Ms. Valerie Pinto, CEO, Weber Shandwick, India
Valerie Pinto is CEO of Weber Shandwick in India. Valerie has over fifteen years of experience in the field of communications and image management. She has been a strategic counselor to Fortune 500 companies and C-suite executives on shaping their reputation with influential stakeholders.
During her tenure with Perfect Relations, she has relentlessly built the agency to become one of the largest public relations consultancies in India with over 400 professionals and 200 prestigious clients. Under her leadership, the firm has grown to become a force to reckon with in business sectors such as consumer and lifestyle, corporate and finance, technology, litigation management, crisis communications and digital PR. Perfect Relations has won the Holmes SABRE Award for Agency of the year 2013 and several awards for consumer brand campaigns as well as for crisis communications.
She has a successful track record of entering new markets/businesses in India and turning them around and placing them on a growth and profitability trajectory.
Valerie holds a post graduate degree in communications from Xavier’s Institute of Communications. She has been a topper in Economics from Mumbai University. A National Level Heptathlon Athlete and a State level Basketball Player are her achievement in sports. In her personal life, she is described as an avid traveler for food, an animal lover and a talented pastry chef.
Asim Kumar
Asim has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Birla Engineering College, Anand, and a management degree from NMIMS, Mumbai.
Asim is part of the core team of Cerebrus and has been with Cerebrus since 2006. He has over 19 years of prior work experience as a Management Consultant and in line roles in Sales and Business development. He has worked earlier in AF Ferguson, QAI, Tata Exports and Sterlite. Asim leads Cerebrus in North India and also for the Development sector. He has worked across our service areas in a large variety of sectors. His unique mix of having done significant work for the public sector, private sector and Not for profit sector has brought many insights to his advisory work as well as a HR partner to clients. Asim also leads our work in Nepal. He has worked on several international assignments in markets like Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Asim is a certified Coach.
Asim is an expert in the Development sector and has worked with all the major international NGOs besides a large number of local NGOs.