Perspectives 22 - Unleashed

Born and raised in Mumbai, Twinkle is the soulful voice behind The Lost Fireflies, an electrifying band that has taken the music scene by storm. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twinkleagarwal19/

Bidisha has a rich experience in diverse sectors like, Manufacturing, Retail, BFSI and ITES over the last 20 plus years. She has a Business Degree from EQUIS Accredited School SDA Bocconi, Milan with a specialization in Design Thinking, and two decades of experience spanning people strategy, mentoring, post-merger cultural integration, and succession planning, among other key people functions. She has worked through the transition of HR from a support function to a critical business enabler. Ensuring employees adapt in the direction of meeting the evolving requirements of the organization. She is responsible for shaping employee capability, as well as their organization’s principles’. She constantly maintains a balanced outlook between novelty and practicality and be able to distinguish how all components could increase the value of an organization, its vision, people, and business.

Potoula Chresomales is the SVP of Product Management and Innovation at Skillsoft, a global corporate elearning company that serves 70% of the Fortune 1000. Potoula is responsible for product development and user experience design and launched the award-winning skill-building platform, Percipio. Potoula founded the Skillsoft Design Partner Program to collaborate with leading global companies to design Percipio to inspire, motivate, and engage learners. She is responsible for Skillsoft’s skill-building framework, using AI to drive personalization and interactivity, and enabling clients to manage, promote, and measure learning. She is expanding Skillsoft’s ecosystem integrations and uses design thinking methodologies to keep the customer at the heart of all that Skillsoft does.

Potoula believes deeply in the power of education to open doors and in the unique position Skillsoft has to help thousands of companies fill critical skill gaps to achieve their strategic priorities and create career opportunities for their team members.

Prior to joining Skillsoft, Potoula held leadership positions in product management and marketing at Kaplan Test Prep, The College Board, McGraw-Hill, and JP MorganChase.

She is a board member of Reach the World, an education non-profit that matches world travelers with K-12 classrooms so they can explore the world together and inspire a generation of global citizens. She is the Chair of the partnerships board for District C, an education non-profit that pairs students with businesses to solve real-world problems. She was a founding member of the Digital Learning Consortium and a mentor with Built By Girls, which aims to prepare the next generation of women leaders in technology.

Potoula was a member of the Forbes Technology Council and was recognized by the National Diversity Council as among the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech in 2021. She was also recognized in HR Executive’s Top 100 HR Tech Influencers in 2022 and in Women in Tech Network’s Top 100 Women in Tech to Watch in 2022.

Potoula has an M.B.A from the Tuck School at Dartmouth and a B.S. from New York University.

Orla Daly is the Chief Information Officer at Skillsoft, where she brings her extensive experience delivering large transformation programs and leading IT & Digital organizational transformation through her passion for applying technology to solve business problems and accelerate business growth.

Orla held several IT and business roles at ExxonMobil, based in Europe, prior to joining EMC in Massachusetts, where she demonstrated a successful track record fostering strong business partnerships, evolving the IT operating model, and leading the company’s largest transformation program to enable Go-To-Market strategies.

As part of the Dell EMC merger, Orla led the IT Integration for Sales & Marketing, before heading up Dell’s global IT Marketing organization. Following Dell, Orla joined National Grid, with accountability for the technology strategy and delivery of IT programs and production operations for the US Customer organization. Most recently, she led IT & Digital Organizational Change Management and served as Chief of Staff for the Chief Information & Digital Officer.

Orla earned a B.A. in International Marketing with French and German from Dublin City University, Ireland, and an MSC in IT from Stirling University, Scotland. She currently lives outside Boston, where she likes to make the most of the New England outdoors with her husband and two daughters.

As the Global Head of L&D, Leadership Development and OD for Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Sachin is accountable for capability development and future skilling needs across technical learning, compliance, scientific, leadership and professional skills, for more than twenty-five thousand DRL employees spread globally. Prior to this role, Sachin spent time at Novartis as their Global Head of Learning for Operations and Corp. Functions, and before that he was the Chief Learning Officer for Global Consulting at Deloitte.

Sachin has over 24 years of experience within Learning, Talent Management and Organizational Development domains. During this time, he has worked and learnt with organizations as varied as the Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, Amazon, Accenture, and IBM India to name a few. He has developed substantial experience in establishing global learning and development organizations, developing skill sensing networks, and driving future skills agenda, while managing multi-locational and multicultural teams and stakeholder groups.

Luisa Golgini is the Director of Customer Success for APAC and India. In this role, Luisa is focused on guiding her team to high performance and ensuring they collectively drive success and value for customers in the region. For the 7 years prior to joining Skillsoft in 2014, Luisa was part of the Global Learning Solutions team at Hudson Recruitment, with responsibility for technology and business systems training for the organization. It was here that she first experienced the benefits of a strategic learning partnership with Skillsoft. Luisa began her career in the Financial Services industry, where she acquired more than 10 years of workplace learning experience. A highlight was successfully delivering a training & change program to 2000+ learners as part of a system replacement project for the Australian money market, during her tenure with the Sydney Futures Exchange. She also held various operational and training roles in the preceding years where she first discovered her passion for helping others achieve their goals and reach their potential.

Ankur is currently working as a Vice President of Marketing at Skillsoft and has been part of the company for over 17 years. In his current role, he is responsible for managing regional field marketing, demand generation, business development, brand management as well as Marketing COE (Centre of Excellence) globally. Prior to Skillsoft, Ankur had worked on marketing and consulting assignments with Fiorano Software, IDC, AMCON and PwC.

Technology business leader with expertise in leading the strategic direction and development of learning products that enable individuals to achieve their fullest potential. With over two decades of experience in the e-learning space, Ramki has been a steadfast leader with a deep expertise in driving product innovation, and technology strategy for skillsoft with specialties include leadership in building feature flag platforms and integration, general management, critical business planning, product management, business operations, bringing new technologies to market and driving customer acquisition and sales enablement.

An HR professional with 17+ years of experience which encompasses HR business partnering, Design & Execution Of Performance Management, Career Planning, Succession Planning, Assessment & Development Centre, Leadership Development, Employee Engagement & Culture Building, Learning & Development, and HR Policy formulation.

Sankhdeep leverages his background in instructional design, digital learning, and technical enablement to build and evangelize learning experiences that are engaging, relevant, scalable, and accessible. He currently leads Global Tech Academy function with the charter to develop technical, functional, and retail domain knowledge and skills for ~25k Walmart Global Tech associates.

Dynamic, results-driven sales executive with extensive experience driving revenue for technology companies across complex market landscapes. Firsthand experience building teams on the ground in China, Japan, India, ANZ, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, South America, East Africa, and West Africa. Exceptional record of performance delivering revenue, developing strategy, and driving execution of key business initiatives.

A Talent Management & Development Leader with eighteen years of experience with a firm focus on business outcomes through Maximizing People Potential. The research orientation which I developed at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) during doctoral dissertation reinforces my competence to deliver to the business with precision. One of the most important principle Sanjeev strongly believed and implemented is - Creating a Democratic Learning Environment and creating the culture of Meritocracy.

Entrepreneur, HR Transformation & Digitization, HR Advisory and Start-up Mentor; forging a different future and loving it! A thought leader in the Digital HR space and a digital evangelist. Vasu has led e2e digital transformation of HR and is regarded as an expert in readying organizations for change and digitization. HR Leader with extensive India and international experience in Manufacturing, Banking and Infrastructure Sectors across Asia, Africa, Middle East, Europe and the Americas. He has lived and worked in various states of India, China (Shanghai), Taiwan (Taipei) and Singapore.

Asha has 26 years of experience in IT Services Industry primarily involved in software delivery management, global customer management, operational excellence and delivery unit management with P&L responsibility focusing on end-to-end program management of Application Development, Application Management & Support Services, New ERP implementations & post-implementation Support, Product Development ensuring effective management of various resources.

Hema is a HR Leader driven by a strong passion to do transformative work with individuals and organizations. She holds multi-sector experience and is currently heading Learning & Development and Diversity & Inclusion functions for Reliance Industries Ltd. She is also a member of Harvard Business Publishing’s Asia Pacific Leadership Advisory Board – Corporate Learning. She is known as a HR professional with a deep business focus and an ability to drive change. Learning & Leadership Development, Talent Management, Employee Experience, Culture Building and Diversity and Inclusion are areas of her interest and expertise.

She enjoys coaching and mentoring diverse set of professionals. She blogs on topics pertaining to Organizational Culture, Positive Living, Learning & Leadership Development. She also speaks at multiple HR forums. She writes poetry in her free time, which she believes is not just a form of creative expression but is also a medium for influencing change.

A Global C-suite HR professional with expertise in large scale transformations, M&A, Change Management, Learning, Organisation Development, Management of corporate Leadership and Technology Academies, Organisation Building and engaging with Senior Business leaders across various sectors like Manufacturing, EPC Projects, Construction, Information and Technology Services, Pharma and Hydrocarbon. MVN Rao is also a certified CEO coach, President - Mumbai/Pune chapter of Coaching Foundation of India (CFI) and Speaker in various management forums including TEDx and numerous leading management institutes.

Vinutha is driven by new challenges posed by building teams which are empowered to deliver, exceeding client expectation. She comes with a rich global experience of over 25 years in information technology covering delivery management, operations management, solution development, creating and building a talent pool on digital skills. She has excelled at delivery management by creating value for the customers through innovative solutions and consistent delivery quality. In depth experience in defining, setting up, and managing end-end business operations, developing digital talent capability@scale. Vinutha has also participated as a speaker on multiple platforms like the Indian Businesswomen Conference, ANZ unconference, part of the organizing committee of ASSOCHAM women conference along with panel discussion, and also in Engineering institutions.

Meenakshi is a specialist in skill and talent development with experience in designing large scale skill development programs for bridging industry-academia connect for educational institutions, state, and central Govt. skill programs. She is also an Agile/DevOps practitioner, trainer, and coach with 24 years of experience in software development and education services. She currently plays the role of chief mentor for Infosys Springboard platform and head the industry academia connect initiative from Infosys - Campus Connect. Responsible for collaboration with educational institutions and Government skill councils and accreditation bodies for bringing in the industry flavour to academic curriculum. The role also involves recommending industry curriculum and executing large scale faculty development program for leading universities in the country. Meenakshi also leads the IT foundation training for Infy's fresh hires at the Global education centre, Mysore with focus on fundamental coding and competetive coding practices.

With over 27 years of professional experience in diversified functions, Rekha's experience broadly includes sales and marketing, talent management; leadership development and learning. Highly collaborative with strong leadership, influencing and strategic skills. Rekha has worked in multicultural teams in the design and successful implementation of change and integration efforts associated with people development, talent management and internal communication. Rekha is passionate about maximising human talent and have made it my profession.

Partnering with Leaders on key people dimensions, organization transformation programs, driving talent engagement & management and development initiatives such as leadership development program, designing & implementing competency model for high performance environment, career management framework, structured & agile on-boarding curriculum, learning roadmaps, focused coaching interventions for diverse profiles spread across different geographies.

Divyesh is an entrepreneurial business leader with rich experience in helping organizations drive their digital HR agenda. Over the last 2 decades, Divyesh has helped hundreds of organizations leverage technology-led solutions for delivering key business results. In his current role as Regional Vice President for Skillsoft India, Divyesh advises businesses on how to extend their digital agenda, go beyond technology implementations to drive strategic imperatives and create best-in-class employee experience (EX) aligned with current and future needs of organizations. Prior to joining Skillsoft, Divyesh has worked in global technology and cloud-based solutions companies like SAP, Polaris Software Labs and others.

Rajiv is a multi-faceted professional with over two and half decades of experience including Strategy Formulation, Change & Transformation Management, Organization Development, eLearning, Learning & Development, Learning Management System (LMS) & Learning Experience Platform (LXP) implementation, Knowledge Management, Coach, SAP-HR Implementation, IT applications development & delivery centre management, Process Improvement, Assessments as per EFQM Business Excellence Model, and HR Excellence Model.

He manages learning ecosystems that supports current and future workforce skill needs, emphasize agility and foresight when designing and executing learning programs. He created an ecosystem for making eLearning embedded in training agenda of business HR through introducing eLearning platform ATL/Partners/ATL Buddies/Partners meet/Bizathon/Patron Award/Learning Maps. He also created Academy of Digital Transformation and Academy of Quality under the ATLVarsity brand culminating into L&T's own corporate University.

A learning leader in large multinational organizations such as IBM and Conduent (formerly Xerox Services), Govind is adept in establishing and managing multimillion-dollar learning & knowledge operations. He has extensive experience in learning strategy & transformation, performance & learning consulting, design, development and deployment of learning and knowledge solutions/curricula/university, driving social & self-directed learning, branding, content management, project/program management, evaluation, effectiveness & ROI. Govind is accomplished in driving efficiencies, innovating, collaborating with large geographically dispersed teams, demonstrating strong leadership, stakeholder management, client partnering, communication, vendor management and negotiation skills to build deep technical, functional and behavioral competencies through best of class learning interventions evolving for 2020 workforce.

Mathuram Subrahmanian has over 23 years of experience with proven expertise in Talent Development, Consulting, Project Management, Designing, Creation & Curation of Learning Solutions, Quality Assurance and Application Development.

Sonal is a Strategic & Innovative HR Leader acknowledged for translating Organisations vision & strategy into strategic HR initiatives that improves performance, profitability, growth & employee engagement. She comes with an academic background in Organisation Development & rich 22 years of diverse work experience that spans across industries & countries. In her current role, she heads two functions - Organisation Development which works along with the CEO & CXO’s to build a Leadership pipeline, Succession Planning and Culture. She also heads the Organisation Effectiveness portfolio with the responsibility to strategize L&D needs for the organization to ensure capability building & organisation Effectiveness. Sonal has won numerous awards including the SHRM Award 2021 for “Building Leaders of tomorrow”, Femina - Women leader Award, Golden Globe Award for Talent Management & Development (OD), featured in top 6 best Organizations in “Global Leadership Award – 2017” by Dale Carnegie Inc and others.

Binoj Vasu has over 28 years of experience across Learning & Development, Talent Management, Talent Engagement, Talent Creation and Business Development domains. He is Group President & Chief Learning Officer at YES BANK. Over two stints covering ten years at YES BANK (separated by his entrepreneurial venture), he has set up, strategized and scaled the Learning & Development (YES School of Banking), Talent Management, Rewards & Recognition, Talent Engagement, Talent Pipeline Creation (YES Talent Academy), Employer Branding & Campus Talent Acquisition (YES University & School Relationship Management) functions of the Bank.

During his career, Binoj has successfully set up & managed Learning & Development and Talent functions across organizations. He is a Certified Coach for Leadership & Transition Management. He holds a certificate in Human Analytics from Wharton Online. Binoj has been instrumental in setting up Centers of Excellence for L&D across multiple Organizations. During the first decade of his career, Binoj was a Business Development Specialist, having held business leadership roles across organizations like Xerox, ExxonMobil & Exide.

Saurabh has nearly two decades of rich experience in leading the learning and development of India's prominent banking organizations including Bajaj Finserv, IndusInd Bank and Kotak Life Insurance. He caters to Learning & Development needs of entire Consumer Banking / Branch Banking employees such as Branch Managers, Relationship Managers, Client Service Managers and Acquisition Teams across PAN India. He is currently managing a team of Zonal / Regional Training Managers.