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Romulus Earl Whitaker
Romulus Earl Whitaker is a herpetologist, wildlife conservationist and founder of the Madras Snake Park ,The Andaman and Nicobar Environment Trust , and the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust.
In 2008, he was selected as an Associate Laureate in the 2008 Rolex Awards for Enterprise, for his efforts to create a network of rainforest research stations throughout India. In 2005 he was a winner of a Whitley Award for outstanding leadership in nature conservation. He used this award to found the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station in Karnataka, for the study of King Cobras and their habitat.
He was producer of the 1996, 53 minute, Super 16 mm wildlife documentary The King and I made for the National Geographic Channel Explorer program. This film on the natural history of the King cobra, the largest venomous snake in the world, received the Emmy Award for Outstanding News and Documentary Program Achievement, 1998.
He has authored several books on reptiles, especially on snakes, and in 2004 co-authored the comprehensive field guide, titled “Snakes of India – The Field Guide” on the Snakes of India.
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Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan
Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan have now become well-known for having charted a new format to listen to Carnatic music. Using the classical piano as a frame around the free-flowing classical South Indian voice, the duo have managed to create a significant following in a very short period of time. The format, eponymous with their critically acclaimed “Madhirakshi”, released by Charsur (2006) has now come to be regularly featured on the festival circuit.
Their work has now traveled to the United States (Fall 2008 tour), Singapore (Esplanade November 2008) and Malaysia (Fall 2008), and of course all over India.
Anil Srinivasan is a trained western classical pianist while Sikkil Gurucharan is a well-known Carnatic vocalist. Anil Srinivasan is a classical pianist born in Madras, India and educated at the University of Southern California and at Columbia University, New York.
The two have recorded four albums together in just two years, starting with Madhirakshi (Charsur), Maaya (Charsur), This and the Other and The Blue Divine.
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Sharada Ramanathan
Sharada Ramanathan is currently a film director, and thinker and writer in the fields of culture and media in India. Her debut film Sringaram (Dance of Love) won three Indian National Film Awards and two Tamilnadu state government awards.
Sharada has been engaged with the fields of culture and media for 25 years including a nine-year stint with the Ford Foundation as consultant and Program Officer for Culture & Media. She is a board member of the World Culture Forum –India.. Sharada is also a thinker and writer in the fields of culture and media and is with the international think-tank of the South-South Cooperation Creative Industries Initiative of the UNDP.
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N.Vittal
N.Vittal is best known for being the Central Vigilance Commissioner and very well respected. He Secretary to Government of India in the Ministry of Information Technology from 1990 to 1996 and was Chairman of the Telecom Commission and Secretary to the Department of Telecommunications from 1993 to 1994. In 1996, he was appointed by the Government of India as Chairman of the Public Enterprises Selection Board where he was involved in improving the public sector undertakings.
He has been a columnist for the Economic Times and has authored several books. He was awarded Dataquest IT Man of the Year in 1993 and was the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award of Dataquest in 2004.
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Krupalatha Martin Dass
Krupa is the founder of Sukrupa who’s mission is to help underprivileged slum children escape a background of poverty, slum life, illiteracy, ignorance and replacing it with hope & opportunities available to mainstream children.
As an executive director Krupa is responsible for overall planning, developing strategy, public relations, budgeting and fundraising.
Krupa was a successful entrepreneur for over a decade. She quit her lucrative globe trotting consulting career to pursue her passion to serve underprivileged children.
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G R K Reddy
Mr G R K Reddy is the promoter of the MARG Group. MARG is an Infrastructure Development Group based out of Chennai. The Group’s business interests encompass Ports, Airports, Special Economic Zones, Information Technology Parks, Science Parks and Commercial space.
MARG, a widely held Public Company has forayed into Asian Countries like Sri Lanka and Maldives handling infrastructure projects in these countries.
A visionary to core, GRK envisaged that “Sustainable Infrastructure” will be a critical factor to drive the Indian economy.
A Post-Graduate in Commerce, and an Honorary from Kellogg school of management, GRK is actively involved in Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), a premier Industry Association in India and is a member on a number of prestigious Committees:
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Steering Committee , CII National Committee on Real Estate & Housing ,
Steering Committee, City Connect Program – CII Taskforce on Building Inclusive Cities ,
CII Tamilnadu, CEO Forum ,
Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, Rural Technology & Business Incubator (RTBI) ,
Director, Business Advisory Committee Member, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai ,
Academic Council of the Anna University, Chennai.
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He is currently the Vice President of Indo Australian Chamber of Commerce.
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Kavita Baliga
Kavita is currently a faculty member of Oscar winner A.R. Rahman’s KM Music Conservatory in Chennai, India. In addition to teaching and conducting, her recent projects include recording for A.R. Rahman in the Hindi films ‘Yuvraaj’ and ‘Ghajini’, completing a choral transcription for the Telagu film ‘Puli’, and singing the operatic aria in Shekhar Kapur’s short film ‘Passage’ which will be shown as an accompaniment to a sculpture exhibition at the Swarovsky Kristallwelten museum in Austria.
She also finished a transcription of the protest song “We Shall Overcome” for a concert sponsored by the American Consulate in Chennai honoring the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s pilgrimage to India. At present, she has returned to Chennai for her second year at KMMC.
Her honors and awards include winning 1st place in the Youth Focus Competition of California, and 1st place in the Satya Devi Memorial Trust competition. Kavita has participated in concerts around the U.S., Switzerland, Italy and India and has had the privilege of working with talented and established musicians such as “Guitar” Prasanna and A.R. Rahman who have helped her find her “voice” in multiple genres of music.
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Dr.Santhosh Babu
Dr. Santhosh Babu, IAS. MD ELCOT, & Director e-Governance & CEO, TNeGA, Govt. of TN.
Civil Servant belonging to the 1995 batch of Indian Administrative Service, Tamil Nadu Cadre.
E-Gov Initiatives: Created the first paperless at the Tamil Nadu Corporation for Development of Women Ltd, Chennai in Nov 2001, 100% computerized the Chief Minister’s Special Cell.
He developed a web based Out of School Children Tracking & Monitoring system www.back2school.in this is the first such tracking software in the country. Developed Tamil Nadu’s first web based grievance redressal system at Krishnagiri www.vasathi.in.
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Satyabrata Dam
A professional Submariner (Indian Navy) specializing in underwater navigation and weapon control, Satyabrata Dam is more often found hanging from lofty heights of the highest mountains across the world. He is an explorer without destination, forever traveling and exploring some of the remotest, least known and most hostile spots on Earth. Starting at the age of 10, he has climbed nearly 300 peaks worldwide including Mt Everest and the highest peaks of all the continents as well as the highest spots of nearly all the 131 countries he has explored so far. He has skied to the North and South Poles and across Alaska, Greenland and Northern Siberia. Satya walked the length of Africa from Tunisia to South Africa at the age of 18 and later retraced the Silk Route from Mongolia to Turkey on foot and Bactrian Camel. He has circumnavigated the world in a tall ship and is a past national champion in Enterprise Class boats. A sky diver, windsurfer, shark-diver, water-skier, deep sea diver, Satya specializes in extreme adventure sports.
Satya is a TED India Fellow and a serial blogger and has been featured widely in national and international media and twice in Limca Book of Records. His other interests include music, magic, cosmology and particle physics. He is currently completing a collection of mystery stories, an adventure novel and a collection of his climbing stories.
Satya’s Blog: http://satyabratadam.blogspot.com/
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Jeeva Raghunath
Jeeva Raghunath is an international professional storyteller and author. She tells and writes in Tamil and English, and is based in Chennai and Singapore. She has been working with teachers and children for ten years, to help develop children’s communication skills through storytelling, speech, and drama. Ms Jeeva also enjoys using principles of storytelling to help adults in corporate settings to improve their communication skills. She is very passionate about developing communication skills among children and her training is a lot of fun for she believes in simplicity and learning through fun.
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R. Madhavan
Madhavan is an IITian, turned farmer who married his passion for farming with his engineering background.
His love for farming made him quit a job at ONGC and follow his heart. He believes in smart agriculture, where Only 20% of agriculture involves tilling the soil and the rest 80% with engineering skills.
Madhavan bypasses the middle men and sells all his farming produce himself.
He believes that food insecurity is more threatening than an atom bomb. About 49% of Indian children suffer from under-nourishment. He believes that producing more food is a solution to the problem and he is already walking his talk.
Former President Abdul Kalam, visited his farm and acclaimed that “We need not one but a million Madhavans in this country!”
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Khurshed Batliwala
Khurshed Batliwala or ‘Bawa’ as he is fondly called, Director of World Alliance for Youth Empowerment, an NGO which addresses adn provides sustainable workable solutions for the contemporary issues faced by young people fo our times.
Under the guidance of Sri Sri, he has designed the YES!+ series of courses that inspires youth the world over to realize their self identified aspirations.
Bawa did his maths from IIT Bombay. In his own words, he decided “it was better to teach people meditation and make them happy rather than teach them mathematics and make them miserable”!
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