Network Capital

Srikant Gopal joined ETS in February 2018 as the new Senior Director for TOEFL Brand Marketing and was appointed to the position of Executive Director of the TOEFL Program in October 2018, in which he is responsible for the strategy, performance and growth of the TOEFL portfolio of products. His team, based in Princeton, NJ, USA and around the world, is focused on understanding and meeting the needs of TOEFL test takers, score users, key stakeholders and influencers in a superior way. The TOEFL product family consists of the TOEFL iBT test, the TOEFL ITP Assessment Series, and the TOEFL Young Student Series (Primary and Junior) tests, along with a suite of test prep products that include the TOEFL Go! App and the TOEFL MOOC course.

Srikant is a graduate of the Birla Institute for Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India and earned his MBA from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA. He combines marketing and business experience from companies like Procter & Gamble and Nestle with a passion for education and student development. Currently residing in the Greater Philadelphia area, he brings a global background to the job, having lived and worked in six countries including the US, and with business experience across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

Saumya Saxena’s research focused on family law and religion in India. She is interested in the interface between law, policy, and society and was part of the Law Commission of India (2016-2018) where she researched on amendments to religious personal laws in India. She was part of the research team that assisted the Justice Verma Committee (2013) on amendments to rape laws in India. She has taught subjects related to gender, social movements, and Indian politics.

Saumya Saxena is a legal historian specialising in family law, religion and gender politics in India. She writes on women’s rights movements, religion and law in late 20th and 21st century South Asia. Her research brings into conversation a number of archives and analyses how issue of religious personal law contributed to the unique evolution of both, the rule of law, and the doctrine of secularism in India. She is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow 2018-2021.

Tripurdaman Singh is a historian of South Asia and currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Born in Agra, India, Tripurdaman read politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, and subsequently earned an MPhil in modern South Asian studies and a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies, Universiteit Leiden and an Indian Council of Historical Research Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Agra.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, and the author of three books: Imperial Sovereignty and Local Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Sixteen Stormy Days (Penguin, 2020) and Nehru (William Collins, 2021). He lives in Cambridge, UK and Agra, India.

Director of Research, Cambridge Central Asia Forum; Lecturer in Development Studies, and Fellow of Jesus College at University of Cambridge

Dr. Shailaja Fennell is Director of Research at Cambridge Central Asia Forum and a University Lecturer in Development Studies. She is also a Fellow of Jesus College at the University of Cambridge.

Since 2004, Dr. Fennell has been researching the linkages between rural development, environmental and educational strategies in India, China and Central Asia. She has specialised in the sub-fields of institutional reform, rural development, gender and household dynamics, kinship and ethnicity, and educational provision.

Her recent publications include The Handbook of BRICS (with P. Anand, F. Comim, and J Weiss) forthcoming (2018), Oxford University Press, Rules Rubrics and Riches: The Interrelations between Legal Reform and International Development (Routledge 2010), Gender Education and Development: Conceptual Frameworks, Engagements and Agendas (Routledge 2008) edited with M. Arnot. She is currently completing a book titled Grains and Gains: The Political Economy of Agriculture in China and India(Sage 2012), and working on a manuscript currently titled Development in Transition: Lessons from Central Asia.

Dr. Fennell pursued her bachelors, masters, and MPhil in Economics degrees from the University of Delhi, after which she went on to read for her MPhil and PhD at the Faculty of Economics and Politics, University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research was on long-term agricultural trends in India and China.

D. Shivakumar, or Shiv as he is popularly known, is a Bangalore born leader and a management thinker.

He is currently the Group Executive President, Corporate Strategy at Aditya Birla Group. Previously, Shiv was the Chairperson & Chief Executive Officer at PepsiCo Holdings Private Limited, India. Prior to that he was CEO for emerging markets at Nokia.

Shiv started his career as a management trainee in the Consumer Products Division at Hindustan Ciba Geigy before shifting to Hindustan Unilever Limited where he spent 19 years in sales, marketing and general management positions. He moved to Philips, India as Chief Executive Officer of the consumer electronics division in 2003.

Stefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department, and a Fellow of Jesus College. He is also Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies.

He combines his academic career with work as a policy advisor, providing strategic economic and development advice, and promoting the use of evidence in decision making. Between 2011 and 2017, he was Chief Economist of the Department of International Development (DFID), the government department in charge with the UK’s aid policy and spending. Between 2020-2022, he was the Development Policy Advisor to successive Foreign Secretaries at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

His research interests concern what keeps some people and countries poor: the failures of markets, governments and politics, mainly in Africa, and how to achieve change.

His latest book, Gambling on Development: Why some countries win and others lose was published in May 2022. It draws on his academic research as well as his policy experience across three decades and 40-odd countries, exploring why some countries have managed to settle on elite bargains favouring growth and development, and others did not. Previously, Dull Disasters? How Planning Ahead Will Make A Difference was published in 2016, and provides a blueprint for renewed application of science, improved decision making, better preparedness, and pre-arranged finance in the face of natural disasters.

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjay Deshpande is a Learning Designer who currently leads L&D at Pride Circle. He has previously worked as a part of the Founding Team of Harappa Education and the skilling team of NASSCOM Foundation. He is passionate about mental health, queer rights and cancer advocacy.

Samira Daswani

Samira is an AYA cancer survivor who founded Manta Cares based on her personal experiences from cancer. Manta Cares is a global community of caregivers and survivors dedicated to making the cancer experience just a little easier.

In her non-survivor life, she is a healthcare strategy and design expert. She's led product design and management teams in the medical diagnostics industry, incubated and launched numerous healthcare startups. She started her career at McKinsey & Company. She has degrees from MIT, Wellesley College and Stanford University. In her spare time, she can be found scuba diving, sketching, writing poetry, and practicing taekwondo.

Johnathan Bi is on the founding team of Lonsdale Investment Technology, a financial technology startup. He is launching a 7-part lecture series on René Girard, a French philosopher who posited a theory that rivalry, imitation (mimesis), and scapegoating mechanism govern human interaction and history, and how Girard’s Mimetic Theory impacts the contemporary world. A recent graduate of Columbia University in Philosophy and Computer Science, Bi is also writing a book on the intersection of Girardian social theory and Buddhist phenomenology. To watch, listen, or read the full transcript of Johnathan’s first lecture on Girard, visit this link.

Over 200 million women and girls in India, and millions more across the world, cannot access a safe way to manage their period. This prevents them from participating in essential daily activities like going to school and work.

My social enterprise Asan (www.asancup.com) has designed an innovative menstrual cup that is extremely easy to use. A single Asan cup can be safely reused for 10 years, averting the waste of more than 2,500 sanitary pads or tampons. For every cup that Asan sells, we donate one for free to a woman or girl in a village who cannot afford period products.

Vikram Aditya is the Co-Founder & CEO of DAOLens which is in the DAOTech space. DAOLens is focused on the four-step journey in the lifecycle starting from DAO discovery -> onboarding to reduce churn -> meaningful contribution -> effective DAO infrastructure. Previously, he was heading the Product at Merkle Science (Crypto Forensics and Compliance). They were creating the infrastructure necessary to ensure the safe and healthy growth of the industry, supporting the transition as cryptocurrencies consolidate with the $22 trillion financial services market.