Balan Ayyar is the Founder and CEO of Percipient.ai, a Silicon Valley-based artificial intelligence and computer vision firm focused on national security missions. The company’s Mirage™ platform is the leading integrated vision platform for intelligence analysis and Constant Integrated Awareness™. 

Balan is a seasoned CEO and a retired General Officer in the United States Air Force (USAF). Before founding Percipient.ai, he served as the CEO of a high-growth technology services firm with revenues exceeding $100 million. His last military role was as the Commanding General of the Combined Joint Interagency Task Force 435 in Kabul, Afghanistan. 

Throughout his career, Balan has served in four combatant commands and held various significant positions, including Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Commander of the USAF Recruiting Service, and a White House Fellow. He is notable for being the first Indian American General Officer in the U.S. Armed Forces and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Balan has received several distinguished awards, including the Legion of Merit, the Defense Superior Service Medal, and the Bronze Star, as well as the NAACP’s Meritorious Service Award. He is married to his college sweetheart, Kristin, and they have three beautiful children.

Akshay Chaturvedi is the Founder & CEO of Leverage, the world’s largest talent mobility platform built for emerging markets. Anchored in India and operating across 18 source countries, spanning South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Leverage powers the full lifecycle of cross-border talent: education, upskilling, careers, financial services, and relocation. For universities and employers across 27 destination countries, it offers an AI product-suite for global talent recruitment and planning. For individuals, a 360-degree stack from admissions and financing to housing and career placement.

Incubated by DFJ Ventures’ Tim Draper in Silicon Valley, Leverage over the last 9 years has partnered with leading investors from world over on the journey, including ETS, Blume Ventures, Kaizenvest Private Equity, DSG Consumer Partners, DSP Mutual Fund, Tomorrow Capital, Spring Marketing Capital, Sterling Partners, Bennett Coleman Group, as well as leading family offices of Binny Bansal, Mithun Sacheti, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Mankind promoter Rajeev Juneja, Capri Global, Indorama Corporation, Lodha Group among others. It now spans 27 countries across 60+ offices, operating multiple products / brands: Leverage Edu, Univalley.ai, Fly Finance, Fly Homes, Leverage Careers, SO-360. An obsession with making every single customer interaction an 11/10 is the core DNA of the 1000+ team spread across all continents (except Antarctica ~ since nobody is moving there or from there at the moment!)

The company’s impact now touches hundreds of thousands of lives across emerging economies – students pursuing global education, professionals building international careers, and institutions accessing a pipeline of talent from the world’s youngest and fastest-growing populations. Leverage has built a dense network of source-to-destination corridors that spans continents, positioning it uniquely at the intersection of the Global South’s demographic dividend and the developed world’s growing talent deficit.

An ISB Hyderabad graduate and now Board Member of its Entrepreneurship School, Akshay was named a CNBC Young Turk in 2019. Next, he was listed on Forbes India’s 30Under30, and subsequently on Forbes Asia’s 30Under30 in early 2020. And later that year, he received the TiE Entrepreneurial Excellence Award. Under his leadership, Leverage was listed in the Deloitte Tech Fast 50 list in 2022 as one of India’s fastest growing companies.

In a significant recognition of his global influence, Akshay was in early 2025 inducted as a Fellow at St. George’s House, Windsor Castle, founded in the 1960s by Prince Edward. He was one of only two Indian entrepreneurs selected globally for this honour. He is a member of the core Founders’ Circle of the British Asian Trust, a philanthropic initiative founded by His Majesty King Charles III to advance education and opportunity in South Asia. He was also among a dozen select delegates invited to spend a weekend at the Pope’s Gardens in Vatican City in late 2025, as a member of the Guild of the Harambeans Alliance, recognising Leverage’s pioneering work in building talent mobility pathways from Africa to Europe – one of several emerging-market corridors the company now operates.

Ashish is a General Partner at Chamaeleon, where he leverages more than 22 years of experience as an operator, founder, and investor to support founders building transformative companies. He takes a people-first approach to investing, backing exceptional entrepreneurs with deep domain expertise and a vision for long-term value creation.

An early investor in AI and machine learning since 2017, he has invested across the AI stack, from infrastructure to applications. His portfolio includes companies such as Ziva Dynamics (acquired by Unity), Spin (acquired by Ford), Maximus (Deloitte Fast 500), Eridu, Vivum, and Dirty Labs.

Prior to Chamaeleon, he helped launch one of Silicon Valley’s earliest AI- and robotics-focused venture funds at Grishin Robotics, where he led investments in companies including Spin and Taskade. He also advises ultra-high-net-worth family offices on technology strategy and private-market investments.

A Kauffman Fellow (Class 24), he is an active leader within the global venture capital ecosystem, having served on the board of NextGen Partners and contributed to the growth of the 256 Network. Earlier in his career, he held leadership roles in M&A, strategy, engineering, and product at Opera Software, Yahoo!, and Dell, and founded two startups in India.

He remains passionate about product-led innovation and technologies that create meaningful real-world impact.

Vedant Agrawal leads Premji Invest’s early-stage practice, focusing on software, consumer, FinTech, and healthcare. Premji Invest is a $16 billion multi-stage investment fund supporting the Azim Premji Foundation, managing direct investments across venture capital, growth equity, and public equities.

Prior to Premji Invest, Vedant was an early-stage investor at Sequoia Capital India, where he led seed and Series A investments in companies including Scaler, Apna, and Classplus, and was an early member of Surge, Sequoia India’s program to accelerate founders’ journeys with capital, workshops, and mentorship. At Scaler Academy, one of India’s leading ed-tech players, Vedant co-led the development of a new business line of education products for upskilling software engineers, helping steer the business to $20 million in annualized bookings within nine months of launch. He began his career as a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company.

Vedant holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Born in New Delhi and raised in Mumbai and Bangalore, Vedant is a trained pianist and patron of local art and cultural events. Beyond work, he enjoys racket sports including pickleball, tennis, and squash, and is a budding golfer.

Renu has over 25 years of experience in growing companies and transforming business models. She is on the Board of Luther Burbank Corporation (NASDAQ:LBC) and a member of their audit and risk committee.

She has held several leadership positions, most recently serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Wells Fargo’s (NYSE:WFC) Financial Institutions Group. Prior to that, she oversaw Wells Fargo’s International Treasury Management business and played a leadership role in the Wells Fargo-Wachovia merger.

Earlier, Renu was Chief Operating Officer at ValleyCrest Companies and Quisic Corporation. She began her career as a scientist at Polaroid and worked at McKinsey & Company for several years. Renu is a founding member of Neythri, a global community of South Asia professional women committed to helping each other succeed. In 2019, she received the National Asian Pacific American Corporate Achievement Award.

Ms. Agrawal holds a M.B.A. from MIT Sloan School of Management and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT. She graduated with a B.Tech in Metallurgy from IIT, Kanpur. Renu resides in San Francisco and Healdsburg, CA with her family.

Maya Ajmera is the President and CEO of Society for Science and Publisher of Science News. Founded in 1921, the Society is best known for its award-winning journalism and world-class science research competitions, including the Regeneron Science Talent Search, Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair and Broadcom MASTERS.

Maya founded The Global Fund for Children (GFC), a non-profit organization that invests in innovative, community-based organizations working with some of the world’s most vulnerable children and youth. Under Maya’s 18 years of leadership, GFC grew into one of the largest networks of grassroots organizations working on behalf of vulnerable children. To date, GFC has awarded nearly $50M to over 700 grassroots organizations in 80 countries, touching the lives of nearly 11M children.

Maya has held several academic appointments at Duke University and Johns Hopkins University. Currently, she teaches a course on social innovation at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Maya is an award-winning children’s book author of over 20 titles, with over 5M readers worldwide. She also serves on numerous boards including Echoing Green, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Foundation, and Sibley Memorial Hospital/Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Maya lives in Washington, DC with her husband and daughter.

Beena is the author of “Trustworthy AI” and “Zero Latency Leadership” books. She currently leads the Global Deloitte AI Institute. Beena is also the Founder of non-profit, Humans For AI, an organization dedicated to increasing diversity in AI.

An award-winning senior executive with extensive global experience in AI and digital transformation, spanning across e-commerce, finance, marketing, telecom, retail, software products, services and industrial domains with companies such as GE, HPE, Thomson Reuters, British Telecom, Bank of America, E*Trade and a number of startups.

Beena serves on the Nomination Evaluation Committee for NMTI at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. She also serves on the Boards of AnitaB.org, WEF Centre for Trustworthy Technology, AACSB and the Advisory Board at Cal Poly College of Engineering. She has been a Board Member and Advisor to several technology startups. Beena thrives on envisioning and architecting how data, artificial intelligence, and technology in general, can make our world a better, easier place to live for all humans.

Beena has been honored numerous times for her contribution to tech and her philanthropic efforts.

Murali Aravamudan is a serial entrepreneur and engineer specializing in technology startups within the Media and Telecom sectors. He currently leads nference, a company dedicated to revolutionizing healthcare through its AI platform, which aims to make biomedical knowledge computable. nference partners with prominent academic medical centers, such as the Mayo Clinic and Duke Health, utilizing extensive patient data and deep learning to assist pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The company has raised approximately $150 million in venture capital.

Another of Murali’s ventures, Anumana, is transforming cardiac care with AI solutions that enhance ECG analysis. The company has received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for four of its algorithms and has secured around $86 million in funding.

Pramana, another company founded by Murali, is innovating digital pathology through advanced imaging and AI. It plans to establish the largest digital pathology archive by 2024 and has raised about $30 million in capital.

Murali also co-founded Veveo, a company focused on content discovery for devices, which was acquired by Tivo in 2014. He has a background with Winphoria Networks, a pioneer in Mobile Wireless SoftSwitch technologies, which was acquired by Motorola for approximately $200 million.

Earlier in his career, Murali held roles at Lucent Technologies and Bell Laboratories, where he contributed to the development of SoftSwitch technology. He is also an accomplished inventor, with 130 patents to his name, and holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru.

Sanjeev Arora, MD, is the founder of Project ECHO and the Executive Director of the ECHO Institute. Dr. Arora is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine with tenure in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center.

Dr. Arora is a pioneer in democratizing specialized medical knowledge for the good of humanity. His idea for Project ECHO was grounded in his personal experience as a liver disease specialist practicing in New Mexico whose patients endured an eight-month wait list for appointments and

often drove hundreds of miles per visit. Delayed access to care adversely affected patient outcomes, resulting in unnecessary deaths from curable diseases like hepatitis C (HCV). Patients from New Mexico’s geographically isolated communities suffered transportation, financial, and caregiver burdens, in addition to their health crises.

Dr. Arora launched Project ECHO at the University of New Mexico in 2003 as a solution for helping all patients receive quality care faster. The ECHO Model works by strengthening the capacity of rural primary care providers to treat complex conditions locally — with ongoing remote support from an interdisciplinary team of experts and a community of peers. Project ECHO used widely available videoconferencing technology to implement a “hub-and-spoke” model for training New Mexico’s community-based clinicians in rural counties, Indian Health Service clinics, and state prisons to treat patients where they live. The ECHO Model has since been used to train providers in more than 70 other disease areas, including cancer, COVID-19, cardiovascular disease and mental health, making significant progress toward reversing health care inequity.

Today, the ECHO Model is being applied around the globe, with programs in North America, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia and partnerships with the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. ECHO topics have expanded beyond health care to include K-12 education, climate change, public safety and more. Backed by more than 500 peer-reviewed research articles, ECHO has proven effective across disciplines and geographies as a way to reduce disparities and drive collaborative solutions for local priorities.

In 2007, Project ECHO won the Ashoka Foundation’s Changemakers Award, an international competition recognizing programs that are changing the paradigm of how medicine is practiced. An inspiring champion and steward of the ECHO Model, Dr. Arora has served as the Director of the ECHO Institute since its establishment. Previously, he served as Executive Vice-Chair and Acting Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, President of the Medical Staff, and for five years on the Board of the Health Sciences Center at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Arora has also served as President of the University Physicians Association.

Harshul Asnani is the President of Technology and Media Business at Tech Mahindra, prior to which, he was the Senior President and Head of the Global Technology Business Unit. He is also senior vice president for North American and Latin American markets for Tech Mahindra’s communications business unit, managing teams located in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

Earlier, he served as executive vice president for business development at Prodapt Solutions, a multinational software, engineering and operational services company headquartered in Chennai.

Prior to Prodapt, Harshul was head of US West, Mid-West and Latin American markets at Tech Mahindra, playing a pivotal role in growing the company’s US profile and leading its foray into Canada and Latin America. Prior to Tech Mahindra, Harshul has worked in variety of leadership roles across sales and account management in leading IT firms like Wipro, Compaq (now HP), HCL Technologies and Patni.

Roshini is the Managing Director, Private Equity at Everstone Capital Asia Pte based out of Singapore. As an operating partner she works deeply with the companies that the fund invests to drive value through human capital transformation, brand strategy and communication, and operational excellence. In addition to this, she also leads ESG and Impact for the firm.

Roshini has more than 30 years of general management and marketing experience and strong track record in consumer industries and have a proven track record for challenging the status quo and turning businesses around. In her earlier roles, she helped build locally relevant business models and executions to win. She is known for understanding complex situations and applying sharp strategic thinking, intuition and insight to actions that drive results.

Prior to Private Equity, she was a business leader and was the CEO and Managing Director for the Walt Disney Company’s Consumer, media and retail business for South Asia, where she set up and built the business to more than $400 million in revenue. Her earlier roles were with Unilever, American Express, Mattel, and Polaris, where she worked on beauty and skin care, financial products, and technology services.

Roshini is an accomplished Independent Director, having close to 10 years of experience in being on the boards of listed companies. She currently serves as an Independent Director at JM Financial (https://jmfl.com/) and a Non-Exec Director at Restaurant Brands Asia Ltd. She recently completed her 2 terms totaling 10 years at Persistent Systems Ltd. (https://www.persistent.com/) She has also been an Independent Director on the board of Max Healthcare, the largest hospital network in India and stepped off , when it was acquired by KKR.

Roshini believes very strongly in entrepreneurship as the future for innovation and growth and work pro bono with Endeavor.org as their global ambassador and panelist helping shortlist the next generation of growth businesses from emerging markets across the world. She also supports Enterprise Singapore, A Govt of Singapore enterprise as a mentor to some of the tech and consumer startups based in Singapore.

Roshini is very passionate about gender parity and is the co-chair of the DEI committee at the Singapore Venture Capital Association.

Roshini holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad, India) and an undergraduate degree from St Stephens College (Delhi, India) majoring in Economics (Hons). She is a keen marathoner, passionate about running, and use her runs to explore and learn about new places.

Prabha is a technology leader at Apple currently heading a team of product-program managers in the AIML organization at Apple, also a creative entrepreneur, and advocate for the arts, education and diversity.

As a trailblazer specifically in the mobile apps industry, Prabha has spent over 15 years driving innovation and leading transformative projects in Apple Media, AI and ML. With a passion for bridging the gap between technology and creative expression, she is the founder of Cikana, a wearable art label that seamlessly blends fashion with digital artistry, offering a unique fusion of design and technology. The designs are inspired by her own contemporary artworks.

In addition to her success in the tech world and the fashion industry, Prabha has also been executive producer of an independent American film, bringing fun, diverse stories to the screen.

Previously, Prabha served as a board member for WeEducate Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing educational opportunities for children from less privileged backgrounds.

Driven by a deep belief in the power of technology, art, and education to change lives, Prabha continues to push boundaries, inspire others, and create spaces where innovation and creativity can flourish. Through her varied roles as a tech executive, creative founder, and community advocate, she remains a powerful force for progress in multiple fields, championing diversity and inclusion every step of the way.

Radha Ramaswami Basu, the Founder and CEO of iMerit and the co-founder of Anudip Foundation, is a leading tech entrepreneur with a wealth of experience in the Indian software business. Her extensive experience and pioneering spirit have made her a significant figure in the tech industry.

Radha’s unwavering commitment to using her wealth of experience in technology management to address one of the world’s most pressing challenges, youth unemployment, is truly inspiring. Through iMerit and Anudip, she has provided employment and skills to hundreds of marginalized women and youth in digital and data services. These individuals now contribute to growing industries, from virtual/augmented reality to the sharing economy to e-commerce and financial services.

Radha’s leadership style, characterized by innovation and a focus on human capital, has been instrumental in the success of her ventures. Before founding iMerit and Anudip, Radha was the Chairman and CEO of SupportSoft. She led the company through initial and secondary public offerings in 2000 and 2003 and built it into a worldwide market leader in support automation software.

Prior to SupportSoft, Basu spent 20 years at Hewlett-Packard. Her most recent position at HP was Senior General Manager of the Electronic Business Software Organization, which she grew to a global $1.2 billion business. Radha’s career at HP began when she founded the company’s operations in India and set up the first software center of any multinational in Bangalore.

Radha currently holds influential positions on the boards of NetHope, Jhumki Basu Foundation, and Santa Clara CSTS. Her strategic guidance and leadership have significantly contributed to the success and impact of these organizations.

Rajeev Batra is an experienced investor and former entrepreneur in the enterprise software sector, specializing in Cloud and SaaS investments. At Mayfield, he has engaged with founders of leading companies like Marketo and Outreach, witnessing the evolution of SaaS from systems of record to systems of engagement.

Known for his radical candor and transparency, Rajeev has built a reputation as the entrepreneur’s first call. He believes in challenging the status quo and values the power of diverse backgrounds in solving significant problems. His journey and experiences have shaped his commitment to helping others, particularly as a parent to a child with Mecp2 Duplication Syndrome.

Rajeev’s operational experience spans startups and major companies, with involvement in three firms that went public: Siebel Systems, Scopus Technology, and Open Environment Corporation. He also helped establish NetNumina Solutions, acquired by Keane/NTT Data. He holds an MBA from Harvard, a Master’s in Electrical Engineering from Cornell, and a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park.

His interests include art, design, history, music, and food, and he embraces the complexities of life, including the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.