Poonam Ahluwalia
President, Youth Employment Summit (YES) Inc., USA.

Poonam Ahluwalia is recognized as a global activist for youth employment and entrepreneurship. As President and Founder of YES, she has worked tirelessly for the past twelve years to successfully bring youth employment to the global agenda. Under her leadership, the work of YES has mobilized stakeholders in over 120 counties around the world to work toward finding innovative ways to promote youth entrepreneurship and employment – this is her contribution towards ending hunger and poverty.

Since founding YES in 1998, Ahluwalia’s has served as the mentor of over 55 YES Country Networks around the world, and organized five Global Summits, 5 Regional Summits and countless in-country forums. Through her innovative, low-touch, high impact approach to development there have been over 400 projects initiated and implemented by young people throughout the world. This year (2012) marks the final year of the YES Campaign, and Ahluwalia is passionately focused on building two global programs that educate and empower young people to be entrepreneurial and live the life of their dreams. Her most important contribution may become the innovative architecture of YouthTrade, a new social movement aimed at providing markets for goods and services of young entrepreneurs under the age of 35.

Ahluwalia is recognized as a catalyst leader both here in the U.S. and aboard. Some of her recent accomplishments include being named as one of the fifty most influential people in New England by India New England. She currently serves on the World Economic Forum’s Council on Youth Unemployment and was recognized as a Woman Creating History at the Women’s International Networking (WIN) Conference held in Rome, Italy in October 2011. Ahluwalia holds two Masters Degrees, one in Mass Communications from Boston University, and the second in Political Science from India.  

Chris Dykstra
Business Development Advisor to YouthTrade USA

Chris Dykstra is a serial technology and media entrepreneur, community leader, and artist. Chris is currently working with the YouthTrade USA team to develop a strategic plan to develop the YouthTrade Innovation Studio into a co-working space for young entrepreneurs.

Chris is a founding partner in Warecorp, a seventy-person technology strategy, software engineering, and consulting company with development centers in the former Soviet Union; CEO and Founder of Zanby, an Emerging Enterprise 2.0 Community Management Platform; and, Chairman and Co-Founder of The UpTake, an online news gathering and broadcasting organization. In October 2010, he founded one of the first U.S. Benefit Corporations in the world, Global Contribution, to explore how to create communities of shared prosperity through collaborative consumption and shared infrastructure. Dykstra has spent the last fifteen years leading international software and web teams, starting companies, and maturing as human being and an impact entrepreneur. Follow Chris on twitter @duckstrap and more about his company The Global Contribution at http://globalcontributioncorp.com and @networkpowered. 

Derrick Egbert
Business Development Advisor to YouthTrade USA

Derrick has joined YES to manage the Mali Youth Enterprise Generator, he has worked in the business world since 1980. During that time he became vice- president of new business development and account management of a New England based advertising agency, Webb & Co., which catered to the mail order catalog industry. He worked closely with catalog owners and general managers; some clients were start-ups, others on-going concerns, and still others represented a new, direct channel for the client. This work gave him an integrated understanding of how the front end (sales and marketing) and backend (fulfillment of the promise) of businesses must work together to create loyal customers.

In 1995 he left the catalog agency to form his own marketing consultancy, Egbert & Associates, which provided marketing services to the catalog industry. In 1999 he joined an internet start-up, Marketplace Technologies, where as VP Sales where he developed partnerships with 250 specialized M&A firms across the US. In 2003 he left Marketplace Technologies and started his own management consulting firm, New Perspectives Consulting.

Today New Perspectives Consulting starts and runs CEO Roundtables in the B2C and B2B catalog/multi-channel marketing industries, facilitates executive retreats for management teams, usually in this these industries, but has done similar work in other industries, and provides executive coaching.

In 2007 New Perspectives Consulting branched out into the leadership development industry. It has successfully implemented leadership programs for clients in the catalog and accounting industries. New Perspectives has developed both the design of these programs and created management workshops which he both led, but created so that internal facilitators can lead them as well.

From 1984 to 1994 Derrick taught in the Bentley College Continuing Education Direct Marketing Program. He taught The Fundamentals of Marketing for Non-Profits at Antioch Graduate School for two years during this time.

Prior to entering the business world Derrick started and ran Acorn Gardening and Landscaping and taught at the high school level, including a private prep school, a drug rehab half-way house, and an “alternative high school”.

Education: Derrick graduated from “The Executive Coaching Institute”—a two year program in how to effectively coach executives, took a week long Ichak Adizes Workshop focused on understanding corporate lifecycles and building complementary management teams, and enrolled in and took an ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) 3 Day Workshop, “Creating Leadership Development Programs.”

In 1973 Derrick graduated from Harvard College with a concentration in Government. In 1976 he graduated from Antioch Graduate School with a MEd in Counseling, and in 1987 he graduated from Babson Graduate School with an MBA with a concentration in Marketing.

Doug Eymer
Graphic Design and Branding

Doug Eymer manages graphic design and branding at YES Inc. Doug recently designed the YouthTrade logo, as well as the logos for YouthTrade Senegal, Nigeria, and Mali.

Doug and his wife Selene founded Eymer Design, a traditional and new media design communications firm. For over a decade, Eymer Design brought intelligent, incisive design to the development of branding strategies, corporate image and identity systems, sales and marketing collateral, annual reports, packaging, interactive marketing, and World Wide Website development. They won national and international recognition, as well as many awards.

Over the years, Eymer Design developed a strong working relationship with PARTNERS+simons. (Being physically located two floors above Eymer’s sixth floor design laboratory at 25 Drydock Avenue made it a little easier!) In early 2000, PARTNERS+simons realized the benefits of joining forces and acquired Eymer Design.

In spring of 2004, Doug left PARTNERS+simons and started EYMER. These days Doug can be found working with all sorts of groovy clients on some awesome projects, including branding projects for YES!

Alek Sudan
YouthTrade Technology and Communications Consultant

Alek Sudan is a technology integrator, driving educational development at McAuliffe Regional Charter Public School, a highly successful pilot, and expanding the role of technology and new media in current academia--revolutionizing the way teachers teach, and students learn.

Founding McAuliffe's educational technology program in 2006, Alek has been instrumental in reshaping access to early education, adopting open education principles advocated by MIT and other leading institutions.

He is a Research Associate and MIT's Office of Educational Innovation and Technology. He is a graduate of Harvard University, majoring in Liberal Arts and minoring in Educational Technologies.

He now brings his technology intergation and communication skills to YouthTrade as he seeks to expand accessibility to innovation.

Vishal Patel 
YouthTrade Nigeria Coordinator

Vishal Patel is a graduate from Boston University’s College of Art with a BA in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Eventually, he hopes to pursue a career in medicine, preferably one that allows him to travel the world.

Recently, he has developed a passion for developmental work. This passion brought him to Tanzania, Africa where he spent three months in the village of Kilema setting up an educational computer center for youth. The computer center was equipped with small, affordable computers loaded with educational software for students from elementary school to high school. The primary goal was to supplement the local school’s English curriculum. He is working on a new project, educationall.org, a website designed to connect grass-root organizations to donors to sponsor children’s education in developing countries.

Now, he has focused is energy on youth development through entrepreneurship and has joined the YES team. Here, he will manage and coordinate with team members in Nigeria to launch the YouthTrade Nigeria pilot campaign

Kelley Raleigh 
YouthTrade Clubs Consultant

During college, Kelley became a Big Sister for a 13 yr old girl and it completely changed her life.

Throughout the last 16 years, Kelley has been an advocate and mentor for teens around the globe.

In Columbia, Missouri, whether it was training college students to be a Big Sister/Brother or creating a committee of local teens that produced open mics, dance performances, short films or art exhibits, Kelley stayed focused and creative with how to empower young people.

Upon moving to Los Angeles in 2003, Kelley started working with Insight Seminars (now called Institute for Youth Leadership/Insight University) and found that there was so much more to create. For 6 years, Kelley was the Director of Teen Insight & the Institute for Youth Leadership. Kelley expanded the program curriculum based on the teens willingness to do and learn more.

There, she created the first ever Teen Leadership Program, the Journey to Tanzania Service Project, a training program for teens to take leader and facilitator roles in the company, the Family Ideal Scene Workshop and the Parent & Teen Seminar. All of which were wildly successful because teens and families were participating and wanting to make a difference in their lives and others.

While traveling to Africa in 2009 & 2011 to volunteer at 2 primary schools and and AIDS Orphanage with Los Angeles area teens, she saw first hand that by teens valuing service and understanding that they, too, can make an impact on the world, that they will be the ones to change the world.

Kelley is currently a Consultant and Coach:

• Coaching teens with the focus on life skills, relationship building and how to lead in their own lives
• Creating unique Marketing & Leadership Programs for private schools and organizations
• Producing fun Workshops for groups of teens that focus on leadership and service
• Continuing to fundraise for and produce the Tanzania Service Project
• Producing positive online videos made by teens for teens

She received her B.A. of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia and is working on her Masters of Spiritual Science from Peace Theological Seminary. She currently lives with her husband and dog in Los Angeles.

Aditi
YouthTrade Marketing Coordinator

Wilson Qin
YES Web Support

Wilson provides support and maintenance for the ever evolving YES website.

Currently a freshman at Harvard University, he is pursuing a degree in computer science, and also plays viola in the Bach Society Orchestra and competes for the club swim team. Wilson is a free-lance developer; despite his youthful appearance, he already has several years of experience making mobile apps and websites, and is currently involved in various start-up ventures. His other interests include dropping rhymes as a Hip Hop M.C., digital music production, and photography

Shubhro Sen
Executive Director, Conscious Capitalism Institute

An entrepreneur, business leader, and educator, Dr. Shubhro Sen is Cofounder and Executive director of the Conscious Capitalism institute, as well as a member of the board of directors of Conscious Capitalism Inc.

Starting in 1987, Sen has been a Co-founder and CEO of multiple businesses in the United States and India and has led them to market success. Several experienced successful exits [Digiflex, IPO; eCredit.com/sr research: acquisition by the internet commerce group [NASD: ICGE]; Meteor Inc: acquisition], and others are ongoing businesses: PowerShare Inc., which provides corporate advisory and software product development, and FSO Knowledge Exchange, an online media events and sourcing advisory firm focused on the financial services sector. in 2007, he became Managing Director, Asia Pacific as well as Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy. He was a core member of the team responsible for M&A as well as the company IPO/reverse merger. [NASD: GEWV].

Sen enjoyed a ten-year academic career from 1982-92 including stints as a lecturer at the University of Illinois, Urbana and the Haas school of Business, U.C. Berkeley [1985-87] and as assistant professor in the marketing department at Northeastern University, Boston [1987-92].

In 2009, he returned to academia to become a visiting professor in the marketing department at Bentley University teaching digital/emarketing. subsequently, he has taught in the MBA program at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. He also is engaged in executive education, working with multiple organizations on corporate development and effective globalization models.