COMA is happy to present the first Professional Networking event of 2017! It will feature two distinguished leaders from Columbus – Guru Vasudeva & Chetan Kandhari. They will share their professional journey and personal experiences that helped them to be successful in their career. There will be time for Q&A and informal networking. The event will be moderated by Hari Narayanaswamy.
Tickets for the event is $5 per person. Seats are limited! Registration will be on a first come first serve basis and will be closed latest by April 10th (or when we reach the maximum capacity).
Below is a brief bio of the speakers. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Chetan Kandhari
Chetan Kandhari is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Personal Lines & Direct IT at Nationwide. In this role, he is accountable to set the technology strategy to deliver solutions for personal lines insurance, and for the direct and digital strategy for the enterprise. Based in Columbus, he oversees a team of 850 associates. At Nationwide, Chetan has progressively held roles of increasing responsibility. In his prior role as SVP and CIO of Enterprise Applications, he was responsible for the systems that support Nationwide associates and staff functions. In other roles at Nationwide, Chetan has led the P&C Personal Lines IT group and the Customer Data and SOA Solution Organization. Earlier in his career, Chetan was a consultant with Diamond Technology Partners and Ernst & Young.
Chetan holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from The Ohio State University, a Master of Science in Information Systems from Miami University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Muskingum University.
Outside of Nationwide, Chetan is active in the community, serving on the Board of Directors for HandsOn Central Ohio.
Chetan was born in India, where he frequently returns to visit, and moved to the U.S. in 1993. Married, with two children, he enjoys vacationing with his family in his free time and encourages his associates to look for a balance between work and life.
Guru Vasudeva
Guru Vasudeva is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Program & Application Services at Nationwide Mutual Insurance, a $26 billion revenue financial services and insurance company. In this role, Guru manages a shared services organization that provides program and project management, application development, requirements and testing, and IT help desk services for the enterprise. He is also responsible for the delivery of large and complex programs, Lean and Agile transformation of application development and maintenance functions across Nationwide.
Prior to this role, Guru has held several senior leadership positions at Nationwide including Enterprise Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Business Unit CIO, and Chief Architect. In these roles Guru has led several functions including IT strategy, enterprise architecture, cyber security, disaster recovery, large program management, and application development and maintenance.
Guru represents Nationwide in regional economic development activities in the Greater Columbus area such as the Columbus 2020 initiative. He is one of the architects of the Columbus Collaboratory, an entity formed by seven Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Columbus to focus on big data, cyber security and talent development and attraction.
Guru has over 23 years of experience in operations and information technology. Before joining Nationwide, he spent six years at IBM as an executive architect focused on conceptualizing, selling, and delivering large Internet-based business solutions for insurance, retail, and government organizations. He has also worked for AT&T and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
Guru resides in Upper Arlington a suburb of Columbus, Ohio and is married with two children.
