Anitha Srinivasan is the Division Chief of Breast Health Services at the Metropolitan Hospital in New York City. She is an experienced general surgeon with a special interest in clinical surgery, breast cancer prevention and care, and global and population health policy. She is deeply involved in surgical education curriculum development and teaching. Since Dec 2017, Anitha is also the Chief Experience Officer at the hospital.
“Future connect is a project that provides much needed student exposure and encouragement essential for Intergenerational Mobility. A Brilliant and well designed endeavor that bridges a gap that education alone cannot provide!”
Ayesha is a management consultant at McKinsey and Company’s New York office. She completed her undergraduate program in Commerce and Management in 2008 and worked at Lehman Brothers/Nomura in their Investment Banking and Capital Markets division prior to completing her MBA in 2012. Since then, at McKinsey she has worked with clients across the globe, primarily serving financial services players (large banks, private equities, financial infrastructure players and regional banks) on a range of digital strategy and organizational agility topics. Ayesha enjoys traveling and learning about new cultures and people.
“It was a wonderful experience being a part of the FutureConnect program. I wish that I had been exposed to such a breadth of learning and topics growing up. It was clear that the class enjoyed the diversity and hands-on nature of the learning – for our specific session, it was wonderful to see the kids have an enhanced understanding of their own personalities and an appreciation for why everyone is wired differently. Understanding and applying the principles of what they learned to build good dynamics at home, school, in teams and on the playground will truly hold them in good stead. Personally, for me, it was a rewarding experience to share a glimpse of the work I do and contribute to the learning of a class of talented kids. It also made me revise the MBTI principles and pushed me to continue to ‘practice what I preach’ in my life! Thank you Charuta and the FutureConnect initiative”
Bryan Wilson is an award-winning Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary creative with 10+ years experience in advertising, branding, and design. Via his side-hustle (aka: Galactic Sneeze), he also invents toys, board games, gizmos, and gadgets… some of which you can find in stores across the US and Canada.
“I had a great time leading a hands-on workshop for the students from Future Connect. Over the course of just a few hours, we discussed some of the basics of design and typography. Through a series of exercises, the kids developed some practical skills in hand-lettering and poster design. The students were smart, talented, enthusiastic, and engaged… and I’d highly recommend the program to anyone.”
Diya Gangopadhyay has been working as a Senior Interaction Designer at Bloomberg LP for the past 6 years. Prior to this job, Gangopadhyay studied both interaction between humans and computers at Carnegie Mellon University, and interaction design at the Indian Institute of Technology in Guwahati. Her career then directed her towards the role of Senior User Experience Designer at Manhattan Associates, and an internship at Nokia dedicated to finding solutions for illiterate users on the web, among many other experiences. Furthermore, Gangopadhyay volunteered at a high school, mentoring students about possible careers and academic paths, but also as a teacher to students in rural India via video chat.
Dhruv is a management consultant by profession based out of New York. He is an electronics engineer by training and completed his Masters in Business Administration in 2012. Since then, he’s worked with clients across pharmaceuticals, healthcare, industrials, and telecom industry in Asia, Africa & the US, advising them on a variety of strategy and organizational topics. In his spare time, Dhruv enjoys spending time with family and connecting with his music.
“I thoroughly enjoyed engaging with the students and to see those moments of a-ha as we talked through different personality types. It was fascinating to see the stark contrasts in the unrestrained personalities of the kids. Personally, it was a very rewarding experience preparing for the games in the sessions and researching materials to put together a captivating story!”
Fritz is a Design + Strategy Director at McKinsey & Company. He helps founders and funders to scale their company and realize new futures using design – he did similar work at his own experience strategy + design consultancy called MATE
“FutureConnect effectively provides a valuable link from the professional community to the next generation of young people who are eager to learn and take on the world awaiting them. I can sincerely say I gained much more than I gave by participating.”
Jeswant Brahamanandam works at McKinsey as an engagement manager in New York since 2017 when after he transferred there from Singapore. Brahamanadam’s education includes an MBA at the renowned Insead and at the Curtin University of Technology. His job consists of managing a team of consultants that mostly help clients in the manufacturing, chemical, oil and gas, and real estate industry reach greater performances. His experience also includes years of covering different roles in engineering at ConocoPhillips.
“This is an impressive group of students. Their eyes light up when they are presented with new concepts and they learn the subject matter very quickly. They are eager to learn and are grateful for the opportunity to do so. I look forward to returning for round two!”
Khusbu Patel works as an assistant clinical professor at Columbia University’s “Center for Family and Community Medicine”. She studied pharmacy at St. John’s University, where she has become, since 2012, part of the pharmacotherapy faculty. Khusbu is certified geriatric pharmacist since 2014 and ambulatory care pharmacist.
“It was refreshing to develop a creative learning program for an eager and curious group of young learners. Within our specific session, students were receptive and engaged in learning about problem solving, health literacy, and the role of pharmacists in health care. I find the program incredibly valuable to our future professionals.”
Priyanka Prakash is a former TEDx speaker, Classical vocalist and currently works as a Management Consultant in New York City, serving CFO’s and senior clients on Strategy and Corporate Finance topics. She is passionate about Finance, Art and the intersection between the two (which was also the topic of her TED talk). Priyanka holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and is a Chartered Accountant. She has been trained for over 20 years in the Indian Carnatic style, and has performed over 200 concerts across the US, India and the UK.
“Spending an afternoon with the talented middle-schoolers was energizing. I spoke to them about Debating – and through the process, learned about their ambitions (one girl wanted to become the top lawyer in the country), learned about what drives them (a young lady spoke about making an impact in her community), and the creative ideas they brought to the fore. This doesn’t happen often – but I was surprised. Many, many times, during the course of three hours. They’re energetic, driven, and deeply committed to improving themselves and learning, under the watchful guidance of the inimitable and entrepreneurial Ms. Joshi. Spending time with these intelligent youngsters was energizing for me. Thank you, Charuta.”
Rakesh leads a double life as a technologist and a filmmaker. As a technology leader, Rakesh spent most of his career over the past two decades at Akamai technologies, a cloud services company that serves 15-30% of the world wide web traffic. He recently quit Akamai to start his own sales consultancy service Dojo Labs. As a filmmaker, Rakesh has made several short documentary and narrative films while receiving acclaim at film festivals globally. Rakesh lives in New York City with his wife and son.
“Teaching kids how to make movies was one of the most memorable experiences in my life. With no prior experience, they were able to plan, shoot and edit a scene from 12 Angry Men. Their enthusiasm and curiosity was infectious, and I would do it again any day!”
Salil is the Founder & CEO Turing Tribe – A media platform for artificial intelligence and machine learning products, news stories, and events.
Previously, Salil worked at McKinsey & Co. advising Technology organizations on their go-to-market strategy and conducting due diligence for PE firms. Salil attended MIT for graduate school and Georgia Tech for undergrad.
“I loved the energy the students brought to the session. They were highly engaged and curious to learn and explore new topics. I was pleasantly surprised to see the level of detail the students wanted to go to during the session. For example, when discussing computer vision, a number of students wanted to understand the math that goes into creating a computer vision model.”
Senthil Muthiah is a Partner at Mckinsey and Company and has been at McKinsey for 13 years. At McKinsey, Senthil co-leads the Industrial Services tribe and focuses his client work on the performance transformations of service-based companies. Prior to joining McKinsey, Senthil held various consulting and business development roles focused on strategic growth and operational transformations
Senthil secured his MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and possesses a bachelor’s degree in engineering with a focus on Telecommunications
Shan is currently a third year General Surgery Resident at NYMC Metropolitan Hospital. He grew in New York and attended SUNY Binghamton as an undergraduate. He was in the class on 2016 at the New York Medical College
“Wonderful program for the children that I had the pleasure of participating in. The organization and professionalism that Charuta and Clara brought made this a truly positive and rewarding experience for me to teach these young students, would be happy to do this again in the future.”
Sriram is passionate about using analytics-driven insights to solve problems in consumer-facing tech companies. He has previously worked in financial sales and trading and early-stage venture capital investing. He is a second-year MBA student at Columbia Business School and is a B.Tech in Engineering from IIT Madras.
“FutureConnect was a great opportunity to meet bright kids who are excited and eager to learn. I came away from the experience feeling energized and enjoyed the chance to polish my public speaking skills.”
Venkat is currently a consultant surgeon at the New York Metropolitan Hospital Center. After attending medical school at the The Armed Forces Medical College in India, he trained in surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of U.K, and was a resident in surgery at the New York Medical College and Brooklyn Hospital Center.
“Thank you so much for the opportunity given to my Surgical Resident Dr.Huang and myself on the 9th of March 2019 at Hamilton Grange Middle School under your Future Connect Initiative.
It was a very memorable experience to watch school students with enormous potential and amazing ability to learn new skills in such a short period of time.
This experience opened my eyes to the significant contribution teachers make to the building blocks of our society by going out of their way, beyond their job descriptions and social obligations.
You made me realize that interaction with school children is a completely different ability and am so grateful to all the teachers that put in so much of time and effort to tailor their instruction to suit the individual needs of the students.
I was amazed to see how early initiation of their minds to ideas and opportunities can churn their curiosity into foreseeable achievers of our society.”
