Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management

Drawing on a background in organizational theory, change management, and system dynamics, Anjali Sastry explores learning, organizational change, and sustainability. Her work addresses how people draw lessons from experience in the context of complex change projects that require innovation and entail multiple constituencies and challenging dynamics. Her interest in the tools and practices that support learning and adaptation translate into teaching innovations, and these in turn are offering new insights for organizations as well as classrooms. She sees a particular need for such tools in the domains of sustainability, social entrepreneurship, and global health delivery.

This work is informed by her past professional experience in management consulting at Bain and Company and as a research scholar at Rocky Mountain Institute working on electric end-use efficiency in India. Using computer simulation, system dynamics, and feedback thinking, as a University of Michigan and then MIT Assistant Professor, she studied imprinting in organizations, institutional theory, path dependence, punctuated change, organizational learning, and the pacing of change in organizations. Sastry’s research has appeared in a variety of publications, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Energy Policy, Corporate Reputation Review, and Technology Review.

Mr. Paul Polak

Founder & CEO of D-Rev: Design for the Other 90%, Author, Out of Poverty

In 1981 Paul Polak founded International Development Enterprises (IDE), the non-profit organization he currently heads as president. Through his work with IDE, he has helped over 17 million impoverished farmers in developing countries to escape the cycle of subsistence poverty. IDE makes innovative, low-cost water-resource technologies accessible to the world’s poorest farmers, enabling them to access and control water, increase and diversify agricultural production, create new wealth, and improve their families’ quality of life. What makes Polak’s work unique is the market-based approach that he brings to poverty alleviation—an approach based on his belief that the rural poor are natural entrepreneurs who, if given the opportunity, will invest their own limited resources to ensure their families’ security and well-being.

Polak’s and IDE’s achievements have been recognized the Scientific American Top Fifty award for agriculture policy (2003), the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award (2004), and the Tech Museum award for the design of IDE’s low-cost drip irrigation system (2004). Articles about IDE and Polak have appeared in National Geographic, Harpers, Forbes, and Scientific American. Polak gives frequent talks and presentations at leading universities like Stanford and MIT, as well as academic and professional conferences like the 2006 International Symposium on Groundwater Sustainability (ISGWAS), the Annual Meeting of the National Collegiate Innovators and Inventors Association (NCIIA), the 2006 Aspen Design Summit, and the 2007 Pop!Tech Conference.

Polak received his M.D. from the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada in 1958, and his certification from the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry in 1978. To learn more about Paul and his work at IDE, please visit http://www.ide-international.org/.

Mr. Shaffi Mather

Founder of Dial 1298 for Ambulance

Shaffi Mather is the Founder of Dial 1298 for Ambulance. He is part of an upcoming new generation young leader within Indian National Congress Party. He is educated at the Mahatma Gandhi University, India, University of Pittsburgh, USA , University of Bridgeport , USA and the London School of Economics, UK where he was a Chevening Senior Scholar and currently, a Visiting Lecturer. He has been selected to be a Mason Fellow at the JFK School of Government, Harvard University for the academic year 2007-08. Post his MBA, Shaffi took his family business in real estate to leadership position in his State and then professionally worked with two of India’s leading corporate tycoons, Mr. Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Industries) and Mr. Subash Chandra (Zee TV/Essel Group). Shaffi’s most notable accomplishment has been the successful establishment of an Emergency Medical Service (EMS) “DIAL 1298 FOR AMBULANCE” (www.1298.org.in) in Mumbai, the first truly world-class self sustainable EMS in India. This project is now under expansion in Mumbai and in his home state, Kerala.

Ms. Sonal Shah

Director, Global Development Team, Google.org

Sonal Shah works for Google.org on their Global Development team, where she is working on defining their global development strategy. Prior to Google.org, she was Vice President at Goldman, Sachs and Co. and developed and implemented the firm’s environmental strategy. She is also the co-founder of Indicorps, a U.S.-based non-profit organization offering one-year fellowships for Americans of Indian origin to work on specific development projects in India. As the former Associate Director for Economic and National Security Policy at the Center for American Progress, Sonal worked on trade, outsourcing and post conflict reconstruction issues. Prior to joining the Center, she was the Director of Programs and Operations at the Center for Global Development managing the daily operations and serving as a strategic adviser to the president. She also developed and managed policy and advocacy programs for the Center. Before that she worked for eight years at the Department of Treasury on various economic issues and regions of the world. She was the Director of the office covering sub Saharan Africa, worked in Bosnia and Kosovo after the war, and served as the senior adviser to the Under Secretary and Assistant Secretary at the Department of Treasury during the Asian financial crisis.

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