Letter from the Editor: Welcome to "&"

By most accounts, leadership is innate and not something that can be taught. But one could certainly nurture it, hone it and celebrate it. The Global Executive Leadership Program at the Yale School of Management provides a platform to do just that. A place to think about the big ideas that will change the world, while building the knowledge, skills and connections to become more powerful leaders.

The promise was an intensive residential course, carefully orchestrated content, world-class faculty, dynamic peer-to-peer interaction and highly accomplished guest speakers, all of which would create an unparalleled learning experience and raise the bar for a group of participants who are already accomplished in their own right. While it was big promise to live up to, it has more than delivered, something that became very evident right after the first module of the course.

If you were to ask me to think of leaders who have had an influence on my life and who I admire, the answer would now include all my co-participants and friends from the program. How could I possibly begin to even describe the learning experience that comes from interacting with a group of leaders from different cultures with their unique perspectives, with their varied personalities and styles of leadership and their ability to constantly challenge the status quo? This may well have been the most powerful learning to address the many challenges that global leadership situations pose today.

It was a great pleasure to be a part of this inaugural batch and I would like to thank each of my co-participants for their contribution to the learning experience.

& is an attempt to create a platform for these practitioners of leadership to share their thoughts. We hope that the platform through its various formats becomes a place for rich conversations, ideas and relationships in the years to come.

& also reflects a diversity of voices. It intends to be a setting for the free flow of ideas and perspectives for reflection and debate, one that is birthed from a practitioner’s experience rather than academic rigor. It doesn’t tell readers what to think but is meant to showcase what leaders are thinking about.

This is the inaugural issue. I readily agreed to be its editor, thinking that it was an easier job to do than contributing with an article. It turned out to be anything but easy, given the multitude of topics and styles of writing. I have therefore taken the minimalist approach and retained the originality of the contributors.

One of the leaders from the program asked me as to who the audience for this magazine was. I was not sure of the answer, for while we know whom the copies of this magazine would be sent to, we are not sure who its eventual readers would be. So please do write back to us at gelpmag@gmail.com and tell us who you are and what you think.

Srinivas Aluri, Editor

About Srinivas Aluri

Mr. Aluri Srinivasa Rao has over 20 years of organizational building and corporate experience in India, United Kingdom, and United States. He is the Managing Director at Morgan Stanley Private Equity-India. He served as Chairman of the Board at Avantor Performance Materials India Limited. He served as a Director of Investments at ICICI Venture as well as Director of Investments at Avesthagen Limited.

His private equity experience has spanned from turning around startups, identifying innovative investment opportunities, investing in growth opportunities, and executing successful exits. Mr. Rao’s prior experience includes hands on experience at very senior levels in business development, mergers & acquisitions, P&L responsibility, and Corporate Strategy in the pharmaceutical sector with Ranbaxy Laboratories and Natco Pharma. He is a part of the Global Executive Leadership Program at Yale School of Management and is a Sloan fellow from London Business School. He is MBA Marketing and Finance from Osmania University and an alumnus of BITS, Pilani.

Photo Caption

Top: Naqi Sheri, James Babb, Jacques Coeng, Rakesh Malhotra, Laurent De Mey, Jon Lindberg, Srinivas Aluri, L.N.Lalwani

Middle: Mayank Varma, Rajesh Sahadevan, Dr. Karthik Anantharaman, Peter Kasahara, Kevin Henderson, Suresh Rangarajan, Vijay Madduri, Akin Ogunbiyi, Vimal Narayananm Anil Kumar, Cris Benavides

Seated: Cristina Hall, Hemendra Sharma, Molly Nagler, Andrey Shemetov, Mohamed, Zemam, Kanika Singal, Juturi Sriramkumar, SriRaama Evani