Jyotsna Pattabiraman

Founder and CEO of Grow Fit & Samagra Springboard Sessions Speaker

Jyotsna is the founder and CEO of Grow Fit, a healthtech company that helps customers achieve peak wellness by using a combination of data science, medical science and behavioral insights. A Melton Fellow and graduate of BMSCE as well as Stanford University, she has played leadership roles at marquee companies like Oracle, eBay and Yahoo in Silicon Valley during their growth phases. Back home in Bangalore, she has helped build businesses at scale as well as smaller companies intent on making a dent in the universe.
Having spent her career on the frontlines of internet businesses, Jyotsna is an all-star internet and mobile maven whose work has been covered at the Wall Street Journal, Femina, CNBC, Outlook and other prominent publications.

Naga Sravan Kilaru

Associate Vice President of SatSure & Samagra Springboard Sessions Speaker

Sravan is an engineer by education, innovator by choice and politician by profession. He is currently serving as an Associate Vice President for Policy and Government Relations at SatSure, which is a tech startup that uses satellite images and Artificial Intelligence algorithms to build large area data analytics to impact millions of farmers life’s by automating the crop insurance claim settlements.

At the age of 17, Sravan started his social career by joining local campaigns and he has been working on numerous issues over the last seven years. He is closely associated with international youth organizations such as Commonwealth Youth Council. He is also a member of United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development, and a strong advocate for youth right and youth policies.

Devika Mittal

Convener-India of Aaghaz-e-Dosti & Samagra Springboard Sessions Speaker

Devika Mittal is the convener-India of Aaghaz-e-Dosti, an Indo-Pak Friendship Initiative dedicated to peace education and citizen diplomacy using low-threshold technologies among others. She has dedicated many years to the work for peace and human rights, including gender issues through both research and practice. Devika is a core member of Mission Bhartiyam, a voluntary organization working for Inter-faith harmony, Peace and Human Rights, and a freelance writer on the issues of peace and conflict especially Indo-Pak conflict, gender and contemporary issues. She teaches at an under-graduate college in Delhi University and is currently pursuing PhD in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics.

Karan Vaish

Lead Systems Engineer at TeamIndus & Samagra Springboard Sessions Speaker

Karan is the lead systems engineer for the TeamIndus Lunar Rover – ECA or Ek Chhoti si Asha. His forte, mechanical engineering, and experiences in designing numerous unmanned rover systems throughout professional, university and school years, landed him with the opportunity to design an actual rover fit for space flight back in 2013. Aided by veterans from the Indian Space Research Organization and backed by a team of dozen engineers, this makes him the youngest engineer to build a rover ready for space flight, due launch in the first quarter 2018.

Team Indus is building a spacecraft that will soft land on the lunar surface and carry a lunar rover, also designed and manufactured in-house, with the primary mission target to traverse at least 500 meters and send back High Definition imagery data.

Vaishnavi Sundar

Independent Filmmaker & Samagra Springboard Sessions Speaker

Vaishnavi is an independent filmmaker, actor, writer and activist from Chennai who has worked in theatre and films for the past 7 years. She is known for her work in the field of cinema and activism involving an interplay of feminism and filmmaking. Having written, directed, and produced all films under her production company, Lime Soda Films, she is currently working on her feature-length documentary on workplace sexual harassment titled, But what was she wearing?

To help female filmmakers worldwide connect, collaborate and create works in the audio-visual medium, Vaishnavi founded Women Making Films, a global community known for its effort to break the glass ceiling within the realms of domestic and world cinema.

Lakshman Pachineela Seshadri

Vice-President at SAP Service Innovation & Samagra Springboard Sessions Speaker

Lakshman’s current area of work is on Strategy, Design and Innovation. A member of the founding team of SAP India, he started and scaled up the Design Thinking initiative for SAP in India to build a robust Community of Practice. As a Design Strategist, he has been driving end-to-end software solutions Innovation projects with Design Thinking, Business Model Innovation and Lean Methods for SAP customers globally and social change projects in India.  Prior to SAP, Lakshman held leadership business roles at IBM Global Services, India and Digital Equipment Corporation (India).

Lakshman is a teaching team member at the HPI School of Design Thinking, Potsdam, Germany. He also teaches Design Strategy and Innovation at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Lakshman earned his Master’s Degree in Technology, Anna University, India.

Shruthi Mohan

YourStory Correspondent & Samagra Experience Presenter

An alumni from BMS Institute of Technology, Shruthi is an engineer turned journalist. Today, as a correspondent at India’s leading e-media, YourStory, she wakes up and sleeps to stories that redefine the new-age India. Recently she was awarded the ‘Digital Media Professional of the Year’ award from the PR Council of India and Young Communicators Club and has represented the Indian Media at a global sustainability conference held at Jakarta. She takes keen interest in stories of social enterprises, start-ups, incubators, and entrepreneurs who are collectively addressing the bigger issues.

When she is not juggling between her professional roles, it is Open Sky Slam that keeps her on her toes. A community art platform for young artists, it allows creative enthusiasts explore art beyond competitive platforms.

According to Shruthi, every story that is worth living, is worth sharing – So what’s yourstory?

Abby TerHaar

Co-Facilitator of the Workshop "The Future of Work: Building a meaningful and global career in the 21st century"

Abby is the Programs Coordinator of Amani Institute. Her passion to learn about diverse cultures combined with her sense of spontaneity and adventure led her to Chandigarh, India to study Punjabi in 2014. Following her Bachelor’s Degree in Politics, Abby taught English in an Indian government school in Delhi.

Prior to Amani, Abby was an AIF Clinton Fellow at Reaching Hand, an NGO in Bangalore, working in skills training with adults. Her past experiences in lobbying, fundraising, and working, for the U.S. Congress coupled with her experience working in India have taught her the values of patience and collaboration in order to create positive change.

Together with Shehzia, Abby will facilitate the workshop “The Future of Work: Building a meaningful and global career in the 21st century”.

Shehzia Lilani

Co-Facilitator of the Workshop "The Future of Work: Building a meaningful and global career in the 21st century"

Shehzia manages the Post Graduate Certificate in Social Innovation Management Program at Amani Institute in India, where she is Country Manager. In the first ten years of her career, Shehzia has predominantly spent time designing and delivering learning and development interventions in the corporate world. She is a passionate L&D professional and AIESEC alumni, and has gained experience in the areas of coaching & mentoring, leadership development, change management and talent management.

She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Fergusson College (Pune University) and a Diploma in training & development from ISTD (Indian Society for Training & Development, New Delhi). Passionate about the study of human behaviour, Shehzia is also MBTI certified and accredited on Harrison Assessments.

Together with Abby, Shehzia will facilitate the workshop “The Future of Work: Building a meaningful and global career in the 21st century”.

Lisa Guenther

Co-Facilitator of the Workshop "Design Thinking for Positive Change"

Lisa is a Design Thinking Coach who enjoys facilitating teams in innovation processes for impactful solutions. As a yoga teacher, she brings aspects of mindfulness into this work. Holding a degree in Intercultural Management, she has expertise in Organizational Behavior and Intercultural Communication. A Fellow of the Melton Foundation, she trained at the HPI School of Design Thinking in Potsdam (Germany) and is currently involved in the development of “Circle + Crown” – a board game for self-reflection. As a User Research Team Lead of the digital-social innovation start-up clarat.org, which is active in the fields of social work and refugee aid in Germany, she supported a user-centered design approach.

Together with Pooja Channaveerappa, Lisa will facilitate the workshop “Design Thinking for Positive Change”.

Pooja Channaveerappa

Co-Facilitator of the Workshop "Design Thinking for Positive Change"

Pooja is an alumni from BMS Institute of Technology. She is currently pursuing a degree in aerospace engineering, and has Design Thinking training fromHPI School of Design Thinking in Potsdam (Germany). A Melton Fellow, Pooja is experienced in working with multicultural teams for technical innovation in industries and is currently engaged in implementing design thinking for developing technological solutions. She is also deeply passionate about sustainability and gender empowerment, and has worked in design thinking projects for varied social causes. She has vast experience in mentoring and facilitating interdisciplinary teams for design thinking.

Together with Lisa Guenther, Pooja will facilitate the workshop “Design Thinking for Positive Change”.

Wen Xiaozhuo

Facilitator of the Workshop "Sustainable Food Production"

A fellow of Melton Foundation and graduate of Zhejiang University (China), Wen is dedicated to Food Science and Engineering. In China, she co-founded an e-commerce platform that connects rural organic rice farmers with consumers in urban areas. As a visiting scholar of Cornell University in 2015, she worked in organic farms in New York State to complement her theoretical perspective about sustainable agriculture with user and producer perspectives. She has taught multiple workshops on sustainable food production and facilitated dialogues about the comparison of food systems across the world.

Wen will facilitate the workshop “Sustainable Food Production”.

Tito Magero

Facilitator of the Workshop "Innovation for Marginal Communities"

A Kenyan by birth, Tito is a senior year student at Ashesi University College (Ghana) and a Fellow of the Melton Foundation since 2014. Growing at an age where employment of technology is taking center stage in Kenya and sub-saharan Africa at large, Tito has taken interest in understanding how new innovations on the continent are addressing issues of inclusivity. His studies and passion merge when investigating use of innovation to bridge social, economic, and political gaps. Tito can best be described as curious, inquisitive and funk.

Tito will facilitate the workshop “Innovation for Marginal Communities“.

Nickhil Sharma

Facilitator of the Workshop "Green Economics 101"

An energy-engineer based in Göteborg (Sweden), Nickhil believes in the potential of economic policies to ensure sustainable development. He has been with the Melton Foundation since 2012 and gained immense insights and reflections from professional and personal travels to Europe, the US and South America. When he’s not working for his Master’s study in Sustainable Energy Systems, he follows his interests such as environment, LGBTQI rights and non-violent solutions to global conflicts. Nickhil loves languages – he’s currently learning Swedish and Bangla – and enjoys watching documentaries, writing short stories, hugging trees, or having a beer.

Nickhil will facilitate the workshop “Green Economics 101: Transitioning to sustainable development”.

The Melton Foundation

Founded in 1991, the Melton Foundation (MF) is a global
network of fellows and partner organizations that promotes and enables global citizenship as a way for individuals and organizations to work together across boundaries of place and identity to develop collaborative solutions to the challenges of today’s interconnected world. To achieve this, the MF offers a fellowship for selected students at partner universities around the world to develop their potential, reach and influence in order to become effective and ethical leaders who have the capacity to act locally with a global context in mind. Through a supported network, fellows contentiously build their capacity to act as global citizens in their growing spheres of influence and become role models for a generation of global citizens.

BMS College of Engineering

BMS College of Engineering was founded by Sri. B. M. Sreenivasiah, a pioneer in the field of Education, in the year 1946, in Bangalore, India. Over the last seven decades, BMS has constantly been among the premier
institutes for education and innovation in the field of technology. As a part
of its brilliant record and to celebrate its bright prospects ahead, the
institute is organizing several conferences, most of them with
speakers from across the globe.