Keynote Speaker

Hitendra Wadhwa is the author of “Inner Mastery, Outer Impact: How Your Five Core Energies Hold the Key to Success”. His mission is to discover, codify and teach the laws of success in life and leadership. With an MBA and PhD from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a lifelong study of the world’s mystic traditions, Wadhwa brings a mathematician’s rigor and a truth-seeker’s spirit to some of today’s most vexing questions about authenticity, success, leadership, and human potential.

As Professor at Columbia Business School and Founder of the Mentora Institute, Hitendra has coached dozens of Fortune 100 C-suite executives and taught more than ten thousand MBAs, executives, doctors, lawyers, social activists and educators. His class on Personal Leadership & Success is one of the most popular at Columbia Business School, for which he has won the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

Hitendra’s work has been covered by leading media including Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN and more. Hitendra’s lessons, says the BBC World Service, “are about how to become a master of yourself before trying to be a master of the universe.” Psychology Today states, “The award-winning professor promises not how to make a living, but how to live.” In his latest article, a cover feature in Harvard Business Review, he states, “people have an innate capacity for exemplary leadership far beyond what many realize”; this comes when we “tap into virtues and energies already present in our core”.

Wadhwa’s Mentora Institute offers a scientific path to pursuing material and spiritual success in life, accelerating performance at work, and building exemplary leaders and cultures. His clients include Accenture, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Ericsson, Kraft Heinz, Lululemon, Morgan Stanley, New York Times, SAP, the Tata Group and United Health Group. His nonprofit Mentora Foundation is developing a fellowship of young changemakers who are committed to strengthening the moral, mental and social fibers in their families, organizations, communities, and nations, starting with their own selves.

Previously, Wadhwa was a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company and the CEO/founder of a Silicon Valley start-up, Paramark, which was twice recognized as a Top-100 Internet technology company by Technologic Partners/Venture Wire.