Bidisha Rudra is the Senior Managing Director for Essilor Transitions and has been with Essilor for 13 years. She has enjoyed variety of roles including Market Research and Analytics, Managed Care Sales, Business Development, and Corporate Strategy, with the latter two stints out of the Asia Pacific headquarter in Singapore. She also serves as the President of Essilor Womens’ Network since the beginning of 2018. She firmly believes that achieving gender diversity and inclusion in the workplace is not something that can be done by just a handful of employees it is a collective effort. Bidisha earned a Ph.D in Applied Economics from University of Georgia, Athens. She was born and brought up in New Delhi, the capital city of India, and through her journey in life in different cities, she made a permanent stop (hopefully!) in Big D, Texas. When she is not busy working on achieving sales targets, Bidisha spends her time running around after her eleven year old twin young boys, Niseem and Nirvan, which is no less challenging!

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Billie Jo Waara joined Cicis as Chief Marketing Officer in 2017. She is responsible for overall brand evolution, marketing, creative and culinary development for the Original, Unlimited Pizza Buffet restaurant chain. Since joining the team, Billie Jo has launched several strategic initiatives including re-evaluation and refinement of brand positioning, pricing standards and technology-enabled Guest occasions such as online ordering. She has led innovative marketing initiatives for several industries including hospitality, quick service restaurants, travel, tourism and retail for the past 20 years.

Prior to joining Cicis, Billie Jo was Chief Marketing Officer for Taco John’s International. Billie Jo’s previous experience includes advertising agency leadership, she was the Director of the South Dakota Office of Tourism and served as a locally elected official as the Minnehaha County Treasurer. Waara graduated from Augustana College with a double major in Business Administration and International Government, and received her MBA from the University of South Dakota.

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A core leader of McKinsey’s Operations Practice, Ashutosh advises clients on operations issues, with a specific focus on end-to-end supply-chain design, logistics, procurement, manufacturing transformation, supply-chain function, omnichannel operation, procurement transformation, and strategy. His experience spans a broad range of industries, including consumer packaged goods, retail, automotive, industrial, pharmaceutical, and high tech.

Ashutosh is a leader of the firm’s manufacturing and supply-chain work within the Operations Practice and coleads McKinsey’s logistics work globally.

Examples of his recent client experience include the following:

• leading a supply-chain strategy and network-optimization study at a high-tech company, with subsequent value capture and implementation to improve overall supply-chain costs by 17 percent annually
• developing a holistic operations transformation for a consumer-packaged-goods company to reduce manufacturing costs by 17 percent and logistics costs by 14 percent while improving customer-service levels to 98 percent, from 87 percent
• spearheading an end-to-end supply-chain-planning transformation to improve service levels by 30 percent and reduce inventory days on hand by 25 percent
• supporting an indirect procurement-spend transformation at the online and network retailer of a consumer company, with work that included global procurement capability building and transformation, to deliver approximately 13 percent yearly savings
• leading a supply-chain planning and order-to-cash transformation, resulting in warehousing savings of 13 percent, transportation savings of more than 10 percent, and inventory reduction by 20 percent
• deploying lean warehousing to improve efficiency by 40 percent while reducing cost by 30 percent on a spend of $21 million for an industrial heavy-duty-parts manufacturer and distributor

Ashutosh has worked as the head of a beverage company’s global logistics group, with responsibility for logistics procurement and management, automation, digital logistics, and productivity across all business units. He also spent ten years at a global transport and logistics company based in Switzerland, leading projects in network optimization, transportation modeling, warehouse design, warehouse start-ups, and warehouse- and transportation-management-system implementation. He ultimately headed the company’s solutions engineering and operations group in North America across the high-tech, retail, automotive, and industrial sectors.

He has spoken at several conferences, including the North American Supply Chain Executive Summit, Supply Chain World, and SummerCon.

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Syed (“Ali”) Raza serves as Apergy’s Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer. Ali most-recently served as President of Dover Energy Automation, part of Dover Energy, a position he held since 2016. Prior to joining Dover Energy, Ali was with Honeywell Process Solutions as Vice President and General Manager—Advanced Solutions, General Manager Advanced Solutions—Europe, Middle East & Africa, General Manager—Americas, and Director, Global Business Development. Ali received a B.E. in Computer Systems Engineering from NED University of Engineering and Technology and a MSc in Computer Engineering from Wayne State University.

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Reddy Gottipolu, MS, MBA, PhD, FASQ

Chief Supply Chain Officer, Memorial Hermann Health System

Dr. Reddy Gottipolu is a Chief Supply Chain Officer at Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston, TX. He currently oversees Supply Chain Management, Sterile Processing, Clinical Engineering and Asset Management functions. Prior to this, he was a Vice President of Supply Chain at Adeptus Health in Lewisville, TX where he played a key role in building supply chain team, and systems to support rapidly expanding business into multiple markets. Prior to joining Adeptus he was a Vice President of Supply Chain Services at MedAssets, a Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) located in Plano, TX. There he provided supply chain leadership services that include assessment of supply chain operations, develop strategic road maps, and deploy new technology solutions.  He also served as a Senior Director & Interim Vice President of Supply Chain Operations at Fairview Health Services, Minneapolis, MN. Prior to moving to healthcare, he gained several years of Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma and Supply Chain Management experience at General Motors and General Electric. He has a proven track record of transforming operations and improving margins of the organizations in which he served. He also served as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Most recently, he taught Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership course in collaboration with BelMont University in Nashville, TN.

Dr. Gottipolu received a PhD in Industrial Engineering, an MBA, a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He is certified in Six Sigma, Supply Chain Management, and FEMA Incidence Command System.

He is currently serving as a member of Amazon Healthcare Supply Chain Advisory Board. He was a board member of twin cities health systems co-op. He was also a member of Editorial Board of Computers in Industry Journal.

He has published several articles in the areas of Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Assembly Process Planning, Lean Manufacturing, and Error Proofing in reputed international journals and conference proceedings. He also spoke on Lean Concepts in Healthcare Supply Chain and Role of Supply Chain in Greening Healthcare at national and international forums.

He is a Fellow of American Society for Quality (ASQ), a member of American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE), and a member of Association for Health Care Resource and Materials Management (AHRMM).

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Associate Professor

Director Center for Machine Learning
Department of CS 
Erik Jonsson School of Engineering & Computer Science,
The University of Texas at Dallas,

Dr. Sriraam Natarajan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at University of Texas Dallas. He was previously an Associate Professor and earlier an Assistant Professor at Indiana University, and at Wake Forest School of Medicine, a post-doctoral research associate at University of Wisconsin-Madison and had graduated with his PhD from Oregon State University. His research interests lie in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with emphasis on Machine Learning, Statistical Relational Learning and AI, Reinforcement Learning, Graphical Models and Biomedical Applications. He has received the Young Investigator award from US Army Research Office, Amazon Faculty Research Award, Intel Faculty Award, XEROX Faculty Award and the IU trustees Teaching Award from Indiana University. He is an editorial board member of MLJ, JAIR and DAMI journals and is the electronics publishing editor of JAIR. He is the organizer of the key workshops in the field of Statistical Relational AI, co-authored the book on this topic and has offered tutorials on the topic. He was also the co-chair of the AAAI student abstract and posters at AAAI 2014 and AAAI 2015 and the chair of the AAAI students outreach at AAAI 2016 and 2017.

http://utdallas.edu/~sriraam.natarajan/

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Mrs. Neel Gonuguntla serves as the President of the US India Chamber of Commerce Dallas Fort Worth (USICOC). The USICOC is a 501(c)(6) organization made up of nearly 3000 individual and corporate members and is dedicated to supporting professional, business and economic development throughout the Dallas Fort Worth area. The USICOC also facilitates trade between India and the North Texas area by connecting member companies with resources to aid in their successful expansions.

As President, Mrs. Gonuguntla oversees strategic planning activities for the Chamber in addition to providing oversight of daily operations including, but not limited to, member services, event management and fundraising for the organization. Under her leadership, the Chamber has grown its member participation by 34% and event-based activity by 40%.

Prior to joining the Chamber, Mrs. Gonuguntla served as President of ReadyToWork®, an education and workforce development consulting company where she oversaw the streamlining of operations and the creation of new revenue streams. She managed teams of remote employees, supervised all business development and operations, and provided legal and regulatory oversight.

Mrs. Gonuguntla received her education from Boston University and Baylor University where she earned her Bachelors in Political Science and her J.D./M.B.A, respectively. She is licensed to practice law in the State of Texas and is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Dallas Bar Association as well as the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers.

Mrs. Gonuguntla is also an active community volunteer dedicating her time to causes including women’s empowerment, inner-city education, and foreign aid.

Currently, she serves on the boards of the following organizations:

• CHETNA which supports victims of domestic violence in North Texas
• COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF THE DALLAS REGION which supports the education and well-being of over 10,000 at-risk youth attending Dallas area public schools
• OPPORTUNITY PLUS which supports women entrepreneurs and community development in North Texas and India
• US GLOBAL LEADERSHIP COALITION which provides support for the United States’ diplomatic and development efforts among both politicians and the public

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Monique Wedderburn is the Director of the University of Texas Dallas Asia Center. She provides overall leadership for the Center’s programs, ensuring intellectual and cultural education about Asia’s foreign policy, business and public policy.

Ms. Wedderburn has over 20 years’ experience working with professionals and students around the world. She is skilled in bridging gaps by coordinating a wide range of international educational programs, advanced economic development projects, and community outreach activities.

Ms. Wedderburn came to the University of Texas at Dallas in 2011 from her prior work as Senior Program Officer at the East West Center (EWC; Honolulu, Hawaii). At the EWC, she coordinated short-term professional development and led visits to Vietnam, China, Thailand, Japan, Bangkok, Cambodia, and Washington, D.C. that addressed topics such as intercultural leadership, politics of globalization, and economic development. In her work with the Pacific Business Center and U.S. Department of Interior she completed economic development work for communities in Hawaii, American Samoa, Virgin Islands, and Palau.

Ms. Wedderburn spent her formative years in Mexico, Zaire (currently the Democratic Republic of Congo), Pakistan, Thailand, and Zimbabwe. She earned her MBA (with Honors — Beta Gamma Sigma) from the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawai’i and her Bachelor of Science degree in Business from Colorado State University. Ms. Wedderburn is an alumna of the Board of Directors for the Texas Lyceum, graduate of Leadership Women, and her volunteer efforts have included serving on community boards.

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Namrata Sharma currently heads the SemiChip business segment for the Engineering and R&D Business Unit of HCL Technologies where she is responsible for building collaborativerelationships at CxO level to strategically align goals and capabilities. She is driving HCL’s expansion in these segments by working closely with global engineering teams to define innovative solutions and implement services in this space. Namrata has extensive experience in the Telecom and Semiconductor domains having worked for Motorola and Dell Services as well as consulting for Tier-1 Telecom Service Providers. In her previous role at HCL Technologies, she successfully led the charge to bring new service lines to the market in 5G, SDN/NFV and DevOps. Nam as she is known, is a multidimensional leader who believes in building long term trusted relationships with her co-workers, customers and friends.

oming from a family of strong female role models, she is a big advocate of gender parity and is actively engaged in creating awareness to promote gender diversity at the workspace and beyond. Nam leads the diversity initiatives at her business unit in HCL and the following quote by the Canadian – Indian poet Rupi Kaur reflects Nam’s thoughts

about her goal :

“our work should equip the next generation of women to outdo us in every field this is the legacy we’ll leave”. – Rupi Kaur

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