Anil Joshi has worked in the field of IT for over two decades and is also devoted to the disability sector for over fifteen years. He is a Board Member of National Trust for the third term, now and is actively associated with Parents movement in India. He is the General Secretary of PARIVAAR – the National Confederation of Parents' Associations. He did his Engineering from Visvervaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur and holds MBA in Finance and Marketing. He is working a Program Director, Human Ability & Accessibility Centre at IBM Research India, for the past three years.

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MS. SHANTI RAGHAVAN,

FOUNDER AND MANAGING TRUSTEE ENABLE INDIA, BANAGALORE

Founder & Managing Trustee, EnAble India

Shanti Raghavan is the Founder and Managing Trustee of Enable India, a non profit organization that works for the economic independence and dignity of persons with disability across India.  Shanti holds a bachelor's degree in Electronics Engineering (B.E) from V.E.S.I.T, Mumbai University and master's degree (M.S) in Computer Science from Monmouth University, New Jersey, USA.

She has 12 years experience in the software industry. At New Jersey USA she worked with AT&T, Lucent Technologies and ADP Brokerage Information Services Group. After her return to India in 1997, she worked as Program Manager and Engineering Manager with CyberCash India Pvt. Ltd, Tarang Technologies and GE Aircraft Engines IT (GTS). She also has part time teaching experience of more than ten years.

Shanti is a social entrepreneur and is the recipient of the prestigious Ashoka fellowship awarded to social entrepreneurs across the globe for their innovative and practical ideas to bring about large-scale social change.

Shanti Raghavan is also a recipient of the NCPEDP-SHELL HELEN KELLER AWARD IN 2005 for employment of disabled and couple of awards from Rotary Club for her work in development of persons with disability. She is also the recipient of the Karmaveer Puraskar award in 2007 and Sadguru Gnanananda Award in 2008.

She is a visiting faculty at Centre for Social Initiative and Management. She has been a speaker for employment and training of the disabled at various conferences of NASSCOM, CII, Techshare and international conferences such as Indo-US conference.

Shanti's first encounter with disability came when her brother was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that leads to progressive vision loss. She and her husband Dipesh Sutariya were instrumental in rehabilitating her brother, not only by orienting him to speech-enabled computers and tools and techniques for his education, but also encouraging him to enjoy outdoor activities such as cycling, rafting and snorkeling. That truly reflects Shanti’s firm belief that people with disabilities can lead wholesome, joyous lives with just a little support and encouragement from the rest of us.

Her rehabilitation was so successful that her brother went on to become the only blind MBA in the field of Marketing and today he is working as Solutions specialist in a globally reputed MNC.

Enable India was established in 1999 and addresses the entire spectrum of services from education, rehabilitation, employment, post-employment support and recreation across all disability groups. However it is the breakthrough in the area of employment, considered the toughest aspect of the emancipation process, which is especially noteworthy. Shanti’s
organization single handedly accounts for over 7.5% of the entire placements for disabled in the country each year. To put this in perspective, some respected organizations which have been in this field for more than 15 years have 1000 registered candidates with a support staff of 150 and do around 40 placements a year. Compare this with Enable India’s registered client base of 1600 with a support staff of merely 8 and with more than 170 placements in the last year!

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MR. RAJA SHANMUGAM, CEO

MINDTREE FOUNDATION, BANGALORE, INDIA:

Zamir is employed as Advocacy Officer in Sense International (India), the only national non governmental organisation working with deafblind/ multi sensory impaired (MSI) persons in the country. Key area of his work involves ensuring recognition of rights of deafblind persons and their families.

He is actively involved in developing, implementing and monitoring advocacy plans of Sense International (India) and its partner organisations. He also assists in national advocacy initiatives interacting with a host of stakeholders namely deafblind people, their family members, government officials, other development organisation representatives, practitioners and occasionally general public.

Zamir represents deafblind people and their families in relevant government/ development platforms to create awareness about deafblindness and promote rights based approach. He also has an important role in supporting development of national support groups of deafblind/ MSI people, families and teachers. He supports them by developing plans for recognition of deafblindness and the rights of deafblind people, exploring opportunities of representation of networks at appropriate platforms and helping members to take advantage of the same. As President of ‘Udaan’, support group of Adult Deafblind persons, he Works closely with network members for greater acceptability and recognition at local /regional levels.

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DR. ARUN MEHTA,

CO - FOUNDER, RADIO PHONY, DELHI:

B. Tech degree from IIT Delhi in 1975, a Masters in Computer Sciences from the State University of Stony Brook in two semesters thereafter with the equivalent of a 4.0 GPA. I then worked with Siemens AG in Erlangen, Germany for three years, designing the electricals, electronics and process control software for steel rolling mills. In 1979, I returned to Mumbai, India, where I designed and marketed hard wired and programmable solutions for a large variety of industrial control problems. In 1982 I joined the PhD program of the Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany, as a fellow of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. My solution for a time-optimal crane controller demonstrated a 5% improvement in the throughput of a 35-ton grab crane at Hamburg-Wedel, and was also presented at the World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control in Munich, 1987. I was awarded the "Dr.-Ing" title the same year.

On returning to India, I became the Managing Director of Indata Com Private Limited, in which capacity I write software, teach, and provide consultancy services. My clients include Tata Iron and Steel Ltd, Jamshedpur, and the University of Pittsburgh, for whom I developed software that helps in the early detection of Alzheimers' disease. I have written extensively for publications in India, Pakistan, the US and Germany. In 2000, I started radiophony.com together with Vickram Crishna, a .com dedicated to audio-centric solutions to the problems of the under-privileged. At the request of Professor Stephen Hawking, I wrote eLocutor, free and open source software that allows persons as severely disabled as him to write and speak. I have taught programming as a volunteer at the National Association for the Blind, helping my students become members of international development teams of cutting edge software that will help improve the lives of not just the blind.

Currently, my passion is software that might make it easier for children with autism, cerebral palsy and dyslexia to communicate, which is being made available free of cost at skid.org.in . This software received the Manthan Award in 2008.

I have conducted three workshops, each a week long, with autistic children and their care givers, to find ways that persons with severe communication disorders might learn to use the computer to communicate. I mentor a few students at school and college level with severe disabilities, helping them with their computing problems, even writing special software to make it easier for them to communicate.

From 1989 to 1991, I was President of the Indian section of Amnesty International, and have since been at the forefront of initiatives to improve cyber rights and telecommunications policy, to allow rapid spread of the benefits of information technologies to all segments of society. I am part of the ONI-Asia project, in which I am seeking to make the monitoring of Internet filtering in India sustainable. This year we started the Bidirectional Access Promotion Society, bapsi.org, of which I am currently President. It combines policy related work with technology development to help individuals with serious access issues.

I moderate several Internet discussion groups, most notably india-gii@cpsr.org which brings together experts from academia, government, industry and the media to critically examine India's bumpy progress along the information highway.

I am a professor and chairman of the computer engineering department at JMIT, Radaur, an engineering college in rural Haryana, 180km from Delhi. I have taught Pascal, PL/1, Visual Basic, Ruby, Perl, C and C++ programming, as well as web technologies, including Ruby on Rails and software engineering.

I have co-authored a book "Technology and Competitiveness", which was published by Sage, and compares the machine tool industries of Brazil and India. In 2007, O'Reilly published "Beautiful Code", in which the world's leading programmers, including Brian Kernighan and Matz, contributed a chapter each. In this Jolt-award winning book, I am proud author of a chapter on eLocutor, entitled "When a button is all that connects you to the world."

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PROF. M. BALAKRISHNAN,

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, IIT DELHI

M. Balakrishnan is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at I.I.T. Delhi. He obtained his B.E.(Hons.) in Electronics & Electrical Engg. from BITS Pilani with I rank in 1977 and Ph.D. from EE Dept. IIT Delhi in 1985. He worked as a Scientist in CARE, IIT Delhi from 1977 to 1985 where he was involved in designing and implementing real-time DSP systems. For the last 22 years, he is involved in teaching and research in the areas of digital systems design, electronic design automation and embedded systems. He has supervised 8 Ph.D. students and published nearly 75 conference and journal papers. Further, he has held visiting positions in University of Guelph (Canada), University of Syracuse (USA), University of Kiel (Germany) and University of Dortmund (Germany). He has been the Philips Chair Professor, Coordinator of the VLSI design, Tools & Technology Programme, Head of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering and Dean of Post Graduate Studies & Research at IIT Delhi. Currently he is the Deputy Director (Faculty) at IIT Delhi

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DR. SURESH DEVASAHAYAM

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, CHRISTIAN MEDICAL COLLEGE, VELLORE

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DR. SRINIVAS BABU

DEPT. OF NEUROLOGICAL SCIENCES, CMC, VELLORE

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MRS. SAVITHRI,

DIRECTOR, DEPT. OF WELFARE OF DISABLED AND SENIOR CITIZENS, BANGALORE, KARNATAKA

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MR. JUDE PARIERA,

RESEARCHER AND FREELANCE AT DEVELOPER

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Mr. Ajit Narayanan

“Nominated one of India’s Top 20 innovators by India Today in April this year, Ajit Narayanan is a cofounder of Invention Labs where he heads product research and development. He has previously worked with American Megatrends Inc. in the United States and has 19 patents to his credit. His areas of interest include embedded systems design, microprocessors and microcontrollers and computer languages. He has been working in the field of Assistive Technology for the past couple of years and is the chief architect of AVAZ, India’s first speech generating device with dynamic message generation capabilities. Ajit holds a B.Tech and M.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras, where he was also awarded the Motorola Prize.

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MRS. POONAM NATARAJAN

SPECIAL GUEST, CHAIRPERSON, NATIONAL TRUST FOR WELFARE OF PERSONS WITH CEREBRAL PALSY, AUTISM MENTAL RTARDATION AND MULTIPLE DISABILITES

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MR. SHANKAR ANNASWAMY

REGIONAL GENERAL MANAGER, IBM INDIA/SOUTH ASIA

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MRS. SAGARIKA BOSE

VICE PRESIDENT, RESEARCH, NASSCOM.

Ms. Sagarika Bose is Vice President - Programs, NASSCOM Foundation [NF]. She is responsible for driving all programs within NASSCOM Foundation including Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy and initiatives within the IT-BPO industry. Sagarika joined NF in its early days in 2005 and has non-profit organizational and program management skills developed during her past experiences.

At NASSCOM Foundation, Sagarika has been instrumental in shaping NF’s flagship program, the NASSCOM Knowledge Network, into its present form with 285+ centres in 13 states of the country. She has played an important role in building relationships with IT-BPO companies in India, especially with the SME segment. Sagarika has represented the industry in CSR on the domestic and international scene, contributing to the curriculum for Training Commons Curriculum led by International Development Research Centre (South Asia Regional Office) in 2007, a CSR seminar entitled ‘Sustaining Corporate Social Responsibility during an Economic Recession’ organized by the US Consulate in Aug 2009 in Bangalore, the eAsia conference in Colombo Sri Lanka 2009, Business Ethics Conference hosted by IIM Bangalore at the Infosys Campus in Mysore (April 2010), and lately at the GRI Conference in Amsterdam (2010) to mention a few.

Prior to joining NF, Sagarika served at TARAgyan, the education division of TARAhaat that develops educational courses for people in rural and peri-urban areas in India. In the years that she invested there, Sagarika managed wide ranging responsibilities that included managing a team of instructional designers, course coordinators and field coordinators, instructional design of non-formal courses such as an English language course, sales and personality development, office administration, adult literacy, etc.

Sagarika has always been inclined toward inclusive growth in India. She started her career as a Special Educator with Action for Ability Development and Inclusion working in rural Haryana. Sagarika holds a Postgraduate degree in Social Policy and Planning and a second Masters in Communications, Information and Society both from the London School of Economics and Political Science, U. of London. She has done her BA in Applied Psychology from Delhi University and also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Special Needs Education from Action for Ability Development and Inclusion (earlier called the Spastics Society of Northern India).

Sagarika’s current role includes managing the CSR division with a special focus on advocacy, advisory and research. This includes designing workshops to build capacity of corporate, design and implement research studies independently as well as in collaboration with other institutes and consultations with NASSCOM’s member companies to give them direction on CSR. Sagarika believes that ‘equality is a futile pursuit, but equality of opportunities is a noble one’ and so strives to make opportunities available for the under-served communities.

Sagarika’s hobbies include photography and travel. Her wanderlust has led her across India and several international destinations.

Ms. Sagarika Bose is Vice President - Programs, NASSCOM Foundation [NF]. She is responsible for driving all programs within NASSCOM Foundation including Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy and initiatives within the IT-BPO industry. Sagarika joined NF in its early days in 2005 and has non-profit organizational and program management skills developed during her past experiences.

At NASSCOM Foundation, Sagarika has been instrumental in shaping NF’s flagship program, the NASSCOM Knowledge Network, into its present form with 285+ centres in 13 states of the country. She has played an important role in building relationships with IT-BPO companies in India, especially with the SME segment. Sagarika has represented the industry in CSR on the domestic and international scene, contributing to the curriculum for Training Commons Curriculum led by International Development Research Centre (South Asia Regional Office) in 2007, a CSR seminar entitled ‘Sustaining Corporate Social Responsibility during an Economic Recession’ organized by the US Consulate in Aug 2009 in Bangalore, the eAsia conference in Colombo Sri Lanka 2009, Business Ethics Conference hosted by IIM Bangalore at the Infosys Campus in Mysore (April 2010), and lately at the GRI Conference in Amsterdam (2010) to mention a few.

Prior to joining NF, Sagarika served at TARAgyan, the education division of TARAhaat that develops educational courses for people in rural and peri-urban areas in India. In the years that she invested there, Sagarika managed wide ranging responsibilities that included managing a team of instructional designers, course coordinators and field coordinators, instructional design of non-formal courses such as an English language course, sales and personality development, office administration, adult literacy, etc.

Sagarika has always been inclined toward inclusive growth in India. She started her career as a Special Educator with Action for Ability Development and Inclusion working in rural Haryana. Sagarika holds a Postgraduate degree in Social Policy and Planning and a second Masters in Communications, Information and Society both from the London School of Economics and Political Science, U. of London. She has done her BA in Applied Psychology from Delhi University and also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Special Needs Education from Action for Ability Development and Inclusion (earlier called the Spastics Society of Northern India).

Sagarika’s current role includes managing the CSR division with a special focus on advocacy, advisory and research. This includes designing workshops to build capacity of corporate, design and implement research studies independently as well as in collaboration with other institutes and consultations with NASSCOM’s member companies to give them direction on CSR. Sagarika believes that ‘equality is a futile pursuit, but equality of opportunities is a noble one’ and so strives to make opportunities available for the under-served communities.

Sagarika’s hobbies include photography and travel. Her wanderlust has led her across India and several international destinations.

Ms. Sagarika Bose is Vice President - Programs, NASSCOM Foundation [NF]. She is responsible for driving all programs within NASSCOM Foundation including Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy and initiatives within the IT-BPO industry. Sagarika joined NF in its early days in 2005 and has non-profit organizational and program management skills developed during her past experiences.

At NASSCOM Foundation, Sagarika has been instrumental in shaping NF’s flagship program, the NASSCOM Knowledge Network, into its present form with 285+ centres in 13 states of the country. She has played an important role in building relationships with IT-BPO companies in India, especially with the SME segment. Sagarika has represented the industry in CSR on the domestic and international scene, contributing to the curriculum for Training Commons Curriculum led by International Development Research Centre (South Asia Regional Office) in 2007, a CSR seminar entitled ‘Sustaining Corporate Social Responsibility during an Economic Recession’ organized by the US Consulate in Aug 2009 in Bangalore, the eAsia conference in Colombo Sri Lanka 2009, Business Ethics Conference hosted by IIM Bangalore at the Infosys Campus in Mysore (April 2010), and lately at the GRI Conference in Amsterdam (2010) to mention a few.

Prior to joining NF, Sagarika served at TARAgyan, the education division of TARAhaat that develops educational courses for people in rural and peri-urban areas in India. In the years that she invested there, Sagarika managed wide ranging responsibilities that included managing a team of instructional designers, course coordinators and field coordinators, instructional design of non-formal courses such as an English language course, sales and personality development, office administration, adult literacy, etc.

Sagarika has always been inclined toward inclusive growth in India. She started her career as a Special Educator with Action for Ability Development and Inclusion working in rural Haryana. Sagarika holds a Postgraduate degree in Social Policy and Planning and a second Masters in Communications, Information and Society both from the London School of Economics and Political Science, U. of London. She has done her BA in Applied Psychology from Delhi University and also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Special Needs Education from Action for Ability Development and Inclusion (earlier called the Spastics Society of Northern India).

Sagarika’s current role includes managing the CSR division with a special focus on advocacy, advisory and research. This includes designing workshops to build capacity of corporate, design and implement research studies independently as well as in collaboration with other institutes and consultations with NASSCOM’s member companies to give them direction on CSR. Sagarika believes that ‘equality is a futile pursuit, but equality of opportunities is a noble one’ and so strives to make opportunities available for the under-served communities.

Sagarika’s hobbies include photography and travel. Her wanderlust has led her across India and several international destinations.