The IIT Association of Greater New England hosted the first Global Leadership conference at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence , RI, Aug 12-14.  Titled “Leading transformation for a better tomorrow: Technologies that lift the human spirit” the conference showcased talks by world leaders on a range of topics. The conference was co-chaired by Raj Laad and Mandy Deb. The volunteer team worked in tandem to put up a show like no other. 

The conference was split into four tracks 

o   Life Sciences & Healthcare: integrative medicine, healthcare delivery, medical devices

o   Energy & Environment: renewable energy generation, storage, efficiency, water tech

o   Frontiers of Technology: IoT, cloud based enterprise, security, AI, Big Data

o   Education: University Presidents panel, digital learning, democratization of education

There was also a special women’s track where women speakers presented on a wide range of topics.  Friday opened with the women’s track featuring a session on entrepreneurship and technology career opportunities for women. There was also a wonderful session on becoming a person of influence.  The evening session featured keynote speeches by Jorge Elorza, Mayor of Providence, Amitabha Ghosh, NASA and Dr. Achin Bhowmik at Intel.  The technology talks by Ghosh and Bhowmik were inspirational and showed us the new frontiers of technology.  The evening featured entertainment by Sonika Vaid and other local artists.

Dr. Desh Deshpande, Ambassador Arun Singh, Raj Rajgopal, President, Enterprise Technology & Solutions, VirtusaPolaris and Ambassador Riva Das presented a few remarks while Eric Gebhardt, Chief Operations and Platforms Officer, GE Current and Navin Budhiraia, SVP, Head Architecture & Technology, Infosys presented the keynote address in the Saturday morning session.  The evening keynotes were presented by Rajesh Subramanian of  FedEx and Arun Sundararajan , Prof , NYU Stern. This was followed by a music concert by Prasanna. Steve Kaufer, CEO and Founder, TripAdvisor, Peeyush Ranjan, CTO, Flipkart gave the keynote presentation on Sunday. 

Organizations working in the social impact space presented their work. There was a business plan competition, a poster competition and a college workshop for high school students.  On Sunday the team honored the former presidents of the IIT Alumni organization in New England. 

The logistics team did an amazing job and nothing went wrong. The food was excellent and plentiful. 

The happy faces of the attendees was a true testament to the excellent organizational skill of the volunteers and the high quality content presented at the event.  There was a lot of takeaways and it is hoped that the work that was started at the conference will continue to impact the world of technology in New England and beyond.