Our History

Kentaro Toyama

Kentaro Toyama is W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information atthe University of Michigan School of Information, a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethicsand Transformative Values at MIT, and author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from theCult of Technology.

Previously, he was a researcher at UC Berkeley and assistant managing directorof Microsoft Research India, which he co-founded in 2005. At MSR India, he started theTechnology for Emerging Markets research group, which conducts interdisciplinary research tounderstand how the world’s poorer communities interact with electronic technology and to inventnew ways for technology to support their socio-economic development. The award-winning group isknown for projects such as MultiPoint, Text-Free User Interfaces, and Digital Green. Kentaroco-founded the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologiesand Development (ICTD) to provide a global platform for rigorous academic research in thisfield. He is also co-editor-in-chief of the journal Information Technologies and InternationalDevelopment.

Prior to his time in India, Kentaro did computer vision and multimedia researchat Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, USA and Cambridge, UK, and taught mathematics at AshesiUniversity in Accra, Ghana.

Kentaro graduated from Yale with a PhD in Computer Science and from Harvardwith a bachelor’s degree in Physics. He was born in Tokyo, raised in both Japan and the UnitedStates, and now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Harsha Murthy

Harsha Murthy is currently Managing Partner of Consummate Capital, a New YorkCity-based investment and advisory firm that specializes in pharmaceutical and biotechnologycompanies.

He is a senior pharmaceuticals and finance executive who has also run his ownprivate equity fund as well as working at major companies like GE Capital, King Pharmaceuticalsand Eyetech Pharmaceuticals and in government at the US Securities & Exchange Commission.

He has served on numerous corporate, academic and not-for-profit boards ofdirectors in leadership positions. Mr. Murthy received his Bachelor’s degree from DukeUniversity and his Juris Doctorate degree from Stanford Law School, with additional course workat Harvard College and Oxford University (New College).

William Frederick Thies

William Frederick Thies is a researcher at Microsoft Research India, in the TechnologiesforEmerging Markets Group (founded by CLT board member Kentaro Toyama). His research focuses oninformation and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), with a focus on educationand healthcare.

Over the past four years, he has collaborated with CLT India on severalprojects, spanning the use of interactive TV-DVDs as an alternative to computers, and a low-costreplacement for ‘clickers’ for polling students in a classroom.

Bill received all of his degrees from the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, where he completed his Ph.D. in computer science in 2009. He has published over 50papers in international peer-reviewed venues, and his Ph.D. thesis was the recipient of the ACMSIGPLAN Doctoral Dissertation Award. Bill is also a co-founder and board member of Innovators InHealth, an NGO that offers training and technology for tuberculosis treatment in India.Billmaintains a personal webpage at http://research.microsoft.com/~thies/

Gayathri Krishna

Gayathri Krishna works for IBM as an Industry Lead for Banking and FinancialMarkets in Bangalore. She has a little over 20 years’ experience in the software industry, allof them in the Banking and Cap Mkts sector.

Gayathri was with i-flex solutions (now Oracle) for 17 years over which sheplayed key roles in implementation, relationship management, testing and documentation ofFLEXCUBE and MicroBanker, i-flex’s flagship Core Banking packages.

She has extensive onsite experience of managing core banking transformations inseveral regions of the world including the Far East, Latin America, Africa and Europe.Gayathri’svoluntary work is with Ranga Shankara, a theatre in Bangalore where she is a part of theleadership team. She is also a Founder and Managing Trustee of Bhoomija, that promotesperforming arts. She spends her vacation time travelling in India and abroad, seeking theatreand music.

Ashish Kasi

Ashish Kasi has 20+ years of experience in the IT industry and is currently the Vice President & GM India for Conviva. Prior to this, he was VP & Site lead at [24]7.ai, CTO at CapillaryTechnologies and spent 10 years with Yahoo! as their head of engineering for Yahoo! Small Business.

Here he helped build a suite of profitable services ranging from ‘content tocommerce’ that enables small and mid businesses to be successful online. Prior to Yahoo!, Ashishhas held leadership roles at various US start-ups and high-tech companies with a focus on thelearning management, commerce and finance sectors. Ashish is a founding member of Jeevajala, anon-profit organization that is focused on rain water harvesting. He is also a member of agoverning council that runs Adarsha Vidya Samsthe (AVS), a school in rural Karnataka and aclient of CLT digital content.

Rohit Shetty

Rohit Setty is a recent USIEF Fulbright-Nehru Fellow with the NCERT andgraduate from the University of Michigan with a doctoral degree in Teaching & Teacher Education.

His work centers on the intersections of policy and practice as they relate toin-service teacher education in India and abroad. His research explores the policies, thepractices, and the possibilities of Indian teacher education. Rohit completed his MA in SouthAsian Studies from the University of Michigan in 2007, where he explored educational issues inIndia through the multiple perspectives of history, anthropology, economics, business, religion,and architecture.

He has taught in Virginia, Japan, and New Zealand as a secondary school teacherand has worked with in-service and pre-service Social Studies teachers across Michigan and inIndia over the last eight years. Additionally, Rohit is partner of a 30-year old family-ownedbuilding systems design engineering consulting company which has offices in Virginia, D.C., NewYork, and India. He is a father of two young children and resides in Virginia.

Marina Kundu

With over 25 years of experience in education teaching and management, MarinaKundu has deep knowledge of the industry and a lifelong passion for education.

Before joining the Board at CLT India, Marina held several top managementpositions, including VP for Learning Innovation at the Financial Times | IE Business SchoolCorporate Learning Alliance, Associate Dean of HEC Paris School of Management in charge ofExecutive Education, and Dean of Undergraduate Studies at Sciences Po Paris.

With a Master’s from Yale University, she started her career teaching Frenchliterature and language at Yale University, the University of Geneva, and Chatham University inPittsburgh.

Marina is Indian-Italian, and currently lives in Paris.

Francis Vérillaud

Francis Vérillaud, Vice President of Sciences Po since 2002 and the director ofinternational affairs and exchanges at Sciences Po since 1995, has been the principle architectof Sciences Po’s internationalization strategy. He has vigorously pursued the institution’sgrowing engagement with international students and faculty, negotiating and helping launcheducational and scientific programs such as the dual degrees with Columbia University and theLondon School of Economics and Political Sciences and many others, including the Global PublicPolicy Network.

Before coming to Sciences Po, Francis Vérillaud held several positions in theFrench Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including postings in Washington and Santiago, Chile. He hastaught economics classes in several French lycées, at the Universidad Católica de Chile and atSciences Po. Francis Vérillaud is a graduate in philosophy from Paris University Nanterre and agraduate from Sciences Po Paris. He was awarded Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiquesand he is Chevalier dans l’Ordre de la légion d’honneur.