Craig Cohon is Vice Chairman of Cirque du Soleil Russia. Prior to this he spent 8 years owning and running his own international development strategic advisor firm that built businesses in India and Africa. This included a modern clean energy enterprise with bp for rural Indian women.

Previously Craig had a 14-year executive-level career at Coca-Cola Company. He started their operations in Soviet Union in 1990 and lived in Moscow for 4 years. He ran marketing in Northern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and was the Coca-Cola brand director worldwide. He served as director of Learning Strategy for three years and in 2000 served as deputy division president for the Northwest Europe Division.

In 1993, Cohon received an Honorary Doctorate of Economics from Moscow International University. In 2000, the World Economic Forum named him “A Global Leader for Tomorrow.” Cohon earned his BA in liberal arts at the University of Western Ontario. Craig is an avid international traveler and investor and Chairman of Worn Again in London and serves on many charitable boards. He has two great children. He splits his time between Moscow, Stockholm, Montreal and London.

Ethan Kay is a practitioner and academic who has been focused since 2005 on how to structure and scale hybrid corporate-NGO partnerships to give base-of-the-pyramid [BOP] villagers access to essential goods and services. He is a PhD candidate and Fulbright-Nehru Scholar at University of Oxford (University College), where his doctoral research examines the comparative effectiveness of multiple models of corporate-NGO partnership in South Asia. As a practitioner, he has worked on BOP penetration strategies with companies in the consumer durables, energy, and FMCG sectors. He has helped build a rural distribution channel in India to supply essential goods and services (e.g. sanitation and groceries) to low-income households. He has served for four years as a strategic consultant to Swayam Shikshan Prayog [SSP], an Indian microfinance and rural community development NGO, through which he has helped devise innovative, market-based solutions (including private sector partnerships) for SSP's low-income beneficiaries. As an academic, he has studied how to effectively structure hybrid corporate-NGO partnerships in BOP markets. His M. Phil. thesis at University of Oxford examined a groundbreaking partnership in India between BP and two microfinance NGOs that retails clean-fuel household cooking stoves. This thesis is presently being rewritten as a case study in collaboration with academics from MIT's Sloan School of Management. In addition to his M.Phil. in Politics (Comparative Government), Ethan has a B.S. in Economics (Finance) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and spent two years in the private sector focused on emerging markets with Jones Lang LaSalle and Lehman Brothers. Since graduating from Wharton, he has been a co-authoring with Gautam Mashettiwar a book, “The Illiberal Art of Business Education”. Ethan sits on the Board of Directors of Hands Up For Darfur, an Oxford student-led charity that has raised $250,000 over the past three years for Darfur-based humanitarian relief organizations. He is also Senior Fellow of Humanity In Action, served on the Barack Obama Presidential Campaign, worked as a consultant to UNDP in Chernobyl, served as Head of the U.S. Team on Climate Change for the G8 Research Group, convened the Martlet Society (an historic University College, Oxford speaker series) and is a collegiate rower. Ethan has lived on four continents and has traveled to over 40 countries (including over 20 developing countries).

For 25 years Jeb Brugmann has been devising solutions to help cities and local communities access the benefits of globalization and to help global organizations engage and develop opportunities in local communities and markets. He has done so as the founder and chief executive of major international organizations and programs, as a corporate and urban strategy consultant, and as a social entrepreneur and for-profit private sector entrepreneur in both developed and developing countries. He has worked on the ground in scores in cities and rural regions in 28 countries.

In 1990 he founded the international environmental agency for local governments (ICLEI) in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme, and served as its chief executive for ten years. Thereafter, Brugmann directed a multi-year program for Asian mayors and city managers on sustainable urban development, and served as strategy consultant to the leaders of Barcelona, Honolulu, Kitakyushu, Los Angeles, Metro Vancouver, and other cities. From 2002-2004, he also served as President of Globalegacy International, an incubator for enterprise-led approaches to poverty reduction in low-income urban districts.

In 2004, Brugmann joined C.K. Prahalad as a Founding Partner of The Next Practice. Brugmann works with client companies and development NGOs to design their "base of the pyramid" market strategies, business models, and products. His particular focus is market analytics, consumer insight, route-to-market, entry strategy, and partnership development. His clients have included bp, Barclays, Nestlé, Reuters, Visa and other Fortune 500 and local companies.

Brugmann has also worked extensively in the field of climate change mitigation. With support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he established the Urban CO2 Reduction Project in 1990. This consortium of 14 cities on three continents created the primary methodology used today for quantifying and reducing urban greenhouse gas emissions. Building on this work, in 1993 he co-founded the worldwide Cities for Climate Protection Campaign, which now involves more than 800 cities and towns in more than 30 countries in a coordinated effort to quantify and reduce urban greenhouse gas emissions.

Brugmann’s work has been financially supported by the governments of Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, the European Union, Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the UN Development Programme, UNEP, UN-Habitat, the World Bank, hundreds of municipalities, and numerous private foundations.

Brugmann took his Bachelors Degree in regional economics, graduating summa cum laude, from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He received a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government. He also studied philosophy and social history at the Albert-Ludwigs Universitat in Freiburg, Germany. He is currently a faculty member of the Cambridge University Programme for Industry.

He has published in leading academic journals, is an editorial board member of the scholarly journal Local Environment, and has been a contributor to four books. His first full-length book, Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing the World, will be released in 2009. His first article in Harvard Business Review, Cocreating Business’s New Social Compact (with C.K. Prahalad), won the 2007 McKinsey Award for Best HBR Article. He lives with his wife, Saddeiqa, and two sons, Rashad and Kareem, in Toronto, Canada.

Prasanna is a management consulting professional in the areas of risk management, investment planning and corporate finance. He has significant experience in working with multinational financial institutions across Asia, Europe, North America and Australia

The key clients with whom he has worked include American Express, Depository Trust Corporation, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers. He has completed projects with Indian customers including Larsen & Toubro, Madras Rubber Factory (MRF), Lucas TVS, Wheels India, Marico and Eicher Motors.

His areas of expertise in Risk include enterprise risk management (ERM), and modeling including risk maturity diagnostics. His current areas of focus in Risk include risk management for infrastructure management firms covering real estate, commodities and utilities.

The areas of expertise in finance include investment valuation and process optimization. The processes cover the areas of sales (including lead and prospect management), operations (cost reduction and increase in process efficiency) and regulations (reporting).

Prasanna has worked with a leading fast moving consumer goods company in the area of rural distribution. The engagement covered feeder distribution, in order to reach smaller villagers (less than five thousand population), effectively. The feeder distribution model was tested out in Rural Andhra Pradesh and has been rolled out across India.

He has worked with Self Help groups to improve their attractiveness as distribution channels for large fast moving consumer companies.

Prasanna has worked with a leading tyre company to enhance the competitiveness of their small workshops. This engagement lead to the development of indigenous equipment to support of retreading of tyres.

His current area of research is in increasing the reach of financial planning beyond the ‘mass affluent’ market segment. The wealth management services are most essential for the entry level customer segment and new business models are needed to profitably address this segment.

Prasanna is a gold medalist in Finance from Indian Institute of Management of Indore, India. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Anna University, India. He is also an Associate Financial Planner covering Risk Management and is also undergoing Risk Management certification.

Yann is a Venture Partner at Siderian Ventures. His focus is to scale breakthrough clean technologies and business models around the world, with a particular interest for India, where he has worked over many years, including a close collaboration with management guru C.K. Prahalad. Yann has held several leadership roles, as an entrepreneur, a Fortune 500 company executive, a UN Director and a McKinsey strategy consultant, across 30+ developed and developing markets. Yann has an MBA from Harvard Business School, is a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) and a frequent lecturer at various Universities.