Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Yet another boost to Brand India

EMPOWERING EXERCISE: Ranjini Manian and Cherie Booth Blair brainstorming at Harvard University’s women’s leadership board recently.

CHENNAI: Brand India added another feather to its cap this month with the nomination of the first Indian to the women’s leadership board of America’s premier university, Harvard.

Ranjini Manian, Founder CEO of Global Adjustments and author of hot selling ‘Doing Business in India for Dummies,’ knows she will be drawn on for her expertise on the nation everyone in the West talks about as “the future”. But, she tells The Hindu, she hopes that the network she is now part of will help build a new generation of women leaders in India.

“This is a powerful group of women that can make quite a lot of difference to a country like India,” she says. Executives of companies such as Bodyshop, Gap, Merril Lynch, Goldman Sachs, rub shoulders with ambassadors, heads of state, governors of States, directors of non-governmental organisations and highflying doctors.

Successful lawyer and wife of former British Prime Minister, Cherie Booth Blair, President of Latvia Vaira Vike Frieberga, Governor of Arizona Janet Napolitana are among those with whom Ranjini is now brainstorming.

Ranjini has three goals. The first is to bring the annual Harvard study delegation to India in 2009. The second is to set up a network for women in India who want to do something different to learn from each other, as the head of Mrs. Blair’s new global taskforce in India. The third is to set up a public policy programme for women in India’s universities to match the ingenuity of “From Harvard Square to the Oval Office”.

These projects are not about working with women at the grassroots or microfinance. There are lots of people doing that already, she clarifies. They are about creating a domino effect of inspiring, educating and facilitating women entrepreneurs, who, in turn, will inspire others.

“We need Indra Nooyi, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Ambika Soni, Pratibha Patel,” she says, to meet counterparts from Harvard’s Women’s Leadership Board, contribute to India’s network and push for the education and involvement of India’s girls in politics.

She is already in the process of setting up a Web portal for Mrs. Blair. “In India, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. If we have websites that get people married, then having sites where women can talk to each other shouldn’t be a problem,” she says, talking about the importance of having reference checks, and the ability to move from chatting online to chatting face to face.

Quoting Mrs. Blair she says: “It’s lonely as a woman to do something alone, but it’s also empowering.”

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