Hyderabad, NFAPost: Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, former Chairman and Managing Director of Cognizant (India), will join the leadership team of Krea University in January 2021 as its first Pro Vice-Chancellor, responsible for Professional Learning.
As part of its 2025 vision, the University has created a blueprint to take its interwoven learning experience to the industry and larger society to address the agile and continuous learning needs of professionals.
In this role as Pro Vice-Chancellor of Professional Learning, Ramkumar will help drive the mission and long-term strategy of all professional programs—spanning Masters in Business Administration, executive education, as well as modularized and laddered advanced programs and micro-credentials that will add significant value to individuals, businesses, nations and society.
In addition to this role, as a part of the core leadership team, Ramkumar will help strengthen Krea’s vision to be a teaching and research university that defines global benchmarks through interwoven-ness and experiential learning, while staying true to its core values of excellence, ethics, inclusivity and accountability.
“Ramkumar brings to Krea a rare combination of three decades of industry, professional and academic experience,” said Dr Sunder Ramaswamy, Vice Chancellor of Krea University.
“His deep appreciation of structural shifts across industries and newer models of learning and skilling will be a great asset to Krea and particularly to the Graduate School of Business, in our journey to enable high potential individuals to learn and create a positive, catalytic impact, ethically.”
Ramkumar Ramamoorthy said he is truly excited to be part of the Krea team that strongly believes in the larger purpose of helping humanity prepare for an unpredictable world.
“In a fast-paced world that is increasingly shaped by the interplay of humans, machines and the environment, learning throughout one’s professional or entrepreneurial career is key to staying relevant while driving excellence and innovation. I am confident that the rich heritage of the Graduate Business School, Krea’s pioneering interwoven learning model and strong legacy of core values will enable the alumni of the university to confidently embrace the future,” said Ramkumar Ramamoorthy.
Ramkumar has about 30 years of experience in the information technology industry as well as academia. He was most recently the Chairman and Managing Director of Cognizant in India—a Fortune 200 company—and was responsible for the company’s India operations with over 200,000 employees.
During his 22 years with Cognizant, he nurtured and grew more than half a dozen portfolios and held various leadership positions including Executive Director, India and Chief Knowledge Officer. Prior to Cognizant, Ramkumar was with Tata Consultancy Services.
Ramkumar spent the first five years of his professional career as an academician and continued to stay in touch with academia throughout his long career in the industry. In the past three decades, he has been on the Academic Council and/or Senate of liberal arts, engineering, management and medical universities in India.
He is currently on the Governing Council of the IT/BPM Skill Sector Council of National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) and the Board for undergraduate studies in engineering and technology at All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). He is also associated with the Chennai Mathematical Institute, one of the premier institutions of excellence for teaching and research in math, computer science and data science.
Ramkumar has played leadership roles in several professional and trade bodies in India. Notably, he is the immediate Past President of the 185-year-old Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) and a past Vice Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) in India.
Krea University, with a pioneering approach of Interwoven learning is located in Sri City, 55 kms north of Chennai. Instituted by a team of global academicians, industrialists and intellectuals with a vision for the 21st Century and beyond, Krea is an effort to re-imagine the education system, aiming to enable students to become agile, ethical and purposeful leaders in this fast-changing world.
Krea University’s governing council include illustrious members such as N Vaghul, Anand Mahindra, Raghuram Rajan, Kiran Shaw and Sajjan Jindal.
Krea University currently houses two Schools and provides strategic oversight to three Research Centres. The School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences currently offers 3-year B.A. (Honours) & B.Sc. (Honours) degrees, with an option to do an additional year i.e. fourth year of Advanced Studies. IFMR- Graduate School of Business offers PhD, MBA and customised Management Development Programmes. The research Centres include LEAD (Leveraging Evidence for Access and Development), Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion (CDFI) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) South Asia.
