Theme: The Road Less Travelled

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference“
- Robert Frost, The Road not Taken

"What if" - That is the question that is bothering most of us.
What if I chose to be different?
What if I chased my passion instead of going with the tide?

So we present you this edition of TEDxXLRI themed the The Road Less Travelled,
featuring speakers who have travelled along the load less travelled,
sometimes they have created their own paths
where none existed and have come out successful.
Be who you want to be rather than who you are made to be!!

XLRI -Xavier School of Management, Circuit House Area, Sonari
Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, 831001
India

Anuj Gosalia

Anuj is the founder & curator of the popular mobile web publishing platform Terribly Tiny Tales, which brings together a diverse pool of fantastic writers to create one tweet-sized story. Every day, these eclectic writers publish a beautiful story written in and under 140 characters and you'd be surprised to read some of the gems they weave.

Dr. Jyotsana Jagannathan

An empanelled artist with the ICCR, and a graded artist of the Doordarshan, Jyotsna has been awarded the titles of ‘Natya Kala Vipanchee’, ‘Yuva Kala Bharathi’, Vasanthalakshmi and Narasimhachari Award from the Narada Gana Sabha and ‘Singar Mani’ in 2008 for her talent in dancing. She is also the recipient of the Dr MGR Award from the Madras Music Academy in 2006 and the Rohini Krishnan Memorial Award from Sri Krishna Gana Sabha in 2002, for her first solo performance.

Franz Gastler

Franz Gastler is the founder of Yuwa, a Jharkhand-based NGO using girls' football to promote health, education, and improved livelihoods. Franz grew up in Edina, Minnesota, and has been living in India since. Before co-founding Yuwa, his various jobs included ski & snowboard instructing, interning at the Ministry of Finance in Colombia, and working as a consultant at the Confederation of Indian Industry and in with a local NGO in Jharkhand. He had first come to Jharkhand four years back to teach in villages and then founded Yuwa in 2009, that is now one of the largest girls' football program in India with 250 players (mostly girls), that participate and win in various international football competitions, recently secured a bronze medal at Gasteiz Cup held in Spain in July.

Gopal Khanna

Gopal Khanna served in the administration of President George W. Bush from June 2002 to August 2005, where he held several senior policy positions including CIO and CFO of the Peace Corps and CFO of the EOP/Office of Administration and then on 15th August 2005, he was appointed Minnesota's first Chief information officer (CIO). He is also a Recipient of Federal 100 Award for impact and innovation in a government agency in 2009.

Piyush Mishra

Piyush Mishra is an Indian film and theater actor, music director, lyricist, singer, scriptwriter. Mishra grew up in Gwalior, and went to graduate from National School of Drama, Delhi in 1986. Thereafter, he started his career in Hindi theater in Delhi. He is acclaimed for his acting in films such as 'Maqbool', 'Gulaal', and 'Gangs of Wasseypur' and noted for his songs 'Arre Ruk Ja Re Bandeh', 'Aarambh Hai Prachand', 'Ik Bagal' and 'Husna'. PRAKASH IYER

Prakash Iyer

Prakash Iyer is a best-selling author, a motivational speaker and a leadership coach. He was until recently the Managing Director of Kimberly-Clark Lever and was earlier the Managing Director and CEO of Infomedia India Limited. Prior to that, Prakash was Executive Director at PepsiCo. An IIM-A Alumnus, he has authored 2 national bestsellers – 'The Habit of Winning' and 'The Secret of Leadership'. It was shortlisted for The Economist Crossword Popular Book Award, and has been translated into seven languages. Passionate about cricket and people, Prakash speaks and writes extensively on motivation, leadership, teamwork and winning.

Sandhya .

Sandhya is a member of Kranti, a revolution. Kranti educates and empowers trafficked girls, the daughters of sex workers, and otherwise socially marginalized girls to become agents of social change within their communities. By providing them with a healing home, formal and extracurricular education, leadership and job training, as well as the skills and confidence to solve social problems, Kranti enables its members to emerge as leaders and economic assets, redefining the value of women in Indian society and globally.

Sunil Khandbahale

Sunil has built a technology enabled multilingual translation platform for 23 languages in 16 domains with extensive vocabulary of 10 million words/phrases, which is being used by 120 million users in 150 countries. His 14 years of contribution resulted in safeguarding 5 million trees, preservation of languages extinction & breaking language divide. From not-knowing-dictionary to publicly being titled as Dictionary-Man, WordSmith & Linguistic-Enable, he has been recognized as Green-Man, Social Entrepreneur, Inclusive Innovator & Youth-Icon.