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Abhay
Belambe, a software engineer, is a Regional Vice
President of the India Development & Relief Fund (IDRF).
Abhay graduated with a B. E. (Honors) from the Birla
Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani, India and with an
M. S. from Northeastern University, Boston.
Ashok
Chowgule
is an industrialist, managing sections of the family business, a
well-known, successful, and respected business house.
The group is headquartered in Goa.
The family has set up schools and a college in Goa,
operations in which Ashok takes keen interest.
Ashok
completed his schooling in Belgaum, India after which he went on to
graduate in Economics and Statistics from Bristol University in the
U. K., and completed his business studies at the Case Western
University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Upon returning home, he has looked after the finance and
administration of the business group, and lately has been
supervising the shipbuilding component of the family business.
As
a part of his social responsibilities, he has been actively involved
in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad since 1991, and at present is the
President of the Maharashtra State unit of the organisation.
He has written several articles and books on the
socio-political issues of Hindutva.
Ashok and Hindu Vivek Kendra
(HVK) have also recently published an analysis and of the
Sabrang/FOIL Report titled “An
Analysis Of The Report 'The Foreign Exchange Of Hate.”
It is available on http://www.hvk.org/specialrepo/hate/index.html
Narayanan
Menon Komerath is a Professor of Aerospace
Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, (GIT) Atlanta,
Georgia. A graduate of
the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in Aeronautical
Engineering, he went on to get an M. S. and Ph.D. in aerospace
engineering from GIT. He
directs the Experimental Aerodynamics Group including the John J.
Harper Wind Tunnel at the School of Aerospace Engineering, since
1990. He has taught and
guided over 1700 aerospace engineers at all levels in aerodynamics,
propulsion, flow diagnostics and space applications.
Professor
Komerath is one of the senior researchers at the U.S. Army/NASA
Center of Excellence in Rotorcraft Technology at Georgia Tech since
its inception in 1982. He
has conducted over 70 projects for the U.S. Army, USAF, NASA,
National Science Foundation, and industries.
He holds 3 U.S. Patents, and has published over 250 papers.
He is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Fellow of the NASA Institute of
Advanced Concepts. Awards
won by his team include 3 Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis awards at GIT,
and 5 Institute awards for excellence as a Ph.D. advisor, research
author, and mentor. Media
attention to their work on advanced space exploration concepts and
flight experiments in the NASA KC-135 aircraft includes the Wall
Street Journal, New
Scientist magazine, the Hindi “Josh”
magazine in New Delhi, and the “Malayala
Manorama” in Kerala.
Since
May 1999, he has taken an active and public interest in events in
the Indian subcontinent. He
initiated the Martyrs for National Integration Fund with the help of
the IDRF, a permanent, growing philanthropic resource to help
families of those hurt in the war against terrorism.
Mihir
Meghani lives in Fremont, California (USA).
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Michigan, he went to the
University of Michigan for his Bachelor of Arts in History and his
Medical Degree, in the Honors and Accelerated INTEFLEX Program.
He completed a residency-training program in Emergency
Medicine at Wayne State University/Detroit Medical Center in 2000,
and now works for a large integrated health care delivery system in
the San Francisco Bay area.
While
in his training, he spent 5 months in India doing medical work,
including a month in the North-Eastern Indian state of Meghalaya. He
served at the World Trade Center as part of the San Francisco Bay
Area Disaster Medical Assistance Team (now part of the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security).
He served in Gujarat after the terrible earthquake of 2001.
In recognition of his volunteer efforts in India after the
earthquake, he was honored by his employer with the
HERO Award and Outstanding Service to the Community Award.
Later
this year, he will travel to the Ukraine as part of a U.S.
Government team to assist the nations of the former Soviet Union.
Dr. Meghani believes in the universal Hindu ideals of “Vasudhaiva
Kutumbakam” - the whole universe is one family; “Ekam
Sat Viprah Bahudha Vadanti” - Truth is One, Sages Call it by
Various Names; peace, acceptance, tolerance, and respect for all.
Beloo
Mehra is an Assistant Professor of Education at
Antioch University McGregor, Ohio, where she designs and teaches
face-to-face and online graduate level courses in qualitative
research, applied curriculum design, and academic writing.
Before obtaining her Ph.D. in Education from the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she taught at a high school in
India for five years and also volunteered with the National Literacy
Mission. Her other
education includes a Master’s in Economics from the Delhi School
of Economics, and a Master’s in Education.
Her
academic interests include cultural models of schooling in ethnic
minorities, especially Asian Indians in the US, qualitative and
practitioner/action research, women’s ways of knowing, role of
self in knowledge construction, and bridging academic and creative
writing.
Beloo
Mehra’s writings include Multiple
and Shifting Identities: Asian Indian Families in the United States
(forthcoming), Lives in
Transition: Stories of Three Foreign Elementary Students from India
(forthcoming), Bias in
Qualitative Research: Voices from an Online Classroom (2002), Research
or Personal Quest?: Dilemmas in Studying My Own Kind (2001), and
Teaching Online and Teaching
Adults: Issues of Course Design, Academic Quality, and Community
Building (2002). Dr.
Mehra has presented in several conferences and is also a regular
contributor to the online magazine, Sulekha.
Kannan
Raghunandan is Radcliffe Killam Distinguished
Professor of Accounting at Texas A&M International University.
He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering
before getting his Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Indian
Institute of Management (IIMC), Calcuttta, and his Ph.D. in Business
Administration from the University of Iowa.
Chitra
Raman
is a freelance writer proficient in both creative and technical
writing fields. She was
most recently hired as an independent academic consultant by her
local school district’s Special Education Department to
conceptualize and write adapted instruction modules in science,
language arts, and social studies for children with autism.
She holds Bachelor’s degrees in English Literature
(University of Delhi) and Journalism (Cum Laude – Wayne State
University) and also has diplomas in Export Marketing (Indian
Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi) and German language (Max
Mueller Bhavan New Delhi).
Chitra
began her career with the Confederation of Indian Industry (formerly
AIEI), writing country profiles and background papers for business
conferences. She
subsequently worked for an import agency, preparing commodity and
market profiles for overseas principals.
Freelance assignments in India included promotional
audiovisuals, features for radio and print media, and ad copy.
After immigrating to the United States in 1985, Chitra joined
the non-profit Focus: HOPE in Detroit as proposal writer.
The following year, she was promoted to a management position
at the organization’s Machinist Training Institute, where she
steered the school through a difficult transition to national
accreditation. She
subsequently freelanced for
The Citizens for Better Care, Detroit, a grassroots agency
engaged in reforming Nursing Home care for the elderly.
She has also freelanced for
The Gale Group, publishers of print and electronic reference
materials for schoolchildren.
Chitra
Raman’s publications have appeared in Horizons, Autism
Society of Michigan Quarterly, (Speech:
“Be Part of the Solution,” Winter 2002;
Article:
“Educating the Educators,” Winter 1999), Charity: True Stories
of Giving, Anthology, Red Rock Press, NY (Story:
The Compassionate Crusader, 2001); Femina
Women’s Magazine
(Poetry, 1997), The Detroit News, (Editorial
Rebuttal of the paper’s position on the Kargil Conflict, June 30,
1999), The Book Review, New Delhi, (Review
of a two-Volume impressionistic version of the Mahabharata by Maggi
Lidchi-Grassi: ”The Battle of Kurukshetra” and “The Legs of
the Tortoise” Roli Books, March 1997).
She
sings both Carnatic and Hindustani classical music.
She takes a keen interest in World Music, which she believes
contains clues to forgotten migrations and cultural contact.
Chitra has acted in plays staged by the Delhi-based Yatrik
and Masque theater groups.
Sugrutha
Ramaswami has a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics
(Madras Christian College, Chennai) and a Master’s in Rural
Management (Institute of Rural Management, Anand) and has worked in
the field of Information Technology in various capacities such as
Systems Analyst, Application Architect, Technical Leader, and
Project Manager. She has been living in the US for the past 5 years,
working as a Senior Consultant and is currently positioned as a
Senior Systems Engineer/Solutions Architect with a leader in
Business Messaging Services.
Sugrutha
is a trained vocalist in the Carnatic and Hindustani music
traditions, having been tutored under the late Chembai Sri Anandan
and Smt. Pramila
Gurumurthy (of Madras University).
She hopes to attain a formal education in law and spend her
Vanaprasthashram working for children’s rights.
She contributes through IDRF to a certain Indian charity that
runs an orphanage. Her
only motivation for involvement in this project is because she
completely believes that her money is being spent exactly for the
cause(s) for which she donated it.
Nagendra
Rao is a Strategic Planning Expert, with over 30
years of varied global experience, working on Strategic Planning,
Budgeting & Management Controls, Diversification Strategy,
Technology Planning, and Global E-Business Development.
He has served in varied positions e.g., Certified Executive
Consultant, Vice President of Corporate Development, Senior Policy
Analyst in the Executive Office of the Governor.
Nagendra has both led and served on elite
multi-national/multi-cultural consulting teams on projects around
the globe. He is also
very active as community mentor, spiritual counselor, and teacher of
non-dualistic metaphysics (Advaita Vedanta) and meditation, in a
syncretistic mode.
Nagendra
had a distinguished academic career including honors in national
competitive examinations. He
graduated from the Calcutta University with a Bachelor’s in
Physics (Honors), where he was a National Science Talent Search
Scholar. He proceeded
to get a Post Graduate Diploma in Management MBA from the Indian
Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) where he had a merit
scholarship. He added
another Graduate Diploma in Managerial Accounting from the famous
Bajaj Institute of Management, Bombay.
He subsequently moved to the Wharton School, Philadelphia,
where he joined as a Management & Behavioral Sciences Center (MBSC)
Scholar and completed all the course and examination requirements
for a Doctoral degree in Multinational Enterprise Strategy.
He
was Asia-Pacific Mentor for e-Business Strategy in the Global
Consulting practice of the world leader in Information Technology -
consulting services, and the manufacture of computer hardware and
software. He received
the coveted corporate Award for Distinguished Project Management and
numerous other commendations.
Currently,
he consults as Senior Advisor - Strategy, Organisational
Development, and Media Relations, to several Indian cultural and
religious organizations in the United States and India.
Ramesh
N. Rao (formerly Closepet N. Ramesh) is Associate
Professor, Communication, at Truman State University, Missouri,
where he teaches a variety of communication courses.
Ramesh Rao, has a B. A. in Sociology, Political Science and
Economics from Bangalore University, India, worked as an executive
in the banking sector for a few years before taking up teaching in a
residential school. After
completing a graduate diploma course in journalism, he found himself
with the editorial staff of one of the most widely circulated
English language newspapers in India.
Later, he acquired an M. S. in Communication from the
University of Southern Mississippi, and a Ph.D. in Communication
from Michigan State University.
Ramesh
Rao’s research interests include the role and nature of conflict
in modern Indian politics, culture, and society; Indian-American
identity issues; and the impact of the Hindu or dharmic philosophies
of life in the modern world.
Rao
is the author of two books: “Secular
‘Gods’ Blame Hindu ‘Demons’: The Sangh Parivar through the
Mirror of Distortion,” “Coalition
Conundrum: The BJP’s Trials, Tribulations, and Triumphs,”
and co-editor, with Koenraad Elst of “Gujarat
After Godhra: Real Violence, Selective Outrage.”
He is a regular contributor of essays, reviews, and
commentaries for Sulekha.com and Hamarashehar.com, and his op-ed
pieces, essays, and book reviews have been published by the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, The Columbia
Daily Tribune, Rediff On the Net, India Currents, and
India Post.
Rajeev
Srinivasan is a well-known columnist for Rediff.com,
India's most [widely read] portal. He writes on economics, society,
and foreign policy with an Indian-American perspective. He is also a
software entrepreneur and divides his time between India and the
U.S. Rajeev graduated with a B. Tech. (EE) from the Indian Institute
of Technology, Chennai (Madras), and an MBA from the Stanford
Business School. He has worked with high technology companies in
Silicon
Valley and in India, and also with management consultancy Booz,
Allen & Hamilton.
Note:
All the views expressed in this report are the contributors’ own
and do not in any way represent the opinions and ideas of the
organizations they work for or belong to.
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