The Advisory Board comprises leaders from top-notch academic institutions and media organisations from around the world. As its apex body, the Board provides overall guidance and direction to the 9.9 SoC. It advises the leadership team on student selection, curriculum design and delivery, and faculty recruitment, and sets demanding world-class quality benchmarks for all activities. Members of the Board bring their diverse skills and experiences to bear on the school not only in providing their valuable inputs, but also as faculty members. 9.9 SoC students will have the unique privilege of being taught by the Board members during the course of their programme in Applied Journalism.

Members of the Board

Sanjeev Chatterjee
An award-winning documentary film-maker, Prof. Chatterjee is Vice Dean, School of Communication   Executive Director, Knight Center for International Media at the University of Miami, Florida, USA. He takes classes on studio and field production, media and society, writing and documentary production at the University. He received an Excellence in Teaching Award in 2002 and has been nominated two more times since. In 2007, Prof. Chatterjee was honoured with the Images and Voices of Hope World Summit Award of Appreciation for his documentary work. He was on the faculty of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change in 2008. He has a master's degree in English Literature from Delhi University and a M.F.A. in Television Production from Brooklyn College.

Clive Crook
Mr. Crook is one of the most respected journalists in the world. He is a senior editor of The Atlantic Monthly, a columnist for National Journal and a commentator for the Financial Times. Prior to this, he spent 20 years with The Economist. He was its deputy editor for 11 years, supervising the magazine’s interests in business, politics and international relations. He was also its chief economics commentator, writing on global trade, development and the economic role of government. A graduate of Oxford University and the London School of Economics, Mr. Crook has served as a consultant to the World Bank, been the chief editor of its annual World Development Reports and worked as an official in the British Treasury. He lives in Washington, DC.

Don Durfee
Mr. Durfee is the Hong Kong Bureau Chief of Thomson Reuters. He was till recently Editor-in-Chief of CFO Asia and CFO China, two specialist magazines that were published by The Economist Group. He has written award-winning features on diverse topics, ranging from executive compensation to the financial problems confronting American cities. Mr. Durfee has also served as the Research Editor of CFO USA and a senior editor with the Economist Intelligence Unit in New York. Mr. Durfee holds a master’s degree from Columbia University and BA from Tufts University. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, which he learned at Stanford University, and has a Bachelors in Music (Classical Guitar) from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Indrajit Gupta
Mr. Gupta is the Editor of the Indian edition of Forbes, an internationally acclaimed newsmagazine. Having worked with some of the top publications in India, he has built a formidable reputation as a business journalist. In a career spanning more than two decades, he has served as Features Editor of Business Standard, Deputy Editor of Businessworld, National Business Editor of Times of India, and most recently, as the Resident Editor of the Mumbai edition of The Economic Times. He is a recipient of the 'Vocational Excellence Award, 2007' for outstanding contribution to the Business Print Medium and the British Chevening Fellowship for Print Journalists, awarded by the British Foreign Office, in 1999.

Vikas Gupta
Mr. Gupta is one of India’s most senior and highly-regarded marketing professionals. He brings over 22 years of wisdom with an enviable pedigree of some of the world’s leading marketing companies – Unilever, Procter   Gamble, and The Coca-Cola Company. Most recently, he ran sales and marketing for the ABP Group, a media conglomerate. Mr. Gupta is a co-founder of 9.9 Mediaworx, and oversees marketing across all 9.9 businesses and leads 9.9 Print.

Radha Hegde
Dr. Hegde is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University (NYU). A PhD in communication from the Ohio State University, Prof. Hegde serves on the editorial board of several major journals in the field of media and cultural studies. She is a recipient of the Steinhardt Teaching Excellence award, and teaches courses on gender, globalization and migration at NYU. She also offers courses on transnational cultures and media in NYU London. She has worked extensively on curricular issues in media studies and has served (2005-09) as the Director of the Communication Studies Program at NYU.

Tony Joseph
Mr. Joseph is the CEO of Mindworks Global Media Services, a leading provider of editorial services to international media companies. One of India’s most respected editors, he has spent 25 years in the media industry. He was the Editor of Businessworld for eight years, during which he repositioned the publication, turned it into a weekly and also made it the largest-selling business magazine in the country. He was also the Associate Editor of Business Standard, the highly-respected financial daily, and Features Editor of The Economic Times, India’s largest-selling business newspaper.

Vinay Kamat
Mr. Kamat is the Editor of the Bangalore edition of DNA, a daily newspaper. He brings with him 23 years of experience in Indian newspapers, magazines and the internet. He has also served as the Editor of Business Times, the business supplement of The Times of India, India's largest English daily, and the Editor of indiatimes.com, a portal by the same media group. He was also the Associate Editor of Business Today, India's leading business magazine. He is a post-graduate in mass communications from Bangalore University.

Sanjoy Narayan
Mr Narayan brings more than two decades of editorial experience at some of the best newspapers and magazines in India. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Hindustan Times, one of the two top dailies in Delhi, where he has, within a year of joining, led a major attempt to relaunch and reposition the newspaper, including a new design and editorial content strategy. Prior to this, he spent 10 years as the Editor of Business Today, a business magazine, turning around the publication and driving its journey to the top. Since 1982, when he began his career as a print journalist, Mr Narayan has worked as a writer, reporter and editor at BusinessWorld, The Economic Times and The Telegraph. He is credited with the launch of several publications, including the pioneering Brand Equity for The Economic Times in the early 1990s; and the launch of the Indian editions of two new magazines – Men's Health and Golf Digest. He has also served as the Chief Operating Officer of India Today Group Digital, a multimedia initiative by one of the top media conglomerates in the country. An economics graduate from the University of Calcutta, he writes a weekly column on contemporary music, a subject is he passionate.

Pramath Raj Sinha
Dr. Sinha, Dean of the 9.9 SoC, is also the Managing Director and co-founder of 9.9 Mediaworx, an up and coming special interest, diversified media company. He spent nearly 13 years with McKinsey and Company, the international management consulting firm, where he consulted for some of the world’s leading media companies. He also helped set up and served as the Founding Dean of the globally top-ranked Indian School of Business (ISB). Prior to founding 9.9 Media, he led the ABP Group, one of India’s leading and most diversified media conglomerates. Dr. Sinha holds a Btech from IIT Kanpur and a MSE and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

Surya Mantha
Mr. Mantha is the CEO of Web 18, the internet and mobile arm of Network18. He has 18 years of experience in business management and consulting across a range of business and consumer software, hardware and service companies. Prior to this, he has worked with Sify India; RealNetworks – Seattle, PRTM (a leading management consulting firm); and Xerox Corp in the US. Mr. Mantha holds a BTech from the prestigious IIT Kanpur and a PhD from the University of Utah, both in computer science. He is also an MBA from University of Rochester, New York.

Graham Watts
Mr. Watts brings on board more than two decades of journalism and training experience. He spent 21 years at the Financial Times in London, mostly on the world news desk, and most recently, as editor of the FT Magazine. He had a parallel career as a journalism trainer and has taught in more than 20 countries. He has also run seminars for British academics on writing for the media, and teaches writing to MBA and economics PhD students in Helsinki, Finland. He has written chapters for journalism training manuals, including “Covering Globalization”, edited by Anya Schiffrin, with whom he wrote a book on business journalism for the Chinese market. Mr. Watts studied journalism and political philosophy at Rhodes University in South Africa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism school in the USA, where he started his training career as a graduate assistant. He later lectured in journalism at Rhodes before leaving academia to return to full-time journalism in Johannesburg and then London. A freelance editor and consultant based in Bangkok, he now edits articles and books when he's not teaching.