Featured Speakers

Sam Pitroda

Mr. Sam Pitroda is an internationally respected development thinker, policy maker, telecom inventor, and entrepreneur who has spent 48 years in information and communications technology (ICT) and related human and national developments.

Credited with having laid the foundation for and ushered in India's technology and telecommunications revolution in the 1980s, Pitroda has been a leading campaigner to help bridge the global digital divide. During his tenure as adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Pitroda led six technology missions related to telecommunications, water, literacy, immunization, dairy production, and oil seeds. He was also the founder and first chairman of India's Telecom Commission. In these roles, he helped revolutionize India's development policies and philosophies, with a focus on access to technology as the key to social change.

Pitroda was recently chairman of India's National Knowledge Commission (2005–2009), set up to provide a blueprint for reform of the knowledge-related institutions and infrastructure in the country. The commission has offered a series of recommendations on various aspects of the knowledge paradigm to help India meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Currently, Pitroda is adviser to the prime minister of India on public information infrastructure and innovation, with the rank of a cabinet minister. He serves as the chairman of the Smart Grid Task Force Committee to reform public broadcasting, modernize railways, deliver e-governance, and perform other developmental activities. He is also a founding commissioner of the United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development.

Pitroda holds close to 100 worldwide patents and has published and lectured widely in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

James Fallows

James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter. He has written 10 books—most recently China Airborne.

In his time with The Atlantic, Fallows and his family have been based in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing; he and his wife now live in Washington, DC. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He has taught at UC Berkeley; the University of Chicago; the Universities of Beijing, Tokyo, and Sydney; and other schools. He is also an instrument-rated private pilot.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a New York Emmy Award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Jack Dangermond

A landscape architect by training, Jack Dangermond founded Esri in 1969 with a vision that a mapping and analysis framework could provide a deeper understanding of our world and help us design a better future. As founder and president of Esri, Dangermond's leadership and vision stimulate the ongoing innovation of GIS technologies that enable people to make insightful decisions and improve the quality of life everywhere.