Anjney is a partner at the American venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he focuses on consumer digital investments and ProductWorks, the firm’s newly launched platform to help entrepreneurs develop transformative products through Engineering, Design, and Product Management. Anjney joined KPCB from First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund (DRF), where he was a founding Managing Partner. While at DRF, Anjney focused on the fund’s investments in early stage internet technologies.
In 2012, Anjney was named the youngest Google Policy Fellow, and in 2014, organized the first Stanford Cryptofolks summit for applied cryptography. Anjney pursued undergraduate and graduate coursework at Stanford University.
WEBSITE: anjneymidha.com
Aurelie works tirelessly to help people keep their traditions and cultures alive. She has worked with musicians in the Caribbean, Egypt, Mozambique, Morocco, India and Argentina. She takes the musicians she discovers abroad to numerous music festivals, has started collaborative projects with them, all in addition to making documentary films. In Mumbai, she worked with traditional musicians and street children, not only helping them to record their own music albums and videos, but also building bridges between the humanitarian world and culture.
Her first documentary was on the traditional music of Mozambique, entitled Mozambico, sketching the music, presented in the major Parisian music venue La Cite de la Musique where she invited 40 musicians to perform. She then went on to document the traditional life of a large gypsy family of musicians in Southern Egypt, through the eyes of the children, work that she shared with other children in France and India, through an interactive exhibition. After working for almost a year in Paris with the famous aerial photographer and filmmaker Yann-Arthus Bertrand, Aurelie is now working with another music community based in Rajasthan called the Langa, using the film as a tool to connect people – creating awareness, sharing the beauty of a unique heritage, empowering the new generation and hopefully contributing to the passing on the tradition.
Daniel is a PhD candidate for the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, where his work focuses on human computer interaction. He believes that computers could be much more powerful if their interactions would engage with human bodies more fully. Daniel’s goal is to build a new generation of human computer interfaces, one that can render dynamic, physical shapes that we can touch and transform to express ourselves and collaborate with others. Already, Daniel has built a number of tangible prototypes based on his vision.
Daniel’s projects have been presented at Ars Electronica, Siggraph and the Science Center Singapore and published at ACM ITS, TEI, CHI and UIST conference. He has received the Austrian State Prize for Multimedia, Europrix Top Talent Award, Laval Virtual ReVolution Award, RTT Emerging Technology Award, Siggraph Research Challenge, UIST Student Innovation Contest and best paper awards at UIST and CHI.
Dhairya is a researcher and designer at the MIT Media Lab who draws his inspiration from cultural myths and stories. His work can be seen through his fascinating projects: ThinkerToys – creating fun toys out of eWaste, Cheers – ice-cubes that change colour depending on how much you drink, Obake – an elastic shape-changing screen, SuperShoes – shoe soles with a sixth sense, and much more.
Dhairya’s work is a mix between innovative engineering, thoughtful design and delightful experiences. This can take form in objects, installations, web, prosthetics, toys, experiences and education. He is interested in the areas of wearables, toys and learning, mindfulness, superpowers, urban exploration, and more. He is currently working on wearables that help people get lost and be in multiple places at once, imparting new skills and capabilities.
WEBSITE: dhairyadand.com
Gazal did a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from NIT, Jaipur, and went on to work as a software engineer with Infosys Technologies for 2 years, before she decided to pursue one of the two biggest dreams of her life. She moved to Mumbai in 2005 to work in the movies. Today, she writes films for some remarkable people in the Hindi film industry, namely Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Govind Nihalani, Prakash Jha and Tanuja Chandra. In 2007, she took another life changing decision. She went through a medical process to fix a disorder she was born with. Her journey to being who she is, has been two-fold – the external path to find a place for herself in the daunting business of the movies… and the internal path of combat with her own identity and destiny.
Hamish is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Azoi, a medical device company that aims to use technology in enabling easier access to healthcare for masses.
His latest product, Wello, a phone cover that allows users to monitor multiple health vitals using their mobile phone. Wello was widely covered in multiple broadcasts and publications around the world including TechCrunch, CNBC, CBS, WIRED and Guardian.
WEBSITE: azoi.com
Hannah directed and produced Project 2×1, world’s first Google Glass documentary, which explored, through collaborative storytelling, the longstanding cultural divide between Hasidic and Caribbean neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, New York. By filming life through the eyes of local residents, she crafted a story and an interactive-screening experience that sparked inter-community dialogue. Beyond the rewarding nature of this local social-impact work, the project has earned broad attention through speaking engagements, and was featured in Fast Company, The New York Times, Huffington Post Live, and more.
Currently, Hannah aims to develop a mobile app to help address the growing health concerns around sedentary media consumption. By day, she is a marketer at a global experiential agency, where she helps generate the agency’s thought leadership on the future of brand engagement, social media, and creative culture.
Harshvardhan is an independent visual artist who makes street art across India. He has been running his travel studio, Inkbrushnme since 2007 which has been producing children’s illustrated books, graphic novels and character designs for animation and gaming projects.
Making a work of art for Harshvardhan is a ritualistic performance. Born in India and exposed to its rich cultural and literary heritage, he has dedicated his time in discovering mythologies and reinterpreting its essence through street art and digital paintings.
Growing up, math and genetics were always Kavita’s favourite subjects in school. She completed her undergraduate degree in chemistry, physics and math, attended the MSc Biotechnology programme at Maharaja Sayajirao University, but left partway to pursue her doctorate at Professor William Chia’s laboratory at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Singapore and King’s College in London.
She conducted her Post-doctoral research at the Massachusetts General Hospital where she discovered an Immunoglobulin superfamily molecule that is required for normal synaptic potentiation at the C. elegans neuromuscular junction. Kavtia is a Wellcome DBT Intermediate Fellow and a recipient of the Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award.
Currently, Kavita holds a teaching and research position at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Mohali. This position allows her to pursue her interests in genetics and neurobiology as well as teaching bright young undergraduate and graduate students.
Leonard is a passionate 16-year-old innovator, developer and designer. At the age of 14, frustrated with teaching methodologies, he co-founded and built ludu.co, an online education platform along with a friend to help his schoolmates and other students summarize the main points of what they learned as they learned it. You organize your ‘ludu blocks’ in a box that you can refer to as you study. Today, it serves more than a quarter of the students at The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.
Leonard is a self-taught coder and has been coding since the age of 7. His first lego robot, with hundreds of parts, motors, sensors, and a mini-computer to connect them to is what inspired his interest in programming, electronics, and robotics. He was awarded an Apple WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) Student Scholarship in 2014. He has worked for several companies in designing and creating their mobile solutions. Aside from working on completing his 11th grade, Leonard recently co-founded a social media platform for sharing images within your company.
His dream is to apply material design, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to create self-assembling nano-tech robots that can inhabit other planets. He strongly believes that we as a species have to be able to do this to evolve and survive.
Neeraj is co-founder and CEO of Hector Beverages, the makers of Paper Boat drinks, traditional Indian beverages. Their other brand is Tzinga Energy Drink, the second largest selling energy drink in India. Prior to starting with Hector Beverages, Neeraj had an impressive career with The Coca-Cola Company for 8 years.
Neeraj is a graduate from Wharton Business School and was awarded the highest academic honour, the palmer scholar, in the University of Pennsylvania business program
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Philip Obaji Jr. is the founder and general coordinator for the 1 GAME Campaign, which promotes basic primary education for vulnerable kids in Nigeria. Philip traveled from house to house – urging parents to send their children to school and created a book center, where poor school children can get exercise books and pens for free.
Philip also started a community project, Off The Streets, for street children who are facing challenges of exclusion from school, ignorance, recruitment into insurgent groups, neglect and abuse. As a result of their work, more than 100,000 children in northeast Nigeria, a region devastated by violence and terror, are enrolled in school and have access to writing materials.
WEBSITE: play1game.org
Pulkit is a writer and filmmaker based in New York City. Growing up in six countries across four continents, Pulkit’s global upbringing drives him to discover and tell stories that connect people intrinsically to one another beyond traditional and restrictive boundaries. With a background in cinema studies and film/TV production from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Miami University (Ohio), he has worked in creative and production capacities on a range of international projects including narrative films, Sundance-backed documentaries, web content, commercials, short films and multimedia campaigns. Pulkit’s first short film as writer/director “Jason.” was screened at numerous festivals, won the Reel 13 online vote competition and was broadcast on PBS. He has also produced the documentary “The Forgetting Game” (distributed by IndiePix Films), experimental short “Acetate Diary” (Official Selection, Tribeca Film Festival 2014), and executive produced “Three Shades of Brown,” a British-Asian comedy web series. As a writer, Pulkit has also written numerous arts and culture articles for Buzzfeed, The Aerogram, NewsLaundry, The NRI, and more.
Pulkit is currently developing his debut feature film as writer/director, titled “Colony.” The project was one of ten selected from around the world for the Cine Qua Non Lab in Mexico, as well as one of 25 selected in the ‘Emerging Storytellers’ program by IFP (Independent Filmmakers Project) in New York City.
Alien in camouflaging roles but for human conveniences: Mental Health Advocaate, Hononrarium Prof, Mime Artist, Author and Writer, Protagonist of an award winning documentary called “A Drop of Sunshine”.
Website – https://valresh.com/
Shashwat co-founded Robo Shack Microtronics with the aim of making learning about technology fun and engaging. Electro Bricks, the low-cost electronics kits designed for children by Robo Shack do not need any prior skills in programming or soldering. The bricks are pluggable with each other and one can create complex circuits using a number of different combinations of the bricks.
Shashwat has also worked in fostering the makers movement in the small town of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. He is passionate about bringing elements of the maker culture into primary and secondary education in India.
WEBSITE: electrobricks.in
Shipra Jain is the vice president of Design and Merchandising of BlueStone.com, a leading online jewellery retail brand. Her last assignment was a design-it-yourself jewellery site Sheyna, based out of USA, that lets users create their own necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings. The website received accolades from key media segments such as Oprah’s blog, NBC’s Today Show and People Style Watch. Shipra has also previously worked with Jewellery brands such as Tanishq.
Shipra strongly believes in breaking the norms that the jewelry industry holds for being secretive and having hidden costs. She is inspired by innovation and advocates for being transparent and is paving a new way to buy jewelry in India.
Shravani Hagargi is a young social entrepreneur from Dharwar, India with a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work. Sharavani co-founded Safe Hands 24×7, an innovative venture employing women security guards so as to help promote the ideas of gender equality, provide women with the ability to become financially dependent and also provide top-notch services.
Steve, a conservation biologist featured by National Geographic, is the Scientific Director of the Wild Bird Trust in South Africa, an organization that works to preserve wildlife and advance the research and education on the conservation of all birds in Africa. The organization’s work has been instrumental in getting the Okavango Delta wilderness in northern Botswana listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its annual expeditions across the wilderness represent the most comprehensive biodiversity survey ever undertaken in this remote area. Steve recently completed a major National Geographic-sponsored expedition across the Okavango Delta to promote broader protection for the watershed and its wildlife
Internationally acclaimed American conductor, Viswa Subbaraman, is currently the Artistic Director/Music Director of The Skylight Music Theatre in Milwaukee. In his inaugural season at the Skylight, highlights include a number of critically acclaimed and audience acclaimed productions such as a Bollywood production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, which he both stage directed and conducted, a production of Hans Werner Henze’s El Cimarrón, and Philip Glass’ Hydrogen Jukebox.
Previous to his time with the Skylight, Subbaraman was the Artistic Director/Founder of Opera Vista, Houston’s innovative contemporary opera company. In his time with Opera Vista, he was selected by the HoustonPress as a 100 Creatives 2012: one of the one hundred most creative people in Houston. Opera Vista and Subbaraman were also honored with the 2010 Mastermind Award from the HoustonPress for artistic creativity and innovative outreach.
Equally comfortable in the orchestral realm as with opera, Mr. Subbaraman served as Assistant Conductor of the Orchestre National de France where he assisted Kurt Masur and visiting guest conductors. Subbaraman has conducted the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C. at the Kennedy Center as a Debut Conductor in the National Conducting Institute.
WEBSITE: www.viswasubbaraman.com
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