Baroness Verma was appointed as the spokesperson for the Department for International Development in the House of Lords on 20 May 2010. She is also the Lords Spokesperson for the Cabinet Office and for Women and Equalities, as well as being a Government Whip. Baroness Verma became a Conservative Life Peer on 22 June 2006, as the Baroness of Leicester in the County of Leicestershire. She was an Opposition Whip in the Lords from 2006 until 2010, and during that time, was Opposition Spokesperson for various departments, including Health, Education, Children, Schools and Families, and Universities and Skills. Baroness Verma is particularly interested in equalities, women's issues and international development and leads on all DFID business in the House of Lords. Baroness Verma has received the following awards:

• Distinguished Fellowship of the Institute of Directors, India
• Presidents Award from the Government of India – Pravasi Bhartiya Samman

Surinder Arora

Nihal Arthanayake

Nihal Arthanayake is an award winning BBC Radio 1 and BBC Asian Network DJ and broadcaster. Since joining BBC Radio 1 in October 2002 he has championed Asian music in the mainstream on one of the most respected music stations in the world, as well as having been given the opportunity to present daytime shows across the schedule. In that time he has also DJ'd extensively around the UK and the world at such globally renowned festivals as WOMAD in Singapore, and Glastonbury. As well as his TV and Radio work he is also a Trustee of the British Council, an Ambassador of The British Asian Trust,  a Fellow of The British American Project, and a Governor of the South Bank. He sits on the steering committee of the South Bank's South Asian Arts festival Alchemy and runs his own club night called Bombay Bronx. In 2011 Nihal presented the UK Asian Music Awards which was shown on B4U. He is a married father of two young children and a proud Tottenham Hotspur supporter. 'Nihal' *WINNER* Best Speech Programme 2010 Sony Radio Academy Awards.

Mihir Bose

Mihir Bose is an award-winning journalist and author. He writes for the London Evening Standard and the Sunday Times and broadcasts on radio and television across sport, and social and historical issues. His “Big Interview” appears in the London Evening Standard each Tuesday and he writes a weekly football blog for insideworldfootball.biz. His current book projects include one on the power of modern sport. Until recently he was the BBC’s first Sports Editor where his job involved investigating and analysing sports stories. His major scoops included revealing the cost of the Olympics, the Premier League plans for the 39th game and Joe Calzaghe’s decision to retire. He covered all BBC outlets including the flagship Ten O’clock News, the Today programme. Furthermore, he has written for nearly all the major UK newspapers. He was the chief sports news correspondent for the Daily Telegraph for 12 years where he created an innovative weekly column, Inside Sport, and edited the Inside Track column of the Sunday Times and several business publications. He has presented programmes for radio and television, and written 22 books including the first history of Bollywood. He has won several awards: business columnist of the year, the sports news reporter of the year, the sports story of the year and the Silver Jubilee Literary award for his History of Indian Cricket. Indeed his book on the History of Indian Cricket was the first Indian book to have won The English Society’s Literary Award. He was consulted by government ministers in the run-up to London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games and served on the Budd Committee, which provided the basis for the new UK gambling legislation. He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales.

Phillip Bernie

Head of BBC Sport TV since 2009. Previously led various parts of BBC Sport output from 2005. Prior to that, Philip worked for 17 years as a programme editor, taking in Match of the Day, Grandstand , Sports Personality of the Year, Football Focus, Wimbledon, 6 Nations Rugby. Founding editor of Match of the Day 2 and also on the BBC1 show On Side. Editor on 6 Olympic Games, 4 World Cups and Euro 1996. Philip joined BBC as graduate trainee, and worked in Radio Sport and then Breakfast News before moving to TV sport in the late 80s.

Sir David Brewer

Sir David was appointed a UK Business Ambassador by the Prime Minister in November 2010. He is Chairman of the China-Britain Business Council and President of the EU-China Business Association. Sir David chairs the CBBC/CityUK Financial Services Committee and is a Member of UKTI’s Overseas Promotion Committee (China Champion) and the China and Asia Task Forces. He is a Holder of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government Magnolia Gold Award. He is also a Non-Executive Director of LIFFE Administration and Management, Tullett Prebon SITICO (China) Ltd and the National Bank of Kuwait (International) PLC. Sir David is Advisor on China for IPS. Sir David’s career has been in insurance broking, with Sedgwick and Marsh. For Sedgwick he opened their offices in Japan in 1976, in China in 1981 and in India in 1986. He was Lord Mayor of the City of London for the year 2005 – 2006 and was appointed Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London in 2008.

Tudor Brown

Tudor Brown became President of ARM in July 2008 with responsibility for developing high-level relationships with industry partners and governmental agencies and for regional development. He was appointed to the Board of ARM Holdings plc as Chief Operating Officer in October 2001. In this role he was responsible for ARM’s main operating divisions as well as US and Indian operations. Before that, he was Executive Vice President, Global Development, responsible for the development of ARM’s regional offices, in particular in Japan and the AsiaPac region. Brown is one of the founding members of ARM. Trained as an electrical engineer, his early career was in high speed mixed signal electronics designing industrial control systems. He joined ARM from Acorn where he was Principal Engineer, working exclusively on the ARM research and development program from1984. He was appointed ARM’s Engineering Director in 1992 and Chief Technical Officer in 1997. As CTO, he was responsible for overseeing development and delivery of ARM’s processor architecture and supporting software. During this period he was heavily involved in the early licensing of ARM technology in many countries, especially in AsiaPac.

Kamel Hothi

Kamel Hothi has over 32 years banking experience and has had a varied career in all sectors. She is recognised for developing the Asian Strategy across Lloyds Group. Her remits has included product development, cultural training, strategy and marketing resulting in some very high profile sponsorships such as The Asian Jewel Awards, The Asian Women of Achievement Awards and the (Global) Asian Awards. Having faced her own glass ceilings over the last 3 decades Kamel is passionate about having a level playing field for all around her and has helped found the bank’s Ethnic Minority Network and the mentoring programme. Her passion to support diversity has resulted in Kamel supporting the Foreign and Commonwealth Office report on community cohesion as well as chairing initiatives such as the Government’s Procurement Working Group, Producing a report advising Ministers on how they can use procurement to leverage race equality and help Small Minority Ethnic businesses grow. Kamel led a delegation to India during Gordon Browns visit in 2008 and acts as an ambassador for the group in the UK where she has received several awards from various sectors in recognition of her support for Diversity and community cohesion.

Lorraine Heggessey

Lorraine Heggessey is a senior television executive with a vast range of experience across both broadcasting and production. She has been involved in many of the UK’s biggest television hits in her roles as Controller of BBC 1 and CEO of talkbackThames. Lorraine was the first female Controller of BBC ONE, a position she took up in October 2000. She oversaw the channel’s re-branding and a comprehensive shake-up of its schedule, moving the news from 9pm. Lorraine became the first woman CEO of a major independent production company when she joined talkbackThames in May 2005, delivering around 600 hours of programming a year, for all major TV channels. Lorraine more than trebled the company’s entertainment output, launching hits like Britain’s Got Talent and Take Me Out for ITV 1 and Hole in the Wall for BBC 1, and grew the business through strategic partnerships with some of the UK’s leading talent including Trevor Eve, Rob Brydon and Graham Linehan (creator of Father Ted and The IT Crowd). After five years, she left talkbackThames and is currently working as a media consultant while she plans her next move. Lorraine is a member of Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Corporate Board and is a former Governor of Notting Hill & Ealing High School. She has two daughters who are both at university. Her husband is a musician and composer. Her hobbies include skiing, hiking and power plate. She is also a keen theatre and cinema-goer. Her latest challenges are to master front crawl and adapt to life as an ‘empty nester’.

Rt. Hon. Patricia Hewitt

Rt. Hon. Patricia Hewitt, is the chair of the UK India Business Council (UKIBC), the membership led organization, backed by UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), that promotes bilateral trade between the UK and India. Ms. Hewitt has a long and distinguished experience in Parliament and Government, not least as the longest serving Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in the last fifty years. In that role, she gave top priority to promoting closer business links between the UK and India. Ms Hewitt also served as Cabinet Minister for Women (2001 - 2005) and Secretary of State for Health (2005 - 2007). In 2008, Ms Hewitt joined the Board of BT Group plc, where she is now senior independent director, chairing the remuneration committee and the pensions review committee. She is also a non-executive director of Euro Tunnel Group and a member of the Barclays Asia Pacific Advisory Committee. In 2010, Ms Hewitt stood down as MP for Leicester West, having first been elected in 1997, but continues to have close family and personal ties with the city and its large British Asian community. Patricia's husband, William Birtles, is senior judge at the Mayor's and City of London Court. They have a son and daughter. In her spare time, Patricia enjoys reading, theatre, music and gardening - and learning to speak Hindi!

Stephen King

Stephen King is HSBC’s Group Chief Economist and the Bank’s Global Head of Economics and Asset Allocation research. He is currently the top-rated global economist in the annual Extel survey. In 2012, Stephen became a member of the Financial Times “A List”. He also writes regularly for the main comment pages in The Times. Stephen's first book, Losing Control, was published by Yale University Press in 2010. Widely praised, the book examines the impact of the emerging nations on western economic prosperity. Stephen is a member of the UK Government’s Asia Task Force. Stephen’s career began at H.M.Treasury, where he was an economic adviser within the civil service. Stephen studied at New College, Oxford.

Anand Mahindra

Anand G. Mahindra, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. graduated with Honours from Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1977. In 1981 he secured an MBA degree from the Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts. He returned to India that year and joined Mahindra Ugine Steel Company Ltd (MUSCO), the country’s foremost producer of specialty steels, as Executive Assistant to the Finance Director. In 1989 he was appointed President and Deputy Managing Director of the company. During his stint at MUSCO, he initiated the Mahindra Group’s diversification into the new business areas of real estate development and hospitality management. In the summer of 1991, he was appointed Deputy Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., the country’s dominant producer of off-road vehicles and agricultural tractors. He initiated a comprehensive change programme in Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. to make the company an efficient and aggressive competitor in the new liberalized economic environment in India. In April 1997, he was appointed Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, and in January 2003 given the additional responsibility of Vice Chairman. Today, the Mahindra Group is a US $ 12.5 billion organization, and one of India’s top 10 industrial houses. Mahindra has evolved into a socially and environmentally responsible global federation of companies with a leading presence in each sector in which it is present. A regular at the World Economic Forum’s annual meetings, and its co-chair in 2009, he was names by Fortune magazine as one of the top 25 most powerful business people in Asia for 2011. Anand Mahindra was also the recipient of the ‘Business Leader of the Year’ award at the Asian Awards 2011.

Professor Peter Nolan

Peter Nolan has researched, written and taught on a wide range of issues in economic development, globalisation and the transition of former planned economies. He has researched on comparative development in China and India; on Chinese agriculture; system change in China and the former USSR; poverty, famine, inequality and migration; restructuring large global firms in the epoch of the Global Business Revolution; the transformation of large Chinese firms since the 1980s; and the evolution of China’s system of political economy; the inter-action between Chinese and the global firms in the epoch of the Global Business Revolution; and the contradictory character of capitalist globalisation. Peter Nolan holds the Chong Hua Chair in Chinese Development, University of Cambridge, and is Director of the University’s Centre of Development Studies. He is the Director of the Chinese Executive Leadership Programme (CELP), which each year brings CEOs from China’s largest firms to the University of Cambridge for a three-week training programme, taught by a combination of academics and the leaders of international firms. He has written numerous books, including: The Political Economy of Collective Farms (1987);China’s Rise, Russia’s Fall (1995); China and the global economy (2001); China and the global business revolution (2001); Transforming China (2004); China at the Crossroads (2004); Global Business Revolution and the Cascade Effect: Systems Integration in the Aerospace, Beverage and Retail Industries (2007); Integrating China (2007); Capitalism and Freedom: The Contradictory Character of Globalisation (2007); Crossroads (2009); and Is China Buying the World? (2012). Peter Nolan has spoken at the Chinese Government’s annual China Development Forum since its inception in 2000. He has testified at the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission of the US Congress and lectured to the Board of the US-China Business Council. He is a member of the UK Government’s Asia Task Force and the China Council of the World Economic Forum. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Copenhagen Business School. In 2009 he was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) ‘for services supporting British business in China and China’s integration into the global economy’.

Ratheesh Yoganathan

Yoganathan Ratheesan (Ratheesh) has been CEO of Lebara Group since the company’s inception in 2001.  Ratheesan founded the company with partners Baskaran Kandiah and Leon Rasiah with the goal of providing high quality, low cost international mobile services to enable migrant communities to connect with families and friends back home.  Since 2001 Lebara has become the leader in its space with revenues in excess of €371 million (2009) and a presence in 10 countries across the world. Ratheesh holds a BSC in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Kingston.

Russell Peters

Born in Toronto, Russell Peters is a global comedy rock-star and Internet sensation. His Youtube clips have been viewed over 75 million times and he has performed to sold-out crowds from Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, to New York’s Madison Square Garden, to the Sydney Opera House to London’s O2 Arena where he established a new attendance record. Over the course of his twenty-plus-year career, he has headlined comedy festivals throughout North America and has performed old-out arena tours worldwide. Peters has appeared on Showtime, Comedy Central, HBO, the CBC, BBC, CTV, CNN, TBS, CBS, ABC and NBC. Peters DVD releases, Outsourced and Red, White and Brown have sold in excess of 300,000 units. His latest release, The Green Card Tour entered the DVD sales charts at number four across Canada and will be broadcast on Showtime across the United States and on CTV / The Comedy Network in Canada. In 2009 and 2010 he was listed on the Forbes list of top earning comedians in the United States along with Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld. Peters’ first book, Call Me Russell was a number one bestseller. Peters recently appeared in the Jake Gyllenhaal action thriller, Source Code and his new movie, Breakaway will be in theatres this September. In October he'll be inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. Russell Peters was also the recipient of the ‘Outstanding Achievement in the Arts’ award at the Asian Awards 2011. .

Rishi Rich

Rishi Rich. Rishi signed his first album at the age of fifteen (20 years ago). He went on to co-produce ten Asian albums before working on his first solo album. It debuted at No.1 in the Asian charts in October 2002 with the timeless single ‘Nahin Jeena’. This showcased Rishi’s innovative style of fusing RnB, Ragga and Bhangra and propelled Rishi’s trademark beats into the mainstream. He has been able to appeal to a wider audience through remixes with international artists such as; Craig David, Mary J Blige, Ricky Martin, Westlife, Estelle, Liberty X, Mis-teeq, an Ali G soundtrack, Britney Spears and Madonna. Rishi went onto launch the successful careers of Juggy D and Jay Sean. 3 of their songs reached the top 10 in the official UK Singles Chart which included ground-breaking TV performances on the likes of Top of the Pops and CD:UK. Rishi’s second album ‘The Project’ included the single Push It Up (Aaja Kuriye), which peaked at No.1 on the BBC Asian Network Chart and the Club Asia Essential 20 Chart. Rishi was awarded ‘Best Producer’ and ‘Best Single’ at the UK Asian Music Awards (AMAs) in 2004. In 2007 Rishi launched his own namesake production company, Rishi Rish Productions. Rishi’s search for new talent led him to H-Dhami. In 2009, Rishi received the ‘Award For Excellence’ at the Asian Woman magazine awards. Rishi was also awarded ‘Best Producer’ at the UK AMA's and at the same time was honored with the ‘Commitment To The Scene’ accolade for his dedication and positive contribution to the Asian music industry. In 2012 Rich Productions works with H Dhami, JuggyD, Veronica, new artists - Abbas Hassan, Kiran Dhania and Romy Shay. He recently released international no.1 singles for Pritharpal featuring Hard Kaur and also for Miss Pooja. Rishi produced Goldkartz 's Ha Karde which won Best Dance Song of the Year at VIMA Awards this year in Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei. Rishi is putting the finishing touches his latest album and working with a whole host of UK and international artists, as well as working on some film and theatre projects.

Amit Singhal

Amit Singhal is the man behind Google search. He is a Google Fellow, which according to The Telegraph is "the equivalent of Jedi in Google terms," and currently oversees the entire search team, the team responsible for Google's search algorithms. If you've ever used Google search, you've benefited from Amit's work. In 2001, he wrote the original algorithm that lay the foundation for the Google search you probably use as part of your everyday life today. A scientist at heart, Amit has devoted his life to the science of search. He holds a Ph.D. in search, and has co-authored more than 30 scientific papers and numerous patents. Amit's contributions have been widely recognized by the technology industry: Fortune magazine named Amit "one of the smartest people in tech." India Abroad magazine named him one of the top 50 most influential Indian Americans. In his book "In The Plex", author Steven Levy calls Amit "among the best catches of all [for Google]". Amit Singhal was also the recipient of the ‘Outstanding Achievement in Science & Technology’ award at the Asian Awards 2011.