OPEN New York’s “Entrepreneurs’ Roundtable: Everything you need to know about starting and running a successful business”
When & Where:
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009, 6 PM to 9 PM at New York University, Kimmel Center Room 802, 60 Washington Square South
Speakers:
Afzaal Akhtar (Event Chair) - Senior Partner and Co-Founder, IBB Consulting Group; formerly Managing Consultant, PA Consulting Group
Rafat Ali - Founder, Publisher & Editor, ContentNext Media (Sold to Guardian News & Media in 2008) ; formerly, Managing Editor of the Silicon Alley Reporter
Ammar Hanafi - General Partner, Alloy Ventures; formerly, VP of New Business Ventures, Cisco Systems
Linda Holliday - Media, Internet and Marketing Serial-Entrepreneur; Advisor and Angel Investor, the New York Angels; formerly, President and Co-founder, Medical Broadcasting Company (Sold to Digitas in 2006)
Dr. Rosina Samadani - President and Founder, Capella Advisors; formerly, Associate Principal, McKinsey & Co.
Imran Sayeed - Senior Vice President, Global Industry Solutions, Keane Inc; formerly Founder & Chairman, Netnumina (Sold to Keane, Inc. in 2005); Faculty Member, MIT’s Sloan School of Management
Registration Options:
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Event Details:
Join us for an inspiring & informative evening as we convene a panel of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders to share their knowledge and experience on planning, starting, funding and running a successful business. The program will start with a panel discussion followed by a question/answer session, ending with a wonderful opportunity for you to meet and network with the speakers
and attendees at the dinner.
Speaker Bios:
Event Chair: Afzaal Akhtar | Senior Partner and Co-Founder, IBB Consulting Group; formerly Managing Consultant, PA Consulting Group
Afzaal's focus at IBB consulting has been on developing major client engagements and overseeing company operations. An accomplished technology strategist and program manager in the consumer and enterprise broadband arenas, Afzaal is an expert at shaping business strategies into pragmatic program plans. Substantial hands-on experience in systems and network architecture, operations and support, and software development enables him to design implementation programs that maximize business benefits throughout each phase of the product lifecycle: product and architecture definition, development, deployment, service delivery, BSS, OSS and customer service operations.
Afzaal's long experience and in-depth industry, technical and strategic savvy have made him a highly effective leader on a number of critical large-scale programs. Previously, Afzaal has held senior consulting and industry positions with leading companies including McKinsey & Co., Fidelity Investments and PA Consulting Group. Among the clients who depend on his expertise are Comcast, Time Warner Cable, UPC, Cablevision, Adelphia Communications, AT&T Broadband, Microsoft, Movielink, Liberty Digital, TeleDanmark, TV New Zealand and Sony.
Afzaal holds an ME in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
Ammar Hanafi | General Partner, Alloy Ventures; formerly, VP of New Business Ventures, Cisco Systems
Ammar has over a decade of financial and operational management experience in the communications and technology industry. He previously served as vice president of new business ventures at Cisco Systems, where he led new product efforts in the enterprise datacenter market. From 2000 to 2002, he was vice president of corporate business development, and in that capacity, he was responsible for Cisco’s acquisitions, acquisition integration, investment, and joint venture activity on a global basis. He joined Cisco in 1997 as a member of the Corporate Business Development Group. During Ammar’s tenure at Cisco, he helped the company complete over 100 investment and M&A transactions, including 50 successful acquisitions and over $750 million in venture capital investments. Leveraging his deep industry expertise, he helped lead Cisco into a number of major new businesses, including optical networking and integrated voice and data infrastructure and applications. Prior to Cisco, Ammar held leadership positions at PanAmSat Corp., a global satellite services provider, and the investment banking firms of Morgan Stanley and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Ammar received a BS in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University (1988) and an MBA from Stanford University (1995).
Dr. Rosina Samadani | President and Founder, Capella Advisors; formerly, Associate Principal, McKinsey & Co.
Dr. Samadani has over ten years consulting experience, including seven years experience with McKinsey & Company, where she was a leader in the healthcare practice, serving pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, physician services, and payer companies. She has worked on all aspects of strategy from clinical development to lifecycle management. She was the firm expert on scenario analysis/role-playing (war-gaming), patient flow analysis, e-health, and pharmaceutical pricing and managed care. She has her BS from MIT in Mechanical Engineering, her MS from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program in Mechanical Engineering, and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Samadani was a National Science Foundation Fellow and a Helen Bernstein Health Sciences and Technology Fellow.
Dr. Samadani serves as a Board of Trustee for Wayland Academy and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Roundtable.
Imran Sayeed | Senior Vice President, Global Industry Solutions, Keane Inc. Formerly Founder & Chairman, Netnumina and Faculty Member at MIT's Sloan School of Management.
Imran Sayeed leads all commercial sector industry practices for Keane, a global BPO and IT Services company with ~14,000 professionals worldwide. Industry practices include Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, Retail, Hospitality & Travel and Energy, and together comprise most of the key business lines and customers for Keane. Sayeed came to Keane through its acquisition of netNumina, a boutique technology strategy and consulting form that he founded and grew from a 15 person startup to one of Computerwold’s Top 100 emerging companies. netNumina won more than 30 of the leading financial services & pharmaceutical institutions in the world as clients, raised more than $25MM from venture capitalists and strategic investors and received more than 20 industry awards for its work.
Imran has over fifteen years of experience in software and services. Previously, as a founder of Open Environment, he helped pioneer multi-tier client server technology, and grew the company from a 10-person startup to an IPO and leadership in the middleware market. Imran has written and spoken extensively in leading industry conferences and trade journals over the last 13 years on entrepreneurship, e-business, financial services, insurance and technology. Imran also serves on the Advisory Board of several software and private equity companies. He also holds a patent on technology for providing secure financials transactions over the Internet that he jointly developed with Citigroup. He is currently a visiting faculty member at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he teaches in the MBA program on technology business strategy. Imran attended Brown University where he majored in Engineering, and Harvard University, where he did post-graduate work in business, marketing and product development.
Rafat Ali | Founder, Publisher & Editor, ContentNext Media (Sold to Guardian News & Media in 2008); formerly, Managing Editor of the Silicon Alley Reporter.
Since founding paidContent.org in 2002, Rafat has overseen the rollout to three new verticals and the expansion into revenue generating events for the parent company ContentNext Media. Before ContentNext, Rafat was managing editor of the Silicon Alley Reporter. Editor & Publisher has called Rafat “journalism’s poster boy for career independence from news companies,” and CBS MarketWatch has called him “a pioneer in using the Web for an almost real-time business news feed.” Per Reuters, "ContentNext’s flagship paidContent, founded in 2002, has quickly established itself as a must-read among executives in the media and digital media sector." In July 2008, Rafat sold ContentNext Media to UK-based Guardian News & Media. Rafat and his executive team continue to run the company as a stand-alone business. Rafat was the Knight Foundation Fellow at Indiana University, his alma mater, where he completed his Masters in Journalism, 1999-2000.
Linday Holliday | Media, Internet and Marketing Serial-Entrepreneur; Advisor and Angel Investor, the New York Angels; formerly, President and Co-founder, Medical Broadcasting Company (Sold to Digitas in 2006).
Linda Holliday is a media, internet and marketing serial-entrepreneur -- recently turned advisor and angel investor with the New York Angels. Recent investments include:
Organized Wisdom, 33 Across, CE Interactive, Classwish and Comixology.
A veteran of the entire internet life-cycle to date, Linda?s specific passions include search, user experience and information architecture. A contributor to TED conference founder Richard Wurman?s Understanding series, she has been recognized for bringing fresh thinking to traditional and new media. Valued for her expertise in designing comprehensive on- and off-line „go-to-market? plans for seed-stage companies, Linda is an active mentor-consultant whose interests still center on the intersection between old and new media. In 2007, Linda and her partner sold their internet marketing communications firm —Medical Broadcasting Company--to Digitas, and then in turn to Publicis. The then 200+ firm, leading in healthcare, still thrives as Digitas Health with over 600+ employees, over $100mm in revenue and offices in multiple countries. MBC was an award-winning pioneer in the internet services sectors and was credited with many innovations. The firm?s roster included global blue-chip media and healthcare clients such as Johnson & Johnson and Time, Inc. Valued for its internet and healthcare marketing expertise, MBC was involved in launching and marketing some of the world?s largest drugs such as Tylenol and Viagra. The company built more than 1000 web sites, ran complex relationship programs on and off-line, designed robust educational programs and led industry efforts with major media and search companies. In addition to general executive responsibilities, as President, Linda also led marketing, media, innovation, and business development. Linda also successfully created and exited a thought-leading internet business intelligence company (ePhrmaceuticals) as well as a production business that produced syndicated television programs (Bodysense hosted by Mike Rowe.) Prior to starting MBC, Linda was the marketing VP for a nationally known commercial, film and Imax film production company (SBK Pictures.) She came to SBK from Cablevision where she led the marketing for sports channels in multiple US cities. Working in sports marketing in Philadelphia, she was fortunate enough to train at the feet of some truly great entrepreneurs, and she was credited with many sports marketing and sports promotions innovations. Whether it was sports channels in Chicago, or Pay-TV in The Netherlands, she is known to say: “Getting viewers to pay for television was great training for the Internet!” Ms Holliday was born and raised in Detroit, the daughter of an electrical engineer and a psychologist. She attended the University of Michigan, received a BFA in Painting and went on to receive an MBA from The Wharton School.
Other Speakers to be added. Admission to the Panel Discussion is complimentary to all current NYU Students.
NETWORKING DINNER | 8:30 PM
Venue: Baluchi's
Location: 90 West 3rd St, New York, NY 10012 (Located behind Kimmel between Sullivan & Thompson)
Cuisine/Type: Indian / Pre Fixe
Time: 8:30 PM
Dress Code: Casual
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