Accelerating Growth and Transformation

Deidre Paknad
CEO and co-founder, WorkBoard

Deidre is CEO and co-founder of WorkBoard. She’s led several high growth organizations as CEO and founder and as an executive at IBM. She’s seen first hand how alignment, accountability and transparency drive results and create resilience. Deidre has over a dozen patents and has twice been inducted into the Smithsonian Institution for innovation. Goldman Sachs named her one of the 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs of 2019.

Aakrit Vaish
Co-Founder & CEO, Haptik

Aakrit Vaish is the Co-Founder & CEO of Haptik, one of the world’s largest conversational AI companies. Aakrit started the company in 2013 and lead it to a successful strategic investment with Reliance Industries in 2019 in a $100 million transaction. Haptik today processes close to 100 million users annually, has presence across 7 global locations, and counts Oyo Rooms, KFC, Samsung, Coca-Cola amongst its marquee clients. Aakrit invests in start-upsin the areas of Consumer Internet, SaaS and Direct to Consumer brands. He has been a part of the Entrepreneur 35 Under 35 and Business World 40 Under 40 Lists.

Aakrit started his career in San Francisco as the 12th employee at a mobile analytics start-up Flurry (exited to Yahoo! in a $280 million deal), after having finished his B.S. in Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.

Jayen Desai
Director Strategy & Business Operations, VMware

Jayen Desai is has been in leadership role with 30+ years global experience across Consulting, Engineering, Technology organizations to take them from inception stage to best in class maturity levels in areas of new product development, product/process optimization, time to market, expanding in newer geographies & building organizational capabilities.

Currently Director of Strategy & Operations at VMware India with key charter being part of the India Leadership Team to drive the organization to next level of maturity in areas of growth, effectiveness & impact in alignment to corporate expectations and roadmap.

Prior to joining VMWare, he served in global leadership positions at Applied Materials, TUV’s and has been involved in setting up this organizations in India including driving large scale transformation involving globalization to achieve benchmarked levels.

Jayen Desai holds a B.E. in Electronics Engineering from Mumbai University & Executive education from Harvard, Stanford, IIM-Bangalore, ESADE & ISB with specialization in globalization.

Seema Nair
Senior EVP and Member, Chairman’s Office, Reliance Industries Limited

Seema Nair is Senior EVP and Member, Chairman’s Office at Reliance Industries Limited. She leads the Digitally Enabled People Transformation project working on People Processes, Policies and Platform. She is supporting the O2C Business and People Transition and leads People Strategy for New Energy.

Seema joined RIL 3 years ago as Head - People Development Group, leading Talent and Leadership, Learning & Development, Diversity & Inclusion, Employee Communications & Employer Branding for RIL Hydrocarbons and Allied Businesses. She has been involved in helping create the RIL Group D&I Charter.

Seema has worked in Technology, Manufacturing and FMCG/ Retail, in Country, AsiaPac and Global roles.

Prior to Reliance, Seema was the CHRO for Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages and SAARC. Before that, she was with Cisco for 9 years, her last role was CHRO for India and SAARC and was a member of the Cisco India Operations Board and Cisco India Advisory Board.

Seema has earlier worked with Intel, Hughes Software, Microland and Crompton Greaves. Seema has an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur and believes in having strong positive impact on employees and on the business, via all that the People Function offers.

She was recently recognized by WeQual as amongst top 3 Women Executives across APAC in the Leadership Excellence category.

Gagan Kharbanda
Vice President and Chief of Staff, EXL

Gagan Kharbanda has 15+ years of experience within the insurance and financial services industry, focused on growth, operations, digital, data and analytics.

He has been an integral part of helping EXL achieve high performance by empowering the Executive/Operating Committees to adopt greater operative agility through delineating comprehensive growth-oriented OKRs.

Currently, he serves as the Chief of Staff to the CEO of EXL, and is based out of the New York office. He plays a pivotal role in leading a set of key strategic initiatives, including turnkey growth opportunities for the company.

Gagan's core responsibilities encompass CEO office communications, board and executive committee engagement. He also drives a variety of external ventures on market positioning, client outreach to accelerate income growth and operational efficiencies across EXL’s U.S. and international businesses. Gagan joined EXL in 2007 and has been continuously contributing to growth across geographies, having spent time in the U.K. and the US. He is a veteran at comprehending the granularity of developing value for clients while accelerating growth agendas.