Ep12: Vandana Bhatnagar: (3Ds) Discover, Develop and Discipline

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Vandana Bhatnagar. Vandana Bhatnagar serves as the Chief Program Officer at National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and has management responsibility for the organisation's funding strategy and portfolio development.

She also leads all technical engagements related to research, analytics, occupational standards, and learning content. A vital member of the senior leadership team, Vandana plays an integral role in developing NSDC's business development strategies to drive skilling operations through its robust partner network.

Vandana has over 25 years of professional experience in banking, development finance institutions, and applied research. Before joining NSDC, Vandana was associated with World Bank as Senior Institutional Development Specialist, Water Department Global Practice.

She has earned a Master of Business Administration from IIM Calcutta and is an alumnus of St. Stephen's College, Delhi University.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep11: Alankrita Sahai: Miss Earth

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Alankrita Sahai. Alankrita is an Indian model-turned-actor and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned as Miss India Earth 2014. She is the first Indian to win seven titles at the Miss Earth pageant held in the Philippines.

In 2018, she made her acting debut with the Netflix romantic comedy film called Love per Square Foot. The same year, she also played the role of Alisha in the movie Namaste England. She is also a TEDx Speaker. She has worked with over 200 brands and has been the face of many leading brands. She is the last India's representative at Miss Earth, who Femina Miss India and Miss Diva chose.

At the Miss Earth contest, she won the most awards, including a gold medal for evening gown, silver medal for Miss Photogenic, and bronze medal for swimsuit and national costume. Her national costume was designed by internationally acclaimed fashion designer and beauty pageant mentor Melvyn Noronha.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep10: Jesse Iwuji: The difference between good and great

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Jesse Iwuji. Jesse, at a young age, Dallas, Texas native, and Nigerian-American, he was interested and driven in the sporting world. Being a Texan, football naturally took its course in his life during high school, where he played at Hebron High in Carrollton, TX. Through hard work and perseverance, he landed a full-ride scholarship to one of the nation's top universities, the US Naval Academy. There he played NCAA Division 1-A college football four years, graduated with a Bachelors of Science, and was commissioned as a Surface Warfare Officer in the US Navy. 

He is still an officer. He has been on two Arabian Gulf deployments totaling out to 15 months of deployment time on two different Naval Warships. Outside of the Navy, Jesse has always had a passion for Motorsports. In 2015 Jesse made history by becoming the first US Naval Officer and Naval Academy graduate to compete in NASCAR. 2015 was Jesse's first official stock car racing season and began it in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series at Irwindale Speedway. He transitioned toward the end of 2015 into the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West from late-model stock cars. Jesse competed in the 2016 season with Patriot Motorsports Group; he finished Top 10 in the overall points, standing as a Rookie. Upon season-ending, he won the 2016 NASCAR Diverse Driver Award given to a driver in NASCAR's top developmental series who has done most for sports diversity. With more competition and competitors in the series in 2017, Jesse competed in the entire NASCAR K&N Pro Series West season with Patriot Motorsports Group and finished Top 15 in points for his sophomore season in his NASCAR career. 

In May of 2017, Jesse transitioned from active duty service to the Naval reserves. At the end of 2017, Jesse became a 2-time winner of the NASCAR Diverse Driver award. 2018 marked the beginning of Jesse's move to larger tracks where he could get NASCAR Cup Series type track experience when he began racing the 1.5-2.66 mile Speedways & Super Speedways in the ARCA Series. 

Jesse finished 13th in points in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West for 2018. On Aug 26th, 2018, Jesse made history again by being the first current serving member of the US Navy to debut in the NASCAR Truck Series where he had a Top 25 finish and, moving into 2019, had multiple Top 20 finishes even on a smaller underfunded team competing against much higher budget teams. 

Jesse recently made his debut in the 2nd highest tier of NASCAR, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and looks to continue the journey eventually into the NASCAR Cup Series. Outside of racing & the Navy, Jesse has also starred in various TV & Online shows distributed nationally, owns his own drag racing events company called The Red List Group, and holds a trucking business called JBJE Transportation.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep9: Marcelo Pedrozo: Art is how you make the other person beautiful

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Marcelo (Marce) Pedrozo. Marce is born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has spent his last 14 years being a hairstylist. Marce has worked around the world with world artists. Due to this, he has been collaborating with international press such as Schon Magazine (London), Lash Magazine (Paris), Elle Magazine (Argentina), among others. Even though not originally from India and new to Bollywood, Marce has impressive clients like Norah Fatehi and many others. 

Marce has been an entrepreneur in the initial years with his lifestyle magazine and is launching a new initiative - "What is Beauty". 

Lover of minimalism but searching for new trends proposes creating a particular style to leave an imprint of his style.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep8: Mahmoud Kaabour: Impulsive film making

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Mahmoud Kaabour. He s an award-winning Lebanese filmmaker and creative consultant who is based in Dubai & Berlin, working internationally. His multilingual productions have shown at top tier festivals and museums, and were all broadcast worldwide.

Mahmoud's films received numerous Best Film & Audience awards, including Tribeca’s 100,000$ Audience Award for Grandma, a Thousand Times presented personally by Robert de Niro. In 2015, he received Esquire Magazine’s Humanitarian Award and was named to the list of 100 most Powerful Arabs Under 40 following the release of Champ of the Camp his documentary about a singing competition that takes place inside the labor camps of the UAE. Mahmoud's self-initiated documentation of the Beirut blast aftermath in 2020 culminated in My Family & The Explosion which premiered on HUMAN Omroep in The Netherlands.  His upcoming project is a worldwide journey in the footsteps of Handala.

As a consultant, Mahmoud was charged with developing TRU Doku, a documentary channel for youth by ZDFinfo & funk which streams on YouTube & Instagram. He also mentored filmmakers and consulted on productions for the Doha Film Institute.

Mahmoud graduated in Film Production from Mel Oppenheim School of Cinema in Montréal, Canada. He began his career with Being Osama which he made for the CBC at the age of twenty-three following an internship with the National Film Board. He would later found Veritas Films in Dubai and manage it for a decade. The company produced branded content for corporations and governmental offices across the Arabian Gulf as well as creative documentaries.

Mahmoud is passionate about bel canto, Jivamukti yoga, cycling and 5Rhythms.The Podcast is available on the following locations:

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep7: Divyanshu Poddar: Conquering the space

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Divyanshu Poddar. He is a Space technology and education entrepreneur who is working towards making humans space faring. Divyanshu sincerely believes a large skilled human resource pool is the key to many problems in achieving this goal, and he is working towards creating the same for India.

Hailing from Ludhiana, Punjab, Divyanshu loves to be left off center. Space sciences have always fascinated him. After graduating from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Kerala, Divyanshu's heart expanded the reach of rocketry in India and created an ecosystem of model rocketry. That gave birth to Rocketeers. He handles the complete production, manufacturing and also looks into sales, marketing and regulation. In ways, he's a serial entrepreneur, having also started Pub'd Up, a customer loyalty app. When not working, Divyanshu enjoys live performances and chai!

Stay nuts about rockets!

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep6: Taarini Kaur Dang: Youngest Venture Capitalist

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Taarini Kaur Dang. She is a high school girl, a Venture Capitalist, Forbes Writer, TEDx Speaker, and Women Empowerment Champion. Taarini is the youngest VC in the world. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of a Venture Capital firm called Brave14 Capital for which she has raised $870k in funding from top Venture Capitalists and Institutional Investors in the US.

Taarini is the youngest person to win the Young American-Indian Award which she received from the Indian Ambassador to the US Navtej Sarna for her work in Entrepreneurship in 2018. At the age of 13, she wrote a book (The Young Aspiring Entrepreneur) which has a foreword from Intel Capital President Wendell Brooks and quotes from Stanford Professor Chuck Eesley, Intel’s Chief Diversity Officer Barbara Whye, Oracle ex-President Ray Lane and author Linda Swindling. She has been an invited speaker at top conferences, like Google Launchpad Female Founders Summit, Collision conference, TiECon, Women’s March, ATEA, AI ShowBiz Summit, etc. She has been the only speaker under the age of 18 at these conferences. She has been featured in media by BBC, Nasdaq, Mercury News, etc. In 2019, she was ranked in Top 100 Women in Finance in India.

Taarini has also created a chat show to bring Entrepreneurship and Leadership lessons from stellar CEOs and VCs - she has already interviewed John Chambers (Cisco ex-CEO), Tim Draper (top VC), Vinod Kumar (CEO of Vodafone Business and Tata Communications ex-CEO), Dheeraj Pandey (Nutanix CEO), Kamran Ziaee (CenturyLink CIO), Quinn Li (Head of Qualcomm Ventures) and several executives from SAP, TechStars, etc. The chat show is coming soon.

Taarini is the co-Founder of a female empowerment Instagram account called @ClassyWomenn which has ramped to 620k followers in 2 years across 10 countries. She answers questions privately from women around the world on their problems in life, eg how to fight domestic violence, how to tell parents to let girls continue their education instead of getting married, choose a STEM career, etc. She has helped over 500 women on a one-on-one basis so far.

She did a summer internship at Nutanix after 9th grade and became one of their youngest interns ever. At Nutanix, she did market research on Desktop as a Service and Cloud Native apps. She also did a summer internship at Stanford University after 8th grade - she did research on Entrepreneurship models and paradigms while studying MIT/Stanford papers on these topics. Besides English, Taarini can speak and write basic Mandarin, and speak Hindi.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep5: Debu Mishra: Good Practices + Good Beans = Good Coffee

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Debabrat Mishra (Debu). Debu is currently the founder of TribeOProject - a coffee brewing and packaging start-up that helps the indigenous tribes of Koraput. Apart from this, he has also launched the Work-Life App for professionals to balance personal and professional life.

Debu has an exciting career trajectory, and this is not the first time he has left a well-paid corporate job to focus his efforts on his passion projects. He has previously had his stint in EdTech and Ad/film making.

Debu has worked with corporate honchos like Deloitte, PWC, Hewitt Associates, and Arther Anderson. In his corporate career, he worked with leaders to help them get better at what they were doing.

Listen to this beautiful story of triumph and learning.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep4: Dot Lung: The mother of social media dragons

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Dot Lung. Dot is short for Dorothy, and Lung is a dragon in Mandarin. She was born and raised in Southern California by Taiwanese immigrants.

Dot wants to help designers and creative people leverage social media to grow their careers. After being sick and tired of life in corporate America, she immigrated from Los Angeles to Barcelona when she was 25 to follow her dream of living abroad and became the "Mother of Social Media Dragons."

Then she created the six elements of the DRAGON Formula to make compelling content that has helped her end up working with clients (Facebook, Wix, Motionographer, OFFF, Digital Design Days, and Sonar+D)!

She has helped develop digital marketing strategies for clients such as OFFF Festival, Teachable, Wix, Sonar, and Facebook. She has even led and collaborated on digital strategy for Hard Rock Cafe. On top of working with these brands, she is passionate about empowering creatives and personal brands to create successful social media strategies for their businesses. She has got 78,000 students enrolled in her online courses. There's a reason why her proven method generates such high brand awareness, builds such meaningful relationships with audiences, and is used to create a social strategy for some of the world's most recognizable companies.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Sp3: Shubham Jaglan: The king of greens

In today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Shubham Jaglan. Shubham Jaglan, an Indian amateur golfer who won the Junior World Golf Championships in 2015. Jaglan is also a World Record holder, 9 under in Classic Junior Open, 2012, and is recipient of the "NDTV – Emerging Player" and "Margdarshan" awards. Jaglan has won over 100 domestic and international tournaments. In 2020, he was awarded the child prodigy award for Golfing.

An NRI named Kapur Singh started a golf academy in Jaglan's village. Jaglan was enrolled in the academy by his grandfather. Against his family's wishes and despite the academy shutting down, Jaglan continued his practice on a small piece of land in his backyard. This land was cleaned by his father and converted into a green with three holes. Most of Jaglan's formative training was self-taught from videos on YouTube.

He was later spotted by The Golf Foundation that gave him an annual scholarship of INR 2.0 lakh and membership in the Delhi Golf Club, which helped the father and son relocate to Delhi to continue his training.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep3: Sayema Rahman: Video didn't kill the Radio

In today's episode, I have invited Sayema Rahman. Sayema is an award-winning Radio Jockey, and she is currently associated with Radio Mirchi for the last 18 years. She has completed her Master of Philosophy in Social Work from Miranda House, Delhi University. She is also an audiovisual artist, Voice-Over professional for English/Hindi/Urdu), Master of ceremonies, and anchor at selective events. Sayeman is an eternal optimist. She has been romancing the airwaves of Radio for more than 20 years now. Sayema's belief in 'matters of consequence' is overrated. Manto, Faiz, Pash, Murukami, Neruda and Ghalib are her knight in shining armor.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Sp2: Apoorva Panidapu: The Maths Genius

My next guest on the special series is Apoorva Panidapu. Apoorva is a 15-year-old high-school sophomore in San Jose, California. Apoorva wears many hats; she’s a student, a teacher, an aspiring mathematician, an artist, a social entrepreneur, and a public speaker who loves helping kids around the world. Apoorva started taking college classes at age 11, and has since completed several upper-division and graduate-level mathematics courses with a keen interest in Number Theory. She attended the prestigious Canada/USA Mathcamp (2018, 2019) and the highly selective University of Virginia REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) in 2020 as the youngest student there. She is grateful to have the opportunity to work with world-renowned mathematicians in her fields of interest and has co-authored and published papers in Number Theory–one of which was published in the prestigious Journal of Number Theory.

Apoorva has received several worldwide recognitions for her achievements in mathematics, such as her performance in NBC National TV show Genius Junior in 2018 hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and global awards such as the prestigious Spirit of Ramanujan Fellowship & has been selected as a World Science Scholar, one among few in the world. She is also a recipient of the 2020 Global Child Prodigy Award.

Furthermore, she co-founded the Gems in STEM initiative with the goal of teaching various topics in math, science, engineering, and technology through the stories of diverse and pivotal figures in STEM history. As a part of this, she has been publishing bi-weekly articles in the Evergreen Times newspaper, Medium, and Cantor's Paradise, the #1 math publication on Medium. She has also won several national and state awards for her speaking and writing. Apoorva is an enthusiastic artist who loves to oil paint and sketch portraits. She is the founder of Apoorva Panidapu’s Art Gallery (www.apoorvaartgallery.com), an online platform to share her artwork and raise funds for charity. She particularly enjoys impressionistic and abstract artworks.

Her story and paintings were featured on Artists for Peace, Stone Soup, and Ellen and Cheerio's “One Million Acts of Good.” She is also the grand prize winner of NASA Langley Research Center’s Centennial Student Art Contest, as well as a recipient of four Presidential Volunteer Service Awards. Apoorva is also a public speaker who encourages girls, gender minorities, and all youth to pursue STEAM fearlessly. In addition to her art gallery and Gems in STEM, she is a global ambassador for GLAM (Girls Leadership Academy Meetup), where she helps encourage girls aged 8-12 from diverse backgrounds to pursue leadership and careers in tech. Her mission is to encourage others to use their gifts to make a difference in the world. She has helped raise more than $25,000 to support children around the world by using her gifts in math and art to try and give back.

In her spare time, Apoorva enjoys playing the violin, practicing kung fu, and reading classical literature. Apoorva aspires to combine pure mathematics, art, and humanities to change the world.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep2: Rustom Patel: Lord of the Wheels

n today's episode, I have the pleasure of inviting Rustom Patel. Rustom love affair with two-wheelers and passion for motorsports is not unknown. His is a name that hardly needs an introduction. Eight times Indian National Champion and 275 trophies are his prized possessions – that reflect his love and passion for two-wheelers. He started working on his beloved sport at a very young age, fulfilled several of his dreams, and has a bike training school in India to produce International stature bikers.

In Rustom Patel's apartment, in the old, Art Deco-inspired Parsi neighborhood in Byculla, hangs a framed picture of him from 2001. It's easy to miss, hanging as it does amidst a jungle of brass – cups, shields, awards, mementos, citations – he has collected over a lifetime of racing atop two wheels. Over the years, it colonized all the shelf space in his apartment and threatened the cutlery in the kitchen. And this is just the metal he has collected. His brother Zubin and his cousin Kaizad, have a similar need for industrial quantities of Brasso – the brothers Patel have dominated the sport of motocross racing and off-road biking in India, from the late '80s to the late 2000s.

The "Patels of Racing" they were called, and if you were a young speed junkie gunning the throttle for glory in those times, it was always a little annoying to see a Patel in the lineup.

Rustom is currently KTM India Factory Rider, Brand Ambassador for Castrol Biking, and is the Racing India Head coach for Ajmera Realty.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Sp1: Namya Joshi: The Minecraft Guru

Welcome to the first special series episode of Masters Decoded. It is a pleasure and an honor to have Namya Joshi, who recently was awarded - Rashtriya Bal Shakti Puraskar. Namya currently studies in Grade VIII at Sat Paul Mittal School. Where she is the student Minecraft Mentor. Namya has also cleared her ACE1 and ACE 2 level at Adobe and got the Trendsetter badge by completing all the certifications.

Over the years, Namya has trained 1000s of teachers and students worldwide and is further training more. She is also the UNESCO Worldwide Youth Multimedia Competition winner, TeachSDGss Ambassador, Rex Karamaveer Bronze Medal Awardee, Global E-Innovation Award Winner Youngest Global Juror, SDGsChildren Ambassador India. Namya has spoken at numerous platforms such as KEOS2019 Finland, EduDays Microsoft, UNESCO, CONVOKE, Asia Berlin Summit, Adobe Education Summit on the power of STEM and game-based learning.

The Podcast is available on the following locations:

Ep1: Renée Cummings: Technology Leaves Legacy

Masters Decoded Season 2 first guest is Renée Cummings. Renée is a criminologist, criminal psychologist, therapeutic jurisprudence specialist, AI ethicist, and the historic first Data Activist in Residence at The School of Data Science, University of Virginia. Renée is also a community scholar at Columbia University. Advocating for AI we can trust, more diverse, equitable, and inclusive AI, she is on the frontline of ethical AI, generating real-time responses to many of the consequences of AI. Renée also specializes in AI risk management, justice-oriented AI, social justice AI, AI policy and governance, and AI to save lives. She is committed to using AI to empower and transform communities by helping governments and organizations navigate the AI landscape and develop future AI leaders.

Renée works at the intersection of AI, criminal justice, racial justice, social justice, design justice, epidemiological and urban criminology, and public health.

She has extensive experience in trauma-informed justice interventions, homicide reduction, gun and gang violence prevention, juvenile justice, evidence-based policing, and law enforcement leadership. Her work extends to rehabilitation, reentry, and reducing recidivism. Renée is committed to fusing AI with criminal justice for ethical real-time solutions to improve law enforcement accountability and transparency, reduce violence, enhance public safety, public health, and quality of life. A thought-leader, motivational speaker, and mentor, Renée is an articulate, dynamic, and passionate speaker who has mastered the art of creative storytelling and deconstructing complex topics into critical everyday conversations that inform and inspire.

The Podcast is available on the following locations: