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.
Sarang Deo, PhD, Assistant Professor, Indian School of Business
Sarang Deo is Assistant Professor of Operations Management at the Indian School of Business. His primary area of interest is health care operations with special emphasis on investigating the impact of operations decisions on population level health outcomes. He has studied the influenza vaccine supply chain and the phenomenon of ambulance diversion (in the US), the adult HIV treatment supply chains and the infant HIV diagnosis networks in sub-Saharan Africa, and more recently the TB diagnosis pathway in rural India.
He frequently collaborates with international agencies such as the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and his research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation and Grand Challenges Canada.
Prior to joining the ISB, Sarang was Assistant Professor at the Kellogg School of Management. He was a management consultant in the Accenture’s Mumbai office before embarking on an academic career. Sarang has a PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management, MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, and BTech from IIT Bombay.
Subhash Mittal, FCA, DISA, Institute of Chartered Accountant of India
Subhash has more than 33 years of practical exposure in financial management discipline. For last 28 years, he owned a consultancy with focus on social development sector. He has worked in close collaboration with multilateral and bilateral financial institutions with varied and extensive exposure to Government systems, as well as voluntary sector.
His key expertise lies in Public-Expenditure & Financial Management, Fiduciary issues both in Govt. as well as Voluntary sector, Extensive Exposure to Financial Management process requirements of Multi-Lateral & Bilateral Donor Institutions & Voluntary Sector and Legal Compliance by voluntary sector.
Subhash has spent his formative years in UK with a number of professional organizations. On his return to India in 1984, he joined Price Waterhouse audit division and spent 6 years in the management cadre. For a last couple of years, he has focused on training and capacity building of professionals in social development sector with organising more than 20 training programs. He also started an e-platform of SRRF Dialogue with more than 5000 members, who actively participate in conversations on social issues.
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.