December 8 - December 11, 2011 in Jaipur, India
Abhay Deol
Abhay Deol
Actor
Indian film actor Abhay Deol, often hailed as a “thinking actor” in the Hindi movie circles, has appeared in popular films such as Dev D, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
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Aisha Chaudhary
Aisha Chaudhary
Inspirational Artist
Seventeen year-old Aisha Chaudhary was born with an immune deficiency disorder and overcame a predicted life expectancy of only one year to have become an accomplished artist today. Despite a serious lung disease called Pulmonary Fibrosis, her persistent optimism, extraordinary maturity in the face of impossible odds, and calm perspective on life’s challenges have been an inspiration to many.
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Alexander Asseily
Alexander Asseily
Founder, Jawbone & State
Alexander Asseily is founder and Executive Chairman of London startup State, a global opinion network. Alexander was founder CEO of Jawbone (Aliph) and continues to serve as Chairman.
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Alexander Tsiaras
Alexander Tsiaras
Techno artist
Alexander is a renowned technologist, artist, journalist and author. As an artist and technologist, he has participated in developing scientific visualization software to enable him to “paint” the anatomy using volume data.
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Amar Sen
Amar Sen
Shadowgrapher
Amar Sen's devotion to the arts has brought him fame for various specializations at different stages in his life; now the world knows him for a number of things including but not limited to singing, acting, magic, graphic arts, poetry and obviously his pet art, handShadowGraphy. The field of performance knows him better for his hardcore professionalism at whatever he does.
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Amish Tripathi
Amish Tripathi
Author
Described as the ‘Paulo Coelho of the East’ by Business World and a ‘People’s author like Jeffrey Archer’ by The Telegraph, Amish’s unique combination of crackling story-telling, religious symbolism and profound philosophies have made him an overnight publishing phenomenon.
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Anand Agarawala
Anand Agarawala
Interface designer
Anand Agarawala is an entrepreneur and product designer.
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Anousheh Ansari
Anousheh Ansari
First female space tourist
On September 18, 2006, Anousheh Ansari captured headlines as the first female private space explorer travelling to and staying onboard of International Space Station. Back on Earth, as a successful serial entrepreneur, Anousheh returned to her job as co-founder and chairman of her latest technology company, Prodea Systems.
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Anu Aga
Anu Aga
Businesswoman and Social Worker
Anu Aga is on the Board of Thermax Limited, the leading Indian player in energy and environment management. She retired as Chairperson of the company in October, 2004. The Government of India conferred her with the Padma Shri Award for her distinguished service in the field of social work in 2010.
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Anupam Mishra
Anupam Mishra
Environmental activist
A Gandhian and an environmental activist, the late Anupam Mishra is among the most knowledgeable persons in India on traditional water harvesting systems. He has travelled to various part of the country, especially Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, visiting various water harvesting systems managed by people.
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Arunachalam Muruganantham
Arunachalam Muruganantham
Innovator, entrepreneur
Arunachalam Muruganantham of Jayaashree Industries designed, created, tested and implemented a sanitary napkin-making machine that operates on a small scale.
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Ayesha Khanna
Ayesha Khanna
Technology, innovation & smart city expert
Ayesha Khanna is Founder and Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, a research and advisory think tank focused on the intersection of technology trends, data intelligence and geopolitics.
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Babar Ali
Babar Ali
Educator
Named the ‘youngest headmaster in the world’ by BBC in October 2009, at the age of 16. Babar Ali is an Indian student and teacher from Murshidabad, West Bengal. He started a school, Ananada Siksha Niketan – Home of joyful learning, in his backyard when he was just 9-years-old, now with 300 regular students. It is an outdoor school and counts a total of 10 teaching and non-teaching staff who are providing their voluntary service. There are no tuition fees, thus making it affordable for the poor in this economically deprived area and thereby helping increase literacy rate there.
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Bedri Baykam
Bedri Baykam
Artist, writer
One of the most internationally well-known Turkish artists, Bedri Baykam was born in 1957, in Ankara. His father Dr. Suphi Baykam was a famous deputy in the Turkish parliament and his mother Mutahhar Baykam an architect-engineer. He started to paint when he was only two years old, and has had several exhibitions since the age of six in Bern, Geneva, New York, Washington, London, Rome, Munich, Stockholm, etc. during his childhood years, when he was known as a child prodigy, (wunderkind) throughout the world. Baykam also won prestigious titles as a tennis player throughout the 70s at Turkish Championships.
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Bhavik Gandhi
Bhavik Gandhi
Endurance athlete
In 2007, Bhavik rowed single handed across the Atlantic, from Spain to the Caribbean island of Antigua, spending an106 days alone at sea in a 23 ft rowing boat. It was an epic 5000 km voyage which began with the battle to leave land resulting in 3 failed attempts and 2 years of preparation. It was a journey that sometimes became a living hell, stretching his mind to the breaking point as he deals with with gale force conditions, water leaks, a broken rudder, an Atlantic hurricane season, sharks, extreme isolation, sleep deprivation, muscle fatigue, a near collision with tankers, and finally a capsize.Pushed physically, psychologically and emotionally to the limit, Bhavik survived without food rations for 2 weeks, lost the few clothes he had, hallucinated, wept, fought fear, grew a beard and nursed blisters while discovering to focus more on the beauty of the ocean and less on the hardship. Bhavik demonstrates that sometimes although a record may have been the objective, the experience gained through seeking that record becomes the reward.
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Chris Meyer
Entrepreneur, Author, Economist, Consultant
Chris Meyer's mission is to anticipate and shape the future of business. He has pursued this goal as an entrepreneur, executive, consultant, author, and the leader of a think tank.Chris has created new capabilities for each of the organizations he has served. He founded Monitor Networks, a Monitor Group company, and was Chief Executive from 2004 to 2009, when he became Founder of Monitor Talent. Prior to joining Monitor Group, he was the Director of the Center for Business Innovation at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, from 1995 until its closing in December 2002. The Center fostered the conversation of leading issues among the business community, developed public conferences, established new services and businesses, and shared what it learned with business practitioners. At the CBI, he founded and served on the Board of the Bios Group, a venture that invested in applications of complexity theory to business. Earlier, he was a Vice President and Group Head at Mercer Management Consulting (Now Oliver Wyman), where from 1984 to 1995 he founded and built the firm’s practice in the information industries, comprising telecommunications, hardware, software, and information services and media. And at Data Resources, an econometrics-based consulting firm, Chris developed the product offering for financial institutions.
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Claire Kremen
Claire Kremen
Conservation biologist
Claire Kremen is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at University of California, Berkeley, and an Associate Conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. She is an ecologist and conservation biologist whose work focuses on understanding and characterizing the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services, and utilizing this information to develop conservation and sustainable management plans, considering both protected areas and the working lands matrix around them.
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Dibakar Banerjee
Dibakar Banerjee
Filmmaker
Dibakar Banerjee is a National Film Award winning filmmaker, best known for films like Khosla ka Ghosla and Love, Sex aur Dhokha. The films went on to receive not just accolades for him but brought him in the list of new filmmakers who were bringing about a marked shift in Bollywood themes, which typically focuses on stories and characters from in and around Bombay.
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Drumjam: Roberto Narain & Vasundhara Das
Drumjam: Roberto Narain & Vasundhara Das
Social musicians, partners of DRUMJAM
Drumjam, the pioneer of interactive rhythm-based activities in India, and the record holder for the largest drum circles in the country, has introduced over 450,000 people to the joys of group drumming.
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Elliot Goldenthal
Elliot Goldenthal
Composer
Composer Elliot Goldenthal creates works for orchestra, theater, opera, ballet and film. Most recently he scored Julie Taymor’s film version of The Tempest, starring Helen Mirren. In 2003, he was honored with the Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the score to Taymor’s film Frida. Goldenthal was nominated for his third Grammy Award for co-producing the platinum soundtrack album for Across the Universewhich featured 35 Beatles songs, he also composed the original score for the film.
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Elora Hardy
Elora Hardy
Creative Director at Ibuku
Having spent the first fourteen years of her life in Bali and the following fourteen in the United States, Elora left her position as the sole print designer at Donna Karan International in New York, returning to Bali to found Ibuku, an international design/build team providing fully functional homes and furniture made from natural substances allowing the occupants to live in an authentic relationship with nature. Her key realization was that with the right nurturing, Asia's creative minds, skilled hands,growing global perspective and unique natural materials will provide the force for positive change in our global future.
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GBS Bindra
GBS Bindra
Innovator
GBS Bindra, Global Director of Innovation at Logica, is responsible for driving Logica’s innovation and new business models. He has been working as an innovator for more than 20 years, leading design teams to create new products and services that leverage technology to improve business outcomes. He is also a committed community leader and a vocal advocate of children and women’s education in underprivileged societies.
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Gokul Chandra Das
Gokul Chandra Das
Dhak musician
Gokul Chandra Das is a dhak (a traditional percussion instrument from Bengal played during religious festivals) player whose music is an amalgamation of classical and folk. Gokul Das was the first dhaki to play at the Hollywood Bowl. Gokul Chandra Das is one of the few dhakis, if not the only one, to take the dhak mainstream and introduce this regional instrument and art to the world. Das comes from a traditional 'Dhaki' family.
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Harpal Singh
Harpal Singh
Healthcare revolutionary
The Mentor and Chairman Emeritus of one of India’s leading hospital chains, Fortis Healthcare, Harpal Singh is also the Founder Chairman of the Nanhi Chhaan Foundation, an initiative in support of the girl child and the environment. Harpal is also currently the Chairman of the Save the Children, India. He has chaired the second and third India Health Summit and delivered the prestigious ‘Friday Lecture’ at the Royal Institute of Great Britain on Integrating Global Healthcare.
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Itay Talgam
Itay Talgam
Conductor
Itay Talgam worked as a conductor with some of the world’s best musical ensembles and orchestras and assisted great Maestri such as Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado.
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John Mathew
John Mathew
Academician, author
Having completed doctorates in Ecology at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia (2003), and in the History of Science at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2011), John Mathew is currently lecturing a freshman seminar on Science, History and Theatre at the latter. He hails from Kerala and remains an Indian national although he has spent significant periods in Iraq, Jordan, Libya, the United States of America, France and England. He obtained his Bachelors, Masters, and M.Phil. degrees in Zoology at the Madras Christian College, Tambaram, Madras (now Chennai). He also holds a Masters in Medical Anthropology from Harvard and has benefited from many scholarships in his educational journey, including the French Governmental Bourse Chateaubriand, the Harvard Sheldon and Krupp, and the Harvard Academy fellowships.
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John Frame
John Frame
Sculptor, filmmaker, composer
John Frame has been making sculpture in the Southern California area of the United States since the early 1980s; his work has been exhibited extensively in the US as well as in Europe, Japan, and Taiwan. From the beginning of his career, he has undertaken an in-depth exploration of the human condition. Those who review Frame's work frequently suggest that its appeal lies in his propensity to probe the deep questions of life without arriving at easy answers. One critic captures this tension thus: “In Frame's work the meaning eludes us while the search for meaning captivates us.”
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John Hardy
John Hardy
Designer, educator
Jewelry designer John Hardy co-founded the extraordinary Green School in Bali, where kids get a holistic and green education. At the Green School, students learn in open-air classrooms surrounded by acres of gardens that they tend; they learn to build with bamboo; and meanwhile they're being prepared for traditional British school exams. The centerpiece of the campus is the spiraling Heart of School, which may be called Asia's largest bamboo building.
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Joi
Joi
Music band
Joi is a contemporary music band that mixes the sounds of rock, soul, folk and worldbeat. Their debut album, Joi - Looking out of the Window, was released December 21, 2010. Group members include Joi Barua, Pawan Rasaily, Ibson Lal Baruah, Manas Chowdhary and Partho Goswami. Their lead singer, Joi Barua, was an INK2010 Fellow and returns this year with his band to bring down the house at INK2011.
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Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor
Film, opera, & theater director
Julie Taymor is an American film, opera and theater director.
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Lisa Staprans
Lisa Staprans
Designer
Lisa Staprans has practiced interior design and product design for 20 years. She travels the world for inspiration and to learn and study other cultures, art, architecture and lifestyles. The book she is currently writing, The Soul of Design, features art, interior design, architecture, gardens, and other soulful spaces around the world.
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Michael Pollack
Michael Pollack
Venture philanthropist
Michael Pollack manages his family investment firm, Pollack Holdings, which has interests in a broad array of both public and private securities. He also established and now runs his private, family foundation, SCA.
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N.V. 'Tiger' Tyagarajan
N.V. 'Tiger' Tyagarajan
Visionary
Tiger is one of the pioneers of the business process management industry who transformed Genpact from a unit of GE in 1997 into a leading global business process and technology management services company. Tiger began his career with the Unilever Group in India where he spent seven years in sales and marketing. He then shifted to the financial services industry and spent three years with Citibank’s Consumer Financial Services businesses, where he earned a reputation for turning around inefficient businesses. He joined GE Capital in 1994 as Head of Risk in India and went on to become CEO for GE Capital's Global Consumer Finance and Auto Financial Services operations in India. In 2002, he was transferred within GE to the Global Commercial Lending Businesses in the U.S. as Global Head of Six Sigma and Global Operations. Tiger rejoined Genpact in 2005 and became President and CEO in June 2011.
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Naveen Tewari
Naveen Tewari
Founder & CEO, InMobi
As Founder and CEO, Naveen is responsible for the overall vision, strategy and execution at InMobi. Prior to founding InMobi, he worked at Charles River Ventures and a Silicon Valley startup. He started his journey with McKinsey & Company. Naveen holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor's degree from IIT Kanpur. He is the founder of the U.S. based non-profit India School Fund that sets up schools in rural India.
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Parag Khanna
Parag Khanna
Global strategist, Best-selling author
Parag Khanna is a leading global strategist, world traveler and best-selling author. He is Managing Partner of Hybrid Reality, Co-Founder & CEO of Factotum, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, Senior Fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, and Adjunct Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.
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Prakash Amte
Prakash Amte
Social activist
Magsaysay Awardee Prakash Amte runs Lok Biradari Prakalp to provide community services to tribal people in rural Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Chhatisgarh. The project has grown into a hospital, residential school and an orphanage for injured wild animals.
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Raghava KK
Raghava KK
Artist
Raghava KK is a renowned Indian artist and a tech entrepreneur, named by CNN as one of 10 most remarkable people in 2010.
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Rajika Puri
Rajika Puri
Danced storyteller, choreographer, writer
Rajika Puri is an exponent of two forms of Indian dance - Bharatanatyam and Odissi – which for several years she performed internationally in solo recital (including a command performance for the President of Mexico). After playing ‘Narrator/goddess Kali’ in The Transposed Heads directed by Julie Taymor (Lincoln Center Theater, ’86), she developed a form of danced storytelling in which she accompanies her dances with songs, chants, vocalized rhythmic syllables, and a narrative in English. An evening of such stories, commissioned by the Rubin Museum of Art, was also presented off-Broadway: Devi-Malika: a garland of danced stories on the feminine divine in India (Duke on 42nd, ’08).
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Ramji Raghavan
Ramji Raghavan
Social entrepreneur
Mr. Raghavan is the Founder Chairman of Agastya International Foundation, the world's largest hands-on mobile science education program for economically disadvantaged children and rural teachers.
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Rob Cook
Rob Cook
Pixar Emeritus
Rob Cook was the co-architect and primary author of Pixar's RenderMan software, which creates photo-realistic computer images. In 2001, he and two colleagues received Oscars for their contributions, the first ever given for software.
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Robert Vijay Gupta
Robert Vijay Gupta
Musical activist, violinist
Violinist Robert Vijay Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in June 2007 at the age of 19.
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Ruchi Sanghvi
Ruchi Sanghvi
Entrepreneur, technologist
Ruchi is the founder and CEO of Cove - a company she started with other early ex-Facebookers. Prior to starting her own company, Ruchi was the first female engineer at Facebook.
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Shantanu Moitra
Shantanu Moitra
Music director, composer
Folk music is rapidly disappearing from mainstream music, but never fear! Shantanu Moitra is a man on a mission to save folk musical traditions. Shantanu is a renowned Indian music composer and restorationist. With a father as an accomplished sarod player and his mother as a talented artist, creativity naturally runs through his veins. He has worked on many landmark Bollywood films, including "Parineeta", "3 Idiots", and "Madras Cafe".
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Sheena Iyengar
Sheena Iyengar
Social psychologist, professor
Sheena Iyengar looks deeply at choosing and has discovered many surprising things about it. For instance, her famous "jam study," done while she was a grad student, quantified a counterintuitive truth about decisionmaking -- that when we're presented with too many choices, like 24 varieties of jam, we tend not to choose anything at all. (This and subsequent, equally ingenious experiments have provided rich material for Malcolm Gladwell and other pop chroniclers of business and the human psyche.)
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Shilo Shiv Suleman
Shilo Shiv Suleman
Artist
Shilo Shiv Suleman is an Indian illustrator, animator and visual artist based in the city of Bangalore. Her primary area of interest is visual storytelling through multiple mediums. She illustrated her first book for children at the age of 16 and has illustrated eight others since with some of the most well known publishing houses in India. She has also been actively involved in setting up community art projects and collectives that get people to appreciate and create street art in their surroundings as well as use art and design to bring socially relevant issues in India to the forefront.
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Shirin Juwaley
Shirin Juwaley
Human rights activist
An acid attack survivor herself, Shirin started the Palash Foundation to address social reintegration and livelihoods for people with disfigurement. In 1998, her husband threw acid on her after she requested divorce.
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Shoba Murali
Shoba Murali
Entrepreneur
Shoba Murali, CEO and co-founder of The UCAN Company, helped shape the overall manufacturing, formulation, clinical trials and marketing strategy of the company. The company markets glucose sustaining consumer-based nutritional products in sports nutrition, fitness, weight management and diabetes markets.
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Swanand Kirkire
Swanand Kirkire
Writer, song-writer, actor, director
Swanand Kirkire has many strings to his bow, he is a writer, song-writer, actor, playwright and director in the Hindi film industry. Graduating from the National School of Drama in 1996 he soon moved into the world of television, and then, in 2003, progressed to film, making his debut as a lyricist & singer with Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi.
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Talavya
Talavya
Classical tabla ensemble
Globe-trotting percussion ensemble Talavya bring tabla to the center stage, distilling its age-old classical spirit and practice into a high-energy, highly accessible performance. Composed by music maestro Pandit Divyang Vakil, the quartet of Rushi Vakil, Kaumil Shah, Sahil Patel and Rahul Shrimali with accompaniment by Heena Patel moves between rousing peaks and smooth meditative passages, revealing the colours of tabla.
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Vikram Bhaskaran
Co-founder, Samosapedia
Vikram Bhaskaran is the CEO and Co-Founder of Samosa Media whose flagship product is Samosapedia: The Definitive Guide to South Asian Lingo.
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Vineet Singal
Vineet Singal
Executive Director, 100KCheeks campaign
Named by The Huffington Post as one of the "Top 10 Changemakers Under 40", Vineet Singal is a senior at Stanford University and leads 100KCheeks, an initiative to register 100,000 new bone marrow donors using the power of personal stories and social media.In working closely with Professor Jennifer Aaker at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a team of 12 dedicated Stanford students, Vineet helped 100KCheeks reach its goal in 1 year. Vineet is currently leading efforts to register a million bone marrow donors worldwide in 2012 and jumpstart the creation of national marrow registries in countries like India and Indonesia.
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Wolfgang Lehmacher
Wolfgang Lehmacher
Entrepreneur
Wolfgang Lehmacher develops and supports businesses and institutions globally. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Aidha, the world's micro-business school, Singapore, and a Member of the Board of Governors, Universal Business School, India’s first green business school.
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Yann Vasnier
Yann Vasnier
Perfumer
Yann Vasnier was born in Brittany, France and from an early age he was drawn to appreciate the nuances of fragrances. He trained as a perfumer at ISIPCA, the prestigious Versailles perfumery school and he graduated Valedictorian in 1999. During his studies, Yann also worked as a trainee perfumer for Quest International in Paris. Upon graduating, he was offered a position as a junior perfumer with the Fine Fragrance team in Paris, trained by Francoise Caron. In 2001, Yann was the recipient of the International Young Perfumer Award. In July 2003, Yann joined the Quest New York as a perfumer and in 2007 joined Givaudan.
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Zohre Elahian
Zohre Elahian
Trailblazing philanthropist
Zohre Elahian has been actively involved in international development for over 10 years. Withher husband, Zohre started Schools Online, a not-for-profit organization that has brought computers to schools and introduced ICT in education in many countries around the world and within the US. As the Managing Director of Global Catalyst Foundation, Zohre has also evaluated many projects, addressing critical needs in education, ICT and microfinance; and her Foundation has provided funding to such projects in many countries.
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