Governing Council

Women’s empowerment is gaining ground because so many brave women have been unwilling to accept anything less.

Madeleine Albright was the first woman Secretary of State. An educationist and writer, Albright currently serves as a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. In May 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ex US President Barack Obama.

The debate is not about gender, it’s about competence. India Inc. is still very much an old boys network, and if we are saying there are competent women – who are getting more qualified – then we have to create more opportunities for them. In that context if you are saying competent women have to be encouraged more, then, yes, sure, they do.

Former MD of Britannia Industries Limited, Vinita Bali has been awarded the ‘Business Woman of the Year’ in 2009 by The Economic Times. Forbes named her one of Asia’s 50 Powerful Business Women. In 2009, she founded Britannia Nutrition Foundation which combats child malnutrition through distribution of fortified biscuits in Indian schools.

Women have so much to bring to leadership. Held back by societal and company norms, they face formidable barriers. By coming together in the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women, they reconnect with strengths, courage, and ambition of an entire community alongside their own. Barriers are no match for this powerhouse combination.

A Baker scholar at Harvard Business School, Joanna Barsh is director Emeritus at McKinsey & Company and author of Centred Leadership and How Remarkable Women Lead. Joanna serves on the Genesco board and Sesame Workshop and is a strong advocate of women’s rights.

Women need to see themselves as Leaders — and we must embed the Leadership Style of Women in the workplace, for best rewards to business and society. It is critical to have distinguished programmes like Vedica — where women get to understand the Gender Context of Leadership in business, for their success.

Poonam Barua is an accomplished business leader, economist, independent Board Director, CEO of WILL Forum India, and Founder Chairman of the “Forum for Women in Leadership”, based in New Delhi. She is the Author of the pioneering Book “Leadership by Proxy: The Story of Women in Corporate India”.

She has been awarded several Visiting Fellowships at School of International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Henry L. Stimson Center, Salzburg Global Seminar, (Austria), and the Advanced Management Program at Wharton School.

Ms. Barua is also Chairing the “WILL Women on Corporate Boards: Series” which aims to mentor a robust pipeline of women executives — and certifying 500 “board capable and board informed” women executives for corporate board positions in 2015.

She has also leading the Annual “WILL Forum India-USA Conference” on women in leadership in New York, most recently hosted by KPMG, BlackRock, Thomson Reuters, and Merck, and has led several Roundtables as Guest Speaker in Paris, Netherlands, Slovenia, and Austria.

Ms. Barua has been recently awarded “The Inspirational Achievers: 2015″, Global & Emerging Leaders” in New York, Roshni Media — and serves as Independent Director on company boards in India and on Advisory Boards of Government of India regulatory bodies.

Professor Dana Brown is the Founding Principal and Pro Vice-Chancellor, Enterprise of Leicester Castle Business School (LCBS) at DeMontfort University. Under her leadership, Vedica has partnered with LCBS through which the Scholars get an opportunity to join the Global MBA at Leicester Castle Business School after completing 18 months of instruction at Vedica.

Dana Brown was the Executive Director of the MBA at Said Business School, University of Oxford. She has been Professor of Strategy at EMLYON Business School and a University Lecturer in International Business at Said Business School. Dana has taught in MBA and Executive Education programs including UK, US, France, China, Russia, Denmark, Spain and Egypt. Her research interests focus on the way national employment and social policies affect business strategies and the intersection of public and private roles in determining policies that affect labor and environmental management. She holds a BA in Political Science and Slavic Languages from Rutgers University, an MPhil in Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Political Science from MIT.

The 21st Century potentially belongs to women. Programmes like Vedica help actualise that promise...and lead in crafting a discourse about alternative ways of Seeing, Being and Doing to build a more humane and inclusive world... a world that transcends limits to embrace possibilities by redefining obsolete notions of power.

A Fulbright Scholar, Padma Shri Awardee and an educationist, Meenakshi Gopinath retired as the Principal of Lady Shri Ram College in 2014, which is rated amongst the best institutions of higher learning in India. She is also the founder and honorary Director of WISCOMP (Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace)

Programmes such as Vedica play an important role in imbuing confidence and determination in young women as they realise their potential and discover they can lead. With an understanding and respect for themselves, these young women can create, nurture and transform. Only then outdated societal attitudes will be challenged and discarded.

An innovative educationist, Padma Shri Gowri Ishwaran is the Founder Principal of the Sanskriti School – an institution that has become one of the leading schools in India. Currently the CEO of tGELF (The Global Education and Leadership Foundation), Ms Ishwaran’s expertise lies in creating a value-based curriculum, integrating technology with the curriculum and focusing on inclusive education for children with special needs and those who are socially disadvantaged. She also serves on the advisory board of several leading institutions and foundations.

For a country to unleash the full force of its human capital, it must offer tailored educational opportunities to women as much as it does to men. This subsumes a real understanding of their similarities, differences, priorities and motivations - exactly what the Vedica curriculum seeks to recognise and build on to ensure a new generation of empowered women leaders

Punita Lal is a high-calibre professional manager with over 25 years of experience in strategy, marketing and leadership, spanning multiple geographies and cultures. Ms Lal’s last held role was as CEO for NourishCo, a strategic joint venture between the Tatas and PepsiCo in the area of healthier beverages using innovative business solutions and a capital-light model.

Vedica Scholars Programme for Women is a unique, new initiative, and promises to make a difference in the world through its focus on developing successful women professionals for the 21st century workplace. I am proud to be associated with this first-of-its-kind management practice programme!

Savita Mahajan is the former Deputy Dean of the Indian School of Business. She was associated with the ISB for 14 years, since its inception in 2001, and was responsible for building its second campus at Mohali, Punjab, as its CEO. She has been featured in Business Today’s 2013 list of “30 most Powerful Women in Indian Business” and is currently an independent Director on the Board of IFCI, nominated by the Govt. of India. She has worked in several Indian organisations such as Maruti Udyog Limited, Bharat Technologies and Karvy Consultants. Savita has a vast and diverse experience with consulting and training assignments working for many reputable organisations for clients like the World Bank and the Tibetan Government in exile of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Her areas of expertise include Strategic Management, Institutional Values, Leadership and Organisational Change.

To live a life of distinction and dignity, women must take some responsibility for their own lives and livelihood. Work must cease to be a ‘nice to have’… and evolve into a ‘must have’…

Anuradha Das Mathur is Founding Dean of the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women. She is Founder and Director of 9.9 Media, one of India’s fastest growing niche media companies, which believes in raising the bar for higher education through publications like EDU that helps decision makers at higher education institutions govern their institutions smartly. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, she ran Businessworld, one of India’s most widely read business magazines and worked for The Economist Group. Anuradha was selected as one of 25 young, talented, emerging global woman leaders for the prestigious Global Emerging Women Leader’s Programme, offered by Fortune magazine and the US State Department. Her passion for improving women’s participation in the workforce took root during this programme and has led to pioneering ventures such as The Foundation for Working Women, a platform where public policy, infrastructure and awareness come together to help women ‘live their choice to work’.

Degrees Held:
Bachelors of Arts, Lady Shri Ram College for Women
Masters of Arts, Trinity College, University of Cambridge

Economic self-reliance empowers women to build leadership capabilities and contribute to social development. Vedica Scholars enter this unique programme with a focus on learning and career opportunities. They graduate with a rigorous management education and a commitment to driving change and creating innovative paths for future generations of women.

Reena V. Mithal has spent over two decades working in global financial markets and investment research. Formerly, she was part of US-based emerging markets research teams at Putnam Investments, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers, where she developed investment strategies and models for global clients. Ms Mithal has been an active angel investor in social enterprises in India. She founded Sankhya Partners in July 2012, and is Managing Partner, Sankhya Women Impact Funds.

Vedica Scholars Programme offers women unprecedented opportunities to attain professional excellence and move to leadership positions. The programme has a major focus on addressing challenges faced by woman at workplace. It helps build their potential to defy stereotyped notions as well as face the age long challenge of patriarchy and unbreakable glass ceiling.

Poonam Muttreja is the Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India (PFI) – a New Delhi-based NGO established in 1970 to promote population stabilization in India and global thinking on population and human development. She has also been a member of the Family Planning 2020 Reference Group – a global initiative to develop a new global architecture for increasing access to voluntary family planning services.

Poonam has served on several government committees including the National Commission on Population chaired by the Prime Minister of India, the Advisory Group for Community Action set up by India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and the Program Advisory Committee of the National Population Stabilization Fund. She also serves on the Governing Board of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and Grassroots Trading Network for Women (GTNfW), SEWA, Ahmedabad as well as on the Governing Board of ActionAid India.

Prior to joining PFI in 2010, Poonam served, for close to 17 years, as the Country Director of MacArthur Foundation in India. In the earlier stages of her career, she was instrumental in setting up of Ashoka Foundation, India (as its Indian Founder Director), Society for Rural, Urban and tribal initiatives (SRUTI) and DASTKAR – both based in New Delhi.  Poonam studied psychology and mass communications in Delhi University and public administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has taught courses on development from a grassroots perspective in Amherst College and Earlham College in the United States.  She lives in New Delhi.

Nivedita Narain is Programme Director at PRADAN, a voluntary organisation that promotes Self-Help Groups (SHGs) of rural woman and strengthens them as organisations to leverage finances for members’ livelihoods. She leads PRADAN‘s efforts in recruiting the best and brightest minds and inspiring them to work with and create change in the lives of underprivileged communities.

Don’t run away from your roots because that is your foundation and the nation’s foundation too. If you want to make a difference, you have got to start at the bottom. There is so much one can do

A graduate from the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Chhavi Rajawat is the youngest Indian woman with an MBA to become sarpanch or village head. She gave up her corporate job to help develop rural India to become the sarpanch of Soda, a village 60 kilometres from Jaipur.

If you are clear about what you want, being a woman is a sustainable competitive advantage in life

Armed with an MBA from IIM-Kolkata, Ireena Vittal, a former partner at McKinsey, is presently on the board of Tata Global Beverages, Axis Bank, GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare, Wipro, Godrej Consumers Products and Titan. Her areas of specialisation are emerging markets, agriculture and urban development.

The workplace is very slowly adapting to a more gender-balanced 21st century talent pool. In the meantime, programmes like Vedica are essential in helping women navigate and succeed in helping nudge business into modernity, without getting pulled down by obsolete cultures and mindsets

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is the CEO of Consultancy 20-first, one of the world’s leading gender consultancy firms. Her organisation helps CEOs, executive committees and managers build gender ‘Bilingual’ organisations. Avivah is also the founder and honorary president of the European Professional Women’s Network. She also lectures at both INSEAD and HEC business schools. She has been recognised by ELLE magazine as one of the Top 40 Women Leading Change.