Yale varsity to honour Nilekani with Leadership Award

By Arun Kumar, Washington, Nov 3: Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder and chairman of India's Unique Identification Database Authority, is set to become the first Indian to receive Yale university's prestigious Legend in Leadership Award.

The award of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute will be presented to Nilekani by varsity's president Richard C. Levin at a ceremony in New Delhi Nov 6, the New Haven based business school announced Tuesday.

The Yale CEO Leadership Summit will bring together over 100 world-renowned business leaders in New Delhi Nov 5-6 to discuss the theme of "Navigating the Global Oceans of Opportunity for Indian Business."

The universal ID card project under Nilekani, who co-founded IT bellwether Infosys in 1981 and served as its CEO from 2002 to 2007, is expected to help ensure that most of the billions of dollars India and other organisations spend on aid reach the people for whom it was intended.

In 2009, Time magazine placed Nilekani on the Time 100 list of the World's Most Influential People.

He is the inspiration for New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's book "The World Is Flat".

Nilekani's own book, "Imagining India," dissected a range of political, economic and social issues confronting the country.

In 2006, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of the highest civilian honours awarded by the government of India.

The Legend in Leadership Award was created 20 years ago to honour current and former CEOs who serve as living legends to inspire chief executives across industries, sectors, and nations.

Past winners of the award include: Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Robert Iger of The Walt Disney Company, Stephen Schwarzman of The Blackstone Group, Roger Enrico of PepsiCo, John Pepper of Proctor & Gamble and Don Keough of The Coca-Cola.

The Yale CEO Leadership Summit is an invitation-only event that is held each June and December in New York city by The Chief Executive Leadership Institute, part of the Yale School of Management. The Institute is the world 's first school for incumbent CEOs.

The New Delhi summit, The Chief Executive Leadership Institute's 60th programme and its first in India, is organised in association with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). The US-India Business Council is a strategic partner for the event.

Supporters of the event include: PepsiCo, UPS, HSBC India, Modi Enterprises, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. (ONGC), GAIL (India) Ltd, and the Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL).

--IANS