Speakers

Dr David Starkey, CBE
TV Historian and Leadership Expert

Dr David Starkey is a leading constitutional and monarchy expert, and media personality. He has written diary columns for The Sunday Times and The Spectator. He appears on television and radio, and is often invited to programs such as BBC's Question Time and Newsnight. He hosts ‘Starkey's Last Word’, a panel discussion about the thorny issues of the day on Channel 4.

Dr Starkey is best known for his television documentaries on the Tudor monarchy, focusing on the life of Henry VIII and the highly acclaimed series ‘Monarchy’, which chronicles the history of English kings and queens from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms onward. He has also written several books on the monarchy.

He is a respected academic who has lectured on international history at the London School of Economics from 1972 to 1998. Currently, he is an Honorary Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. With his wealth of knowledge and skills as a communicator, he blends information and insight with humor. He draws spectacular analogies with the monarchy in his discourses on corporate leadership.

Dr Starkey was appointed a CBE in the Queen's birthday honors list of 2007 for his services to history.

Nadine Dereza
Business and Finance Conference Facilitator, TV/Radio Presenter

Nadine has presented for CNN, Simply Money, BBC, Sky TV, SABC and Summit TV and is one of the most knowledgeable and experienced presenters in business and finance.

Over the years, apart from interviewing chief executives and senior management teams on their company’s performance and financial results, she has also presented reports on all the major business and financial stories. She won the "Financial Journalist of the Year" award while she was London Markets Correspondent for the Financial Times.

Nadine has chaired and facilitated numerous conferences and events for a variety of sectors globally, including senior management and sales conferences, product launches, award ceremonies, and consumer and trade shows.

In May 2009, Nadine was appointed Non-Executive Director for WorldSkills London 2011, the largest vocational skills competition in the world. London will host the competition in October 2011. WorldSkills brings together young people to compete in skills ranging from plumbing, landscape gardening, information technology, beauty therapy, hotel and catering, welding and Web design.

Nadine has a degree in Business Studies and is a member of Federation of Small Businesses and the Institute of Directors.

Joschka Fischer
Former minister for Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany

Joschka Fischer was the German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor from 1998 to 2005. His political career began in the state of Hesse where in 1991 he became the first-ever Green Party minister on the state level, holding the portfolios of the environment and energy. In 1994, Fischer entered federal politics and became the co-chairman of the Green Party’s federal parliamentary group.

Joschka belongs to the realist camp of the Green party. As the Foreign Minister, he stood against German popular opinion and faced down the majority of Green Party members who opposed German military participation in the Kosovo campaign, arguing against pacifism in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing. But, as the Iraq war loomed, he clashed memorably with then US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and positioned himself as the one of the few outspoken critics of the Iraq invasion of 2003.

Joschka has been one of the most influential leaders of the German Green Party. He led his party into the political mainstream during the 1998 federal election, forming social democrat-green coalition on the federal level. Under Joschka's leadership, the Green party expanded its voice in the coalition during the 2002 federal election where it achieved its best election result to date.

Joschka currently runs an advisory firm in Berlin that serves a wide range of corporations and institutions. Additionally, he acts as political advisor to energy companies, RWE and OMV, in conjunction with the proposed Nabucco gas pipeline project. Joschka serves on the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group and as Co-Chair of the Executive Board of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of several books and his political commentaries are syndicated internationally.

S. Gopalakrishnan
Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Infosys Technologies Limited

Gopalakrishnan (Kris to his colleagues) is one of the founders of Infosys Technologies Limited. As Chief Executive Officer, he plays a key role in defining the company strategy and using technology and innovation continuously to maintain its leadership in the industry.

On June 22, 2007, Kris took over from Nandan M. Nilekani as the CEO and Managing Director of Infosys Technologies Limited. Kris previously served as Chief Operating Officer (since April 2002), and as the President and Joint Managing Director (since August 2006). His responsibilities included customer services, technology, investments and acquisitions.

Kris' initial responsibilities at Infosys included management of design, development, implementation and support of information systems for clients in the consumer products industry in the U.S. Between 1987 and 1994, he headed the technical operations of KSA/Infosys (a joint venture between Infosys and KSA at Atlanta, U.S.) as Vice President (Technical). In 1994, Kris returned to India and was appointed Deputy Managing Director of the company.

Kris is currently the Chairman of the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management (IIITM), Kerala, and Vice Chairman of the Board for Information Technology Education Standards (BITES) set up by the Government of Karnataka. Kris is the Vice Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industries(CII) Southern Regional Council. He is also a member of ACM, IEEE and IEEE Computer Society.

Kris holds a master's degree in Physics and Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

S.D. Shibulal
Chief Operating Officer and Member of the Board, Infosys Technologies Limited

Shibulal is one of the co-founders and member of the Board of Directors of Infosys Technologies Limited. Shibu, as he is fondly called, has over three decades of IT leadership experience. He has played a pivotal role in the Infosys journey and a signal role in the evolution of the Global Delivery Model which is now the de-facto industry standard for delivery for outsourced IT services.

Shibu started his Infosys journey in 1981 by first spearheading its project management, followed by client relationships in North American region for a decade. He followed this with a five-year sabbatical with Sun Microsystems between 1991 and 1996, where he responsible for designing and implementing their first e-commerce application amongst other credible contributions. In 1997, on his return to Infosys, Shibu established and headed the Internet Consultancy practice. He moved on to serve several leadership roles at the group level, firstly as the Worldwide Head of Customer Delivery and later as Group Head, Worldwide Sales and Customer Delivery. Over the years, Shibu has been known to foster innovation, leadership, teamwork and work values within the organization.

On June 22, 2007, Shibu took over from S. Gopalakrishnan as Chief Operating Officer and has been serving this role since. His focus has been on increasing competitiveness, improving customer experience, improving employee engagement and increasing the depth of services.

Shibu received a master’s degree in Physics from the University of Kerala and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Boston. He is a member of several international forums, namely, the International Board of Foundation, Globethics.net; the global Corporate Governance Forum’s Private Sector Advisory Group and the Metropolitan College Dean’s advisory Board, Boston University.