Kaushal Chokshi
Chairman & Founder
Kaushal has been a serial entrepreneur for the last thirty years. He has a background in Electrical Engineering and Management. He has established ventures in the United States, Europe, and India across various sectors including manufacturing, construction, thermal insulation, Internet, and business services. His extensive international travel and ability to evaluate economic trends in Eastern and Western countries, has allowed him to participate as an early leader of globalization. Over 25 years back, he was one of the earliest adopters of virtual project management at a global level. Through new technology and innovative models, he has been able to elevate his businesses, their stakeholders, and personal life.
Kaushal has a passion for staying current with topics, trends, and organizations related to futurism, singularity, foreign affairs, think tanks, public policy, green initiatives, social enterprises, angel investment, Walk & Bike community projects, clean tech, food, travel, wine, the Internet, and living life.
Neal Gandhi
CEO & Founder
Neal has co-founded several businesses in his career. His first company; established when he was 21 years old, went on to become a pioneer in off-the-page direct selling and was eventually sold to a large retailer. In 1995, he co-founded an Internet professional services company, which grew to 200 fee earning consultants, and was subsequently sold to a Nasdaq listed company. In 2000, he co-founded and continues to hold a stake in Attenda, a managed IT services company which has subsequently grown to having around $100m in committed forward revenues. He exited day to day operations at Attenda in 2005 to concentrate on founding Quickstart Global in early 2006 and continues to enjoy the challenge of managing a highly distributed company with a diverse range stakeholders and cultures.
Neal reads voraciously, particularly enjoying anything related to macro-economics, new business thinking and biographies of business innovators. He also assists start ups in defining market beating strategies for success.
Advisory Board
Chris Disher
Mr. Disher is a retired Vice President and founding partner of Booz Allen Hamilton's Global Outsourcing Advisory Service. With over twenty-five years of consulting experience, Mr. Disher specializes in organization and technology strategies for step change improvement in business performance. He has led global client engagements that involve cost reduction, business operations and administrative performance improvement, and outsourcing.
Mr. Disher is a founding member of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals serving on the Standards Board and as Chairman of the Research Committee. He also serves as Officer in Charge for the Offshoring Research Initiative with Duke University. Mr. Disher is a frequent speaker on trends in outsourcing, offshoring, and IT effectiveness.
Allan Bertie
Allan is currently Managing Director at GCA Savvian a leading international M&A advisory firm with strong positions in TMT, healthcare and industrial sectors. Prior to joining GCA Savvian Allan worked with Dresdner Kleinwort as Managing Director of Global Banking. Prior to that he worked with Bridgewell, Schroders, DLJ and Credit Suisse in a variety of investment banking roles. His experience includes capital raising, strategic advice and mergers and acquisitions advice in a domestic and cross-border capacity.
Allan is formerly a Non-Executive Director at Attenda Limited, a Graduate of Glasgow University and a Chartered Accountant.
Dr. Richard Skyes
Richard is a veteran of the IT and outsourcing industry. His former roles have included being CIO of ICI and Chairman of Morgan Chambers, an outsourcing consultancy. He is currently Research Associate at CSC's Leading Edge Forum and Chairman of the Offshore and Outsourcing committee at Intellect, the UK trade industry for the Hi-tech industry.
John Hammit
Mr. Hammitt has over thirty five years of global executive experience in general management, strategic business development, information technology and consulting, with the most recent ten spent focused in the healthcare industry. During the last fifteen years he has also had extensive experience in finding and utilizing highly skilled technical resources throughout the world.
John retired from Johnson & Johnson in September 2007. Most recently he served as President eJNJ L.L.C. and concurrently as J&J's Vice President, Global Operations for Networking and Computing Services (NCS); both of those companies being subsidiaries of Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc.
Mr. Hammitt has over thirty five years of global executive experience in general management, strategic business development, information technology and consulting, with the most recent ten spent focused in the healthcare industry. During the last fifteen years he has also had extensive experience in finding and utilizing highly skilled technical resources throughout the world.
John retired from Johnson & Johnson in September 2007. Most recently he served as President eJNJ L.L.C. and concurrently as J&J's Vice President, Global Operations for Networking and Computing Services (NCS); both of those companies being subsidiaries of Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc.
eJNJ was Founded in April 2000 by a team of J&J leaders, including Mr. Hammitt, to focus on finding and implementing emerging information-based healthcare business opportunities. The objective of those new solutions was creating significant incremental value and accelerating long-term growth across J&J's 200+ operating companies. Before the formation of eJNJ, Mr. Hammitt was Global Vice President & Chief Information Officer for J&J's Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics Groups.
NCS Global Operations provided worldwide, regional, and local/premise information technology infrastructure - networks, computers, desktops, portable devices, telephones, etc. - for all of J&J's independent companies. That support was provided through more than 100 locations with over 2500 company associates, contractors and outsourced service partners.
Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson in 1997, Mr. Hammitt served over 18 years as the first corporate VP & CIO in three multi-billion dollar worldwide companies: United Technologies Corp. (1988-1991), The Pillsbury Co. (1983-1988) and Morton-Thiokol (1972-1983).
In 1992, John created a consulting and services business focused on assisting Fortune 500 companies generate greater value from investments in information systems and technology. That business was merged into Giga Information Group in 1995, where he subsequently served as a senior Vice President helping lead and transform that innovative research and consulting business from start-up into becoming a public company.
Throughout his career, Mr. Hammitt developed profitable growth-focused business strategies as well as implemented specific programs for ensuring information technology investments successfully contributed to enhanced market share and earnings growth. During his career he served on a number of state, county, metropolitan and university blue-ribbon advisory boards dealing with issues of public sector and educational information systems. He also represented J&J as its representative to the Information Management Committee of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
During 1989 & 1990, John was elected President of SIM International (Society for Information Management) the leading worldwide professional association for senior information systems executives with three thousand members throughout the world.
His undergraduate work was in Chemical Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology and he holds an M.B.A. in Marketing and Finance from the University of Chicago.
David O. Woods
David is CEO of Giant Partners and leads a team of internationally-known strategists and leadership experts, helping companies throughout the world develop growth strategies and increase their revenues as well as their leadership abilities. Prior to his role as a corporate strategist, David was the founder and CEO of EXIM Group, an organization founded to assist companies in the development of global strategies.
Previous to founding EXIM Group, David was the CEO of Ditch Witch. David has also served in leadership positions in numerous associations and organizations, including his role as Chairman of the Association Equipment Manufacturers, as President of Leadership Oklahoma, board member of various companies and advisor to numerous CEOs.
Rob Wirszycz
Rob works as a Chairman, director and business advisor for software, services, communications, media, and online ventures. He is a Partner at Nortons, a professional services firm, non-exec chairman of Ultraknowledge and Reflective, a non-exec director with Netstore plc, Bluesource, CompleteTV, Agena, and QND and advises companies such as Accenture, Actix, Jacobs Rimell, Colt, BT, Skinkers, Microsoft, and Cisco.
In the past, Rob has worked as the Marketing & Strategy Director and Head of Global Alliances at EDS, Director General of CSSA (now Intellect), the UK IT Industry Trade Association, CEO of two 'dot com' online information ventures, Executive Vice President for InterX, an enterprise software company, Marketing Director for Callhaven, a fast- growing UK based Apple, Sun and Oracle reseller, copywriter and creative director for major marketing agencies and electronics firms in Japan, and a Kindergarten teacher while on voluntary service in Kenya.
Rob has an MBA and is a Chartered IT Professional. He lectures on strategic marketing for entrepreneurs at Cass Business School in the City of London. He is a member of the CBI E-Business Council, the Association of Alliance Managers, the Parliamentary IT Committee, the Real Time Club, the Enterprise Privacy Group, the Marketing Society, the British Computer Society and is a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.
Atul Vashistha
Atul is brings almost two decades of global business expertise to neoIT and NEOGROUP. He co-founded neoIT in 1999 with the mission of helping enterprises grow their business and improve operations by capitalizing on services globalization. This passion for globalization of services and a unique business model has helped neoIT establish itself as the leader in the services globalization advisory and management arena.
