Corning Incorporated Foundation.

Ken is a former member of the Healthcare Leadership Council, and the American Clinical Laboratory Association (chairman). He is the former chairman of The ARTS of the Southern Finger Lakes and the Corning Philharmonic Society, and a former trustee of Elmira College and the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Ken received an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School in 1976, and a BSBA, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Bucknell University in 1972. Ken is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Bucknell University.

 

See other Boston University VIPs: Robert A. Brown, James Post, Michael Salinger

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Xiongwen Lu, PhD, Dean of Questrom School of Business, Fudan University

Tuesday 9/30, 9:00 am – 10:00 am EST
Forum: Increasing the Value of Management Education

Professor Xiongwen Lu is Dean of Questrom School of Business, Fudan University, and Founding Director of Chinese Marketing Research Center at Fudan University. Prof. Lu’s teaching and research interests cover marketing in China as an immature market, internet marketing in China, service marketing, corporate reorganization, and change management.

Prof. Lu has been serving as Vice President of Chinese Society for Management Modernization since 2010 and Vice Chairman of China National MBA Education Supervisory Committee since 2008. He also serves as Vice President of ABEST 21 (The Alliance on Business Education and Scholarship for Tomorrow, a 21st Century Organization), Council Member of AAPBS (Association of Asia-Pacific Business Schools), Board Director of Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), Member of AACSB Asia-Pacific Advisory Council and EFMD Asia Advisory Board.

Prof. Lu received his PhD in Economics from Fudan University and was a Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, MIT Sloan Questrom School of Business, and the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University.

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Rick Chavez, Chief Solutions Officer, Microsoft Advertising and Consumer Monetization Business Group

Tuesday 9/30, 10:30am -11:30 am EST
Forum: Cultivating Innovation and Entrepreneurship

He is responsible for innovating solutions that enable the world’s most important brands to connect and deeply engage with the customers they serve.   His team works with Global 250 enterprises to solve high-value problems, ones that blend consumer internet and enterprise assets from the broad Microsoft portfolio. In this capacity, he leads an inter-discipline organization that spans field sales, marketing, and engineering, and is comprised of a Consumer Insights team and an xD (Experience Design) team. 

Rick has introduced the ‘Studio Model’: an approach for innovating insight-powered experiences that provide people more of what they want, and less of what they don’t – at work, home, and on-the-go. The insights are based on highly-differentiated frameworks for understanding human behavior, based on the primary research of the Consumer Insights team[1]. These insights are brought to life through design-based capabilities of the xD team. The Studio Model emphasizes co-creation with consumers, brands, and partners, and a test-and-learn iterative approach where are ideas are framed, vetted, and then ‘prototyped into existence.’ In this model, solutions are ‘pulled’ into the market – tuned by the evolving digital habits of consumers and the competitive demands of high-ambition CMOs. 

Rick has 25+ years of experience as an entrepreneur and advisor, helping organizations build substantial market and competitive value through commercializing technology products, services and management approaches. Prior to joining Microsoft, Rick was a managing director at TCG Advisors, a boutique strategy and transformation firm based in Silicon Valley. Some of his work with companies such as Adobe was incorporated in a book on strategy and innovation, Escape Velocity, by Geoffrey Moore (Houghton Mifflin, September 2011). He also served as interim executive and start-up entrepreneur. As interim executive, he was CEO for LOBBY7 and Vice President, Corporate Development for Brix Networks. LOBBY7 was acquired by Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) and Brix was acquired by EXFO Corporation (NASDAQ: EXFO).[1] Key frameworks as described in the book by Natasha Hritzuk and Kelly Jones, both on Rick’s team: Multiscreen Marketing: The Seven Things You Need to Know to Reach Your Customers across TVs, Computers, Tablets, and Mobile Phones. CxO implications of these frameworks can be found in the Afterword.

 

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Soumitra Dutta, PhD, Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean, Professor of Management and Organizations, Cornell University

Forum: Cultivating Innovation & Entrepreneurship

*Forum Hosts engage throughout the 60 hours at unscheduled times.

Soumitra Dutta is the eleventh dean and professor of management and organizations in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate Questrom School of Business at Cornell University. He most recently served as the Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Business and Technology and was the founder and academic director of the eLab at INSEAD, a top-ranked graduate business school in Fontainebleau, France.

Previous roles Dutta has held during his 23-year tenure at INSEAD include dean of external relations; dean of executive education; and dean of technology and e-learning. He has served as a visiting professor in the Haas School at Berkeley, Oxford Internet Institute at University of Oxford, and Judge School at University of Cambridge in England. He has lived and worked in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including stints as an engineer with GE in the U.S. and Schlumberger in Japan.

Dutta is an authority on the impact of new technology on the business world, especially social media and social networking, and on strategies for driving growth and innovation by embracing the digital economy. He is the co-editor and author respectively of two influential reports in technology and innovation — the Global Information Technology Report (co-published with the World Economic Forum) and the Global Innovation Index (to be co-published with the World Intellectual Property Organization). Both reports have been used by several governments around the world in assessing and planning their technology and innovation policies.

His work has been widely published in the Harvard Business Review, European Management Journal, Management Science, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Decision Support Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and other journals. Dutta and his ideas have been featured in myriad business magazines, newspapers, and blogs, including Global Intelligence for the CIO, Information Week, Brasil, BusinessWorld India, Chief Executive, Finance & Management, Chief Executive Magazine, Forbes, and The McKinsey Quarterly.

Dutta is a member of the Davos Circle, an association of long-time participants in the Annual Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, and has engaged in a number of multi-stakeholder initiatives to shape global, regional and industry agendas. He is on the advisory boards of several international business schools. He has co-founded two firms and is on the boards of several startups. He received the European Case of the Year award from the European Case Clearing House in 2002, 2000, 1998, and 1997.

Dutta received a B.Tech. in electrical engineering and computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. He received an MS in business administration, an MS in computer science, and a PhD in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.

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Peter Wexler, Cofounder, SpiderCloud Wireless

Forum: Cultivating Innovation & Entrepreneurship

*Forum Hosts engage throughout the 60 hours at unscheduled times.

Peter Wexler is an Engineer, entrepreneur, and Investor currently focusing on Internet and mobile technologies. He has been instrumental in helping to evolve the computer networking industry into the globally connected, broadband environment that we know today. During the past 25 years, he has led the development of key products that form the foundation of the Internet and today’s rapidly growing mobile networks. Currently he is a co-founder, investor and Director of Spidercloud Wireless. The company, develops devices and systems that provide very dense indoor licensed spectrum to feed the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and other wireless devices. 

Peter was the founding Vice President of Engineering at Juniper Networks. During his tenure at Juniper, Peter grew the engineering organization from 17 to 600, helped lead the company from initial product through IPO, and oversaw the delivery of multiple generations of high-performance routers that power much of today’s high-speed Internet. Subsequently he managed Juniper’s Mobile Business Unit and was a Director of the Ericsson-Juniper joint venture company. Previously Peter has held Engineering and management positions at a number of Companies including Bay Networks, Wellfleet communications and Siemens.

His good fortune has enabled him to help take a number of companies public, raise many rounds of venture financing, work with insanely great people, and to be part of global organizations ranging in size from 10 to 440,000. He has also shared in the heartbreak of, on occasion, developing great technology 5 years before there was a market.

Peter serves on a number of private company boards and is a member of the University of Illinois Engineering Advisory Board as well as the Boston University Questrom School of Business Advisory Board. He has an MBA from Boston University, an MSE from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a BSEE from SUNY Stonybrook.

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Maryam Alavi, PhD, Dean, Stephen P. Zelnak Jr. Chair, Professor of Information Technology Management, Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business

Tues 9/30, 9am – 10am EST
Forum: Supporting 21st Century Competencies

Maryam Alavi, PhD, joined Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business as Dean in July 2014. She also holds the Stephen P. Zelnak Jr. Chair.

As an expert in IT innovations and strategic applications, Alavi has authored numerous published papers and has served on the editorial boards of several prestigious academic journals. She is a thought leader on technology-mediated learning and an experienced educator who has extensive experience in developing leadership curriculum for business students.

Alavi is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences. She has consulted with organizations including AT&T, KPMG, IBM, Marriott Corporation, Sodexo, the American College of Physicians, the Aspen Institute, the General Accounting Office, International Association for Management Education, and the World Bank. Her international work experience includes teaching graduate and executive development programs in Europe, North Africa, and Asia.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she served as interim dean and vice dean of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, where she held the John & Lucy Cook Chair in Information Strategy.

Alavi was awarded the distinguished Marvin Bower Faculty Fellowship at Harvard Business School and received the prestigious AIS (Association of Information Systems) Fellows Award. AIS Fellows are elected by a committee of peers and are expected to be role models and an inspiration to colleagues and students within the discipline.

She served two terms as a board member of the Georgia Technology Authority appointed by the Governor of the State of Georgia.

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Jitendra V. Singh, PhD, Dean, School of Business and Management, Michael Jebsen Professor of Business Chair Professor, Department of Management, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Tues 9/30, 10am – 11am EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Jitendra Singh is currently Michael Jebsen Professor of Business and Management and Dean, School of Business and Management at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong. He moved to Hong Kong after a long career at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

From 2007-2009, he was Dean of the Nanyang Business School (NBS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, one of the leading science and technology universities in Asia Pacific. During this period, he was Shaw Foundation Chair and Professor of Strategy, Management and Organization at Nanyang Business School. In addition, at the university level, he was a member of the University Cabinet of NTU, and Chief Adviser, India Strategy to the President of NTU. At the end of his term as Dean of Nanyang Business School (NBS), their MBA program was ranked #24 in the 2009 Financial Times rankings, and was rated as one of the leaders in the Asia Pacific region.

He has been a faculty member at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, since 1987 where he was the Saul P. Steinberg Professor in the Department of Management before moving to HKUST. During 1998-2001, he was Vice Dean, International Academic Affairs. In his Vice Dean role, he was a member of Wharton’s core administrative leadership team and was charged with shaping and implementing the global strategy of Wharton. These efforts culminated, in part, in the worldwide alliance between Wharton and INSEAD, the foundation of Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India and the creation of Singapore Management University in Singapore. Earlier, he was Director of the Emerging Economies Program at Wharton from 1996-98. From 1991-1995, he was Research Director, Entrepreneurship at the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Center at Wharton, the leading research center in entrepreneurship at any US business school.

He moved to Wharton in 1987 from University of Toronto, Canada where he was an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the (now) Rotman School of Business. In 1991, he received an M.A. (honoris causa) from University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford Business School in 1983. His earliest education was in natural and mathematical sciences and he received his B.Sc. (Physics, Mathematics, and Statistics) from Lucknow University, India. Subsequently, he received his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. He worked as a line manager at Voltas Ltd., a Tata group company, in India for three years before coming to the US for his Ph.D.

His research and teaching interests focus on strategy and organization, with a specific current interest in emerging multinationals and business leadership in India.

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Vineet Nayar, DBA, Founder, Sampark Foundation, Former CEO, HCL Technologies

Tues 9/30, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST
Forum: Harnessing Digital Technology

Vineet Nayar is former CEO of HCL Technologies and Founder of Sampark Foundation. He is also author of the highly acclaimed management book “Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down” (Harvard Business Press, June 2010).

Vineet is an acknowledged management visionary and a radical thinker who architected HCLT’s transformation from $0.7 billion in 2005 to a $4.7 billion Global Technology Services Company with over 85,000 employees spread across 32 countries in 2013. This radical transformation led Fortune to recognize HCL as “the world’s most modern management” while BusinessWeek named HCLT as “one of the world’s most influential companies”; praise that has led HCL’s innovative management practices to be taught as a case study at both the Harvard Business School and London Business School.

Vineet currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the HCL Corporation. He joined HCL in 1985 after earning his MBA from XLRI. In 1993, he founded Comnet and helped it grow into a $1.4 billion dominant leader in Technology Management Services. In 2005, Vineet became President of HCL Technologies and served as the company’s CEO from 2007 till January 2013. During these years he led a remarkable turnaround of the company which saw it revenues and market cap grow by six times.

Vineet was also recently chosen by Fortune Magazine for its first ever, global “Executive Dream Team” 2012 which has been described as an “all-star leadership” that “could coalesce and dominate in any industry”. This is in addition to his inclusion in the elite “Thinkers 50 List” in 2011-12 which is a definitive listing of the world’s top 50 business thinkers. His ideas of organization transformation in form of his book “Employees First, Customers Second” has received rich praise from influencers like the late C.K. Prahalad, Tom Peters, Gary Hamel and Ram Charan and has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide.

Vineet currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the McKinsey Leadership Institute and is on the Advisory Panel of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index established by INSEAD and Human Capital Institute and the Millions Learning Project led by the ex-Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard. He is also the Founding member of Brookings India and has been a Juror of Harvard Business Review’s prestigious McKinsey Prize, two years in a row. Previously Vineet has served as Governor of ICT, member of the Global Advisory Board of Women Leader’s and Gender Parity Program as well as a Community Partner of the Forum of Young Global Leaders at the World Economic Forum.

In 2004, he established Sampark Foundation (www.samparkfoundation.org), which aims to transform the lives of children, youth, and adults through large scale programs in education, social entrepreneurship, livelihoods, and climate. His work in this area over the last decade has seen Vineet being cited in Forbes magazine’s prestigious ’48 Heroes of philanthropy List 2013′.

Vineet spends his spare time reading and writing on management strategy. He hosts two blogs, a personal one at www.vineetnayar.com and another for the Harvard Business Review, which can be found here.

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Ajit Rangnekar, Dean, Indian Business School

Tues 9/30, 10am – 11am EST
Forum: Challenging the Business Model of Education

Ajit Rangnekar is the Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB). Rangnekar leads the School’s vision to be among the globally top-ranked, research-driven management institutions. His role is to attract the best of research faculty to the School, create an

environment that promotes high quality research, strengthen its expertise on emerging markets issues, and to ensure the transformational development of the school’s students and alumni. Rangnekar has been associated with the ISB for close to a decade and has been instrumental in strengthening the School’s relationships with the external stakeholders – industry, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and experts. Rangnekar believes that education institutions have the responsibility to meet the needs of

government, business and society and envisions ISB playing its part in this transformation, not just in India, but all over the world. In line with this mission, he works closely with several international organisations and business school experts on improving the way management education is imparted across the world. He serves as a Director in the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). He is also a member of the Blue Ribbon Committee of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools

of Business (AACSB). He is also involved in an advisory capacity with several educational, student and regulatory bodies in India. Rangnekar has a background spanning over thirty years in Consulting and Industry across different countries in Asia. Before joining the ISB, he was the Country Head, first for Price Waterhouse Consulting and then for PwC Consulting, in Hong Kong and the Philippines. He was head of the

Telecom and Entertainment Industry Consulting practice for PwC in East Asia (China to Indonesia). He worked with Associated Cements Companies, India prior to moving to Hong Kong. Rangnekar holds an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and completed his post graduation in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

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