WALTHAM, MA—The 2023 New England Choice Award winners were selected by jury of 13 members of diverse backgrounds. Here is a list of the jury members in the alphabetical order:
Anu Chitrapu
Senior Vice President, Bank of America
Ms. Chitrapu is Senior Vice-President and Executive at Bank of America. She is passionate about women empowerment, eliminating gender based violence, education for girls and protecting the environment. It was this passion that led to the creation of Nyrvaana, a social enterprise with a mission to save fabric from landfill while providing employment to disadvantaged women.
Ms. Chitrapu recently created You Can Be, a book for young girls. It inspires them to pursue any profession they like, by showing them examples of accomplished women role models who look like them.
Ms. Chitrapu served as President of TiE Boston between 2020 and 2022. She is on the Board of Advisors for the Museum of Science, Boston and on the advisory board of Direct Action for Women Now (DAWN). She is also an active member of several Boston based non-profit organizations including American India Foundation (AIF). Ms. Chitrapu holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.
Rohit Mahajan
Managing Partner, BigR.io
Mr. Mahajan is currently a managing partner with BigR.io, a technology consulting firm empowering data to drive innovation and advanced analytics. BigR.io specializes in Machine Learning, Big Data, Natural Language Processing and Custom Software strategy, analysis, architecture and implementation solutions and also serves as an incubator for AI startups leveraging these types of solutions. Mr. Mahajan is also the author of Quantum Care: A Deep Dive into AI for Health Delivery and Research.
Mr. Mahajan brings his passion for the cutting edge AI technologies to BigRio, a technology consulting firm empowering data to drive innovation and advanced analytics. BigRio specializes in Machine Learning, Big Data, Natural Language Processing and Custom Software strategy, analysis, architecture and implementation solutions.
Mr. Mahajan holds Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering, is Wharton School Fellow and a graduate from Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program.
Girish Mehta
Founder, Indian Circle for Caring USA
Mr. Mehta founded the Indian Circle for Caring USA Inc., (ICC) in 2007, recognizing the unfulfilled need of the growing Indian Community in the United States. He has had played various roles from engineering and engineering management to business management, marketing, and sales in the field of industrial automation.
He was the founder and President of Firstsource Solutions Limited for 16 years – a consulting and solutions provider in the early days applying personal computers and networking to serve clients and their businesses.
After completing a professional career, Mr. Mehta’s skills, time, and energies are applied on a full-time basis in serving Indian Community through ICC. He serves on the National Board of Advisors of Sewa International, and Governing Council member of Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA).
He played an important role in establishing Jain Sangh of New England. He has dedicated all of his time to ICC and its clients since its establishment in 2007. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from India, Masters in Engineering Design from Tufts University and an MBA from Boston University.
Upendra Mishra
Publisher, INDIA New England News and Co-Founder of IneMultimedia and New England Choice Awards
Mr. Mishra is the founder and president of the Waltham, MA-based The Mishra Group, an integrated full-service marketing and public relations firm.
Since 1997, the Mishra Group has provided comprehensive, results-oriented solutions for the fast-paced new age of online and traditional marketing through the area’s best writers and editors and most talented graphic and Web designers and digital media strategists. He is also the publisher of INDIA New England News, IndUS Business Journal, Life Sciences Times and Boston Real Estate Times.
Zenobia Moochhala
CEO, Sittercity & Co-Founder, Care.com
Ms. Moochhala has spent two decades working in mission-driven for-profit companies. She began her career in product development at Upromise, a loyalty platform designed to help families save money for college, remaining with the company through its successful 2006 exit to Sallie Mae.
From there, Ms. Moochhala went on to co-found Care.com and led the global consumer marketing team driving revenue, managing acquisitions and expansion in 18 countries. She was instrumental in scaling the organization from startup to more than 20 million members and in taking the company through its 2014 IPO.
From there, she pivoted to try something new and joined dog DNA-testing company Embark Vet as COO. She now serves as CEO of Sittercity. Ms. Moochhala served on the board of TiE Boston and was a New England Choice Award Winner in the Business & Entrepreneurship Category.
Deepti Nijhawan
Director, India Initiatives, Boston University Global Programs
As Director of India Initiatives at Boston University’s Global Programs, Ms. Nijhawan supports the VP/AP of Global Programs in playing a central role in Boston University’s India strategy by collaborating with faculty, developing relationships with quality partner institutions in India, and overseeing administrative components for the BU Foundation in India. Her extensive network and knowledge of India has helped engage leading science, technology, industry and government leaders to participate with BU faculty and students. She has organized and moderated academic panels, and also presented papers at several higher education conferences including the Universities of Rhode Island and Alberta, Canada.
An architect and urban planner by training, Ms. Nijhawan has extensive experience with projects that have had an impact on the local urban landscape. At the Boston Redevelopment Authority she served as project manager for Boston’s Harborwalk Project that proposed knitting together 44 miles of the City’s waterfront walkway. At the Cambridge Housing Authority, she served as a Senior Planner, overseeing renovation projects at several public housing developments, including the development of the Windsor Street Community Center that served the area’s at-risk youth. Her passion for working with India led her to MIT for over seven years where she served as Managing Director of the MIT-India Program, helping to send over 300 MIT students to India as well as supporting MIT faculty with seed grants for their work in India. During her time at MIT, she also worked as an Instructor at the Edgerton Center where she taught a Freshman Seminar Course on the urban planning challenges of Indian cities. This included taking her entire class to India for field work each year.
Ms. Nijhawan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with Master’s degrees in City Planning and Architecture, and earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree at the Delhi University School of Planning and Architecture. She is involved with several local and Indian non-profit organizations, having served two-terms as President and Chairperson of MIT’s Heritage of the Arts of South Asia, the leading South Asian arts organization in New England, and as a Board Member of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Visiting Committee for South Asia. Her awards include the Infinite Mile Award from MIT, an Outstanding Service Award from the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and the MITHAS Chairperson Award.
Mandy Pant
Lead Technologist, Design Engineering Group at Intel
Ms. Pant is a Lead Technologist in the Design Engineering Group at Intel. Prior to this, she was the Director of Intel’s Corporate Research Council, a body that works with leading academic researchers worldwide and senior technical leaders at Intel to seed and drive research efforts in areas of strategic importance to Intel in particular and the computing industry in general. Before this, as Intel’s lead technologist in the area of power delivery and power management, she investigated and drove several issues in the power space, particularly on-chip power delivery issues, power management and power reduction on the Intel next generation high volume server microprocessors.
Ms. Pant has led Intel’s die power delivery company wide synergy efforts and recently driven Intel’s power delivery Roadmap program. Further, she has also been a key player in driving and deploying Intel’s internal innovation programs. She has published 20+ technical papers in prestigious VLSI conferences and journals, has 3 issued patents and 5 pending patents.
Ms. Pant received her Bachelors (B.Tech) in Computer Science and Engineering from I.I.T Kharagpur, India, a Masters (MS) in Electrical Engineering and a Doctorate (PhD) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. She joined Intel in 2001 as part of the Alpha team acquisition from Compaq Computer Corporation where she worked since graduating in 2000. Ms. Pant enjoys hitting the gym regularly, dancing, reading, doing yoga and spending quality time with her husband.
Jasmine Shah
Founder, Aangikam Dance Academy
Ms. Shah is the director and the founder of Aangikam Dance Academy, which teaches two classical style dances from India, Bharat Natyam and Manipuri, as well as folk dances from various regions of India. In addition, she has served the Gujarati Association of New England in various positions, including its president.
As an Indian classical dance teacher, Ms. Shah has taught over 2,000 students in last 30 years. Many of her students have made tremendous progress in dancing after graduating from her class and carrying it forward to colleges, going for national and international championships.
Ms. Shah has helped each and every Indian community organization by providing mentorship and performances for their annual functions, religious functions and many major milestone celebrations.
As an actor, she has performed in dramas/skits in the US when there were no artists’ groups coming to US, and entertained the Indian community with her acting skills.
Anupendra Sharma
CEO, AXLMED
Mr. Sharma founded AXLMED to make it easier to understand disease. His skills lie in company creation, spinouts, fundraising, governance, product development strategy, and exits. The companies he is invested in the US and China have raised nearly $180 million in venture capital and he has been involved with $16 billion in M&A transactions.
His most recent role was Global Head of BD for Siemens Healthineers. Prior to that, for eleven years Mr. Sharma was a Senior Investment Partner at Siemens Venture Capital (SVC) in Boston, where he led investments in healthcare (devices, diagnostics, software, and services). He previously worked in Mergers and Acquisitions for JPMorgan & Citigroup.
Mr. Sharma founded the Startup Leadership Program, which has educated nearly 4,000 entrepreneurs in 13 countries who have raised more than $4 billion, co-founded the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at BITS Pilani and co-founded the Massachusetts Life Sciences Startup Day to accelerate the pace of startups in the Commonwealth. He co-created the Healthcare Innovation & Commercialization course at Harvard Medical School and serves on the board of Cornell Life Science Ventures and as a reviewer for National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health.
Mr. Sharma holds an MBA from Cornell University, MS in Accounting & Finance from Manchester Business School, Masters in Economics and Bachelors in Instrumentation Engineering from BITS Pilani, India.
Dr. Manju Sheth, MD
Co-founder, INE MultiMedia, Women Who Win, NECA and Physician at Harvard Vanguard / Atrius Health
Dr. Sheth, a Board-Certified Internist with a keen interest in women’s health, is a co-producer of NECA Awards and co-founder of INE Multimedia, a Waltham, MA-based (501c-3) non-profit organization devoted to promoting and supporting charitable organizations, art, culture, education and empowerment through workshops, seminars and multimedia. She is also the Co- founder and President of Women Who Win , a non-profit media platform dedicated to empowering women.
She served as the Chair of Saheli Advisory Board and has served on the board of patient advisory board of Harvard Pilgrim Health care and as a trustee of IAFPE. She is the National community ambassador for Akshya Patra.
She was voted in the 150 ‘Women of Influence’ by YW of Boston in 2016. Dr. Sheth served as president of the Indian Medical Association of New England in 2013. She has been a big advocate for the empowerment of women and has been voted Woman of the Year in 2011. Dr. Sheth is the creator and host of the popular “Chai with Manju” celebrity interview series.
Venkat Srinivasan
Founder and Managing Director of Innospark Ventures
Mr. Srinivasan, Founder and Managing Director of Innospark, has worn the shoes of an entrepreneur for most of his career. He brings deep expertise in AI and computational algorithms to the firm, especially computational linguistics combined with deep functional knowledge in multiple domains including finance and accounting.
He has founded several successful AI-led startups, including eCredit (acquired by ICG) and Rage Frameworks (acquired by Genpact).
He holds 8 patents, has published over 30 research papers in peer-reviewed prestigious journals, has co-edited two books and is the author of a recently published book titled, The Intelligent Enterprise in the Era of Big Data.
Mr. Srinivasan has strongly advocated for and believes that successful AI-led transformation will be characterized by traceability, context recognition and the ability to learn from sparse data environments through computational abstractions. Venkat served on the board of TiE Boston and was a New England Choice Award Winner in the Philanthropy Category.
Madhu Sudan
Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Prof. Sudan is best known for his works on probabilistic checking of proofs, and on the design of list-decoding algorithms for error-correcting codes. His current research interests include property testing which is the study of sublinear time algorithms to estimate properties of massive data, and communication amid uncertainty, a mathematical study of the role of context in communication.
Currently, he is a Gordon McKay Professor in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, where he has been since 2015.
Prof. Sudan received his Bachelors degree from IIT Delhi in 1987 and his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 1992. Between 1992 and 2015, he worked at IBM Research, at MIT (Associate Professor 1997-2000, Professor 2000-2011, Fujitsu Chair Professor 2003-2011, CSAIL Associate Director 2007-2009, Adjunct Professor 2011-2015), and at Microsoft Research (Principal Researcher, 2009-2015).
Aditi Taylor
Chief Risk Officer, MFS Investment Management
Ms. Taylor is a Senior Vice President at MFS Investment Management overseeing Trade Support and
Broker Relations. In her current role, she leads middle office operations overseeing aspects of portfolio support, trade management and manages strategic relationships with global sell side research providers.
Previously, she served as the Chief Enterprise Risk Officer of the organization providing oversight of enterprise risk management.
Prior to that, Ms. Taylor served as the Partner/Principal in Deloitte Advisory LLP where she spent almost 19 years working on various consulting engagements across multiple global companies. Aditi holds an MBA from Bentley University, MA and a bachelor’s in economics from the University of Mumbai, India.
Ms. Taylor has been active in the New England community serving in leadership roles for various community organizations, including as President of the New England Marathi Mandal and the India Association of Greater Boston. In 2014, she was inducted in the Boston Business Journal’s class of ‘40 Under 40’ Leaders to watch for as well as recognized as Boston Business Journal’s ‘Leaders in Diversity’. In 2015, she was honored by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce as one of the ‘Ten Outstanding Young Leaders’. She was also recognized by the India New England News as the ‘Most Versatile Leader’ in 2017. Until recently, Ms. Taylor sat on the board of Tech Goes Home (TGH) a non-profit organization working towards bridging the digital divide. Ms. Taylor also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Boston University MET and teaches Advanced Enterprise Risk Management.
