Ratan Tata
Ratan Naval Tata (born December 28, 1937, in Mumbai) is the present Chairman of the Tata Group, India's largest conglomerate established by earlier generations of his family.
Ratan Tata was born into an old Parsi family of Bombay (present-day Mumbai), the first child of Soonoo & Naval Hormusji Tata. Ratan's childhood was troubled, his parents separating in the mid-1940s, when he was about seven and his younger brother Jimmy was five. His mother moved out and both Ratan and his brother were raised by their grandmother Lady Navajbai.
During college, Ratan joined Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity. In 1962, after graduating from Cornell University with a degree in Architecture and Structural Engineering, Ratan joined the family business. Ratan turned down a job offer from IBM, following the advice of J.R.D. Tata, and entered the family business. Today, Ratan maintains that he came back because of his ailing grandmother who had raised him. Ratan joined the Tata Group in December 1962, when he was sent to Jamshedpur to work at Tata Steel. He worked on the floor along with other blue-collar employees, shovelling limestone and handling the blast furnaces. He is not married.
Mr. Tata was honoured by the Government of India with the Padma Bhushan on 26th January 2000, on the occasion of the 50th Republic Day of India. He serves in senior capacities in various organisations in India and he is a member of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry. In March 2006 Mr. Tata was honoured by Cornell University as the 26th Robert S. Hatfield Fellow in Economic Education, considered the highest honor the university awards to distinguished individuals from the corporate sector. [1]
Ratan Tata's foreign affiliations include membership of the international advisory boards of the Mitsubishi Corporation, the American International Group, JP Morgan Chase and Booz Allen Hamilton. He is also a member of the board of trustees of the RAND Corporation, and of his alma maters: Cornell University and the University of Southern California. He also serves as a board member on the Republic of South Africa's International Investment Council and is a Asia-Pacific advisory committee member for the New York Stock Exchange. Tata is on the board of governors of the East-West Center, the advisory board of RAND's Center for Asia Pacific Policy and serves on the programme board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's India AIDS initiative. In February 2004, Ratan Tata was conferred the title of honorary economic advisor to Hangzhou city in the Zhejiang province of China.
He recently received an honorary doctorate from the London School of Economics.
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratan_Tata)