Faculty Team

Arun and family have been in Swami’s fold since the early 80s. Arun has been a member of Sai Centers in Florida, Massachusetts and Northern California. He is currently serving in the role of President of the Sathya Sai Baba Center of Central San Jose. He previously held the roles of Young Adult Advisor for Region 7 and Central San Jose Sai Center, and also helped organize programs at the center and regional levels. After completing his undergraduate degree in India, Arun graduated with a Masters in Computer Science from University of Florida, and an MBA from Stanford University. He works in the software industry and currently manages products at Google. As an engineer and product manager, Arun has worked in development of new products and the scaling of products to larger businesses. During his career, he has worked in different capacities as an individual contributor, manager, and leader of cross-functional teams. Arun’s interests include mentoring, learning, music, and sports.

“Jaggu” Jagannathan has 40+ years of experience in senior leadership management positions in steel, auto, information technology and quality management services. He was the CEO of Tata Quality Management Services – a Division of Tata Sons, and later became the Executive Vice President and the Global head of Business Excellence for Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT services provider. He has worked with partners in Latin America, Europe, South Asia, South Africa and Australia, gaining a global perspective towards business excellence, cost improvement and quality management. He has trained thousands of executives all over the world in Business Excellence, Excellence in Leadership, and Time Management. Till recently he was the CEO of Transconn International, LLC and is currently the Director and Co-Founder of Gurukul Learning Systems.

Jaggu has been a pioneer in developing quality management systems in India and has been recognized internationally for his contributions to Value Engineering. He is a Certified Value Specialist from SAVE, USA. He holds an Engineering degree and a Master’s degree in Industrial Management from the Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) and AMP from INSEAD, France. He is the author of two books, “Getting More at Less Cost: The Value Engineering Way” and “The Value Strategy”. An ardent devotee of Swami, he is a visiting faculty to the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning where he teaches Business Excellence to the senior management students for the last 5 years. In 2019, he facilitated the introduction of Business Excellence as a full credit elective subject in the curriculum of the second-year MBA program.

Komal Ram was first introduced to Swami at the age of 2. She is a former SSE student and currently serves as the president of the Sathya Sai Baba Center, Seattle Eastside. She has resided in the Seattle area for the past 31 years after her family relocated here from the Fiji Islands. Komal attended the University of Washington. She holds a Master of Business Administration degree and has been a member of the Young American Leadership Program at the Harvard Business School since 2015. She spent nearly 15 years at Alaska Airlines, most recently as their Director of Brand Experience. She left her corporate role 4 years ago to pursue her dream of being an educator and currently works at Bellevue College as an assistant associate professor in the school's business department. She's married to Boe Singh and they have 2 children. Her interests include reading, exercising and exploring new travel destinations with her family and friends.

Ms. Lalitha Jagannathan has BA in Sociology from Madras University, MA in Economics from BHU, and a Pg.D. in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management from XLRI Jamshedpur, India.

After her commendable academic achievement from XLRI she joined the Tata Motors where she held important positions in the Human Resources Division. Her professional path in Training and Development is strewn with colorful interactions with people and leadership positions in Baroda Productivity Council, Transpek Industries at Baroda, Visiting Faculty XLRI at Jamshedpur and XIM Bhubaneshwar and lastly as a senior faculty in the area of Organization Behavior in the Apex training center of the Tata group – The Tata Management Training Center, Pune. She has conducted several Leadership development programs in India and USA. She has well over 25 years of corporate experience.

Apart from her contribution in the professional arena she was also active in the non- profit service organization called All India Women’s Conference as the President, solely created for rendering help to the needy families in Jamshedpur. She is an ardent devotee of Sri Sathya Sai Baba for well over 3 decades. She has actively engaged herself in SSE activities, devotional programs, and study circles. She has completed 10 weeks of training at The Institute of Sathya Sai Education in Thailand.

Her journey of life till date has been filled with acquiring and learning new things. She is contributing back to society as the Founder, and Chairperson of Gurukul Learning Systems by training school children using the platform of Human Values.

Ranga's current passion is to empower neurodivergent individuals with the desire and ability to contribute, to find meaningful, rewarding, and sustained employment and to help organizations in their journey to embrace neurodiversity inclusion in their workplaces. In a past life, Ranga was an accomplished senior executive of digital transformation, with expertise in providing innovative and cost effective solutions and services to enable and support business strategy and growth in the Higher Education and Information Technology industry. Ranga's focus while in Stanford Graduate School of Business was to transform higher education through innovative application of information technology, together with instructional design, online educational assets, design thinking for process redesign, improving user experience, and data driven business decisions, guided by a comprehensive business and technology architecture.

Ranga’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rangajayaraman/

Swami came into Ranga's awareness in a dramatic way on 13th of April 1972 during the break after he completed his high school. Since then Swami has been playing with, protecting, and guiding Ranga in a variety of overt and subtle ways, never giving up on him in spite of his many detours (past and present) on his spiritual journey. As part of his ongoing reformation process, Swami had Ranga play devotional coordinator and president roles in Central San Jose Center and regional devotional coordinator role in Region 7.

Ranga infrequently writes about his life experiences with Swami in his blog: http://ranga-jayaraman-personal.blogspot.com/

Dr. Sanjay Mahalingam is a proficient academic and educator at the Sri Sathya Institute of Higher Learning, Prashanti Nilayam and a trained life coach. While his areas of expertise include Quality Management, Operations Management, Supply Chain Management and Transformational Leadership, Dr. Sanjay is widely regarded as a gifted communicator, a skill that he has consciously employed in transmitting the teachings of our beloved spiritual master, Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

Dr. Sanjay has been blessed with many personal interviews over the course of his years as a student and research scholar of Sri Sathya Institute of Higher Learning. Amongst other travels such as those to Chennai for the Athi Rudra Maha Yagna (2007), he has had the rare fortune of accompanying Swami on the highly coveted Kodaikanal trips on three different occasions (2005, 2006 and 2007). He was an important part of the famous university convocation dramas of 2004 and 2005. These diverse interactions with Bhagwan allowed him to witness the munificence of the Avatar in its varied manifestations. Having spent a decade in the immediate proximity of such an Unparalleled Being, Dr. Sanjay has had the invaluable opportunity to be able to glean from his experiences with Bhagwan, wisdom that is astonishingly simple, yet very profound.

Passionate about self-transformation and intrinsic human potential, Dr. Sanjay’s primary methodology draws upon traditional wisdom to solve contemporary problems. According to him, “Leadership is all about influence and influence flows from personal mastery through self-awareness”. Mentoring ‘Swami’s’ students, turning their snags ‘inside out’ and facilitating an environment of outer productivity fueled by inner joy remains his abiding love and life’s delight. Among the many awards he has received, he cherishes most, the feedback he receives from students and workshop participants, year after year.

Dr. Sanjay Mahalingam, after completing his MBA (2004) and PhD (2008) is currently assistant professor, Department of Management and Commerce, Sri Sathya Institute of Higher Learning, Prashanti Nilayam.

Dr. Shashank Shah is a stakeholder management strategist, researcher and published business author. He has been a thought leader in the areas of Stakeholder Management Strategy, Private Sector Development, Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability and has developed strategic perspectives and operational frameworks on leading multinational and Indian public and private sector firms, including Fortune 500 companies. Dr. Shah completed his postgraduate and doctoral studies in Business Management from Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning where he received the President of India and Governor’s Gold Medals for standing first at the University in the MBA and M.Phil programs. He was awarded the AIMS International Outstanding Doctoral Management Students Award 2010 at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad.

Dr. Shah has been Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School, USA and held joint appointment as Project Director and Fellow at Harvard University South Asia Institute (SAI), USA. A TEDx speaker, Dr. Shah has taught graduate courses in Marketing, Total Quality Management, and Indian Ethos and Values; and graduate and doctoral courses on Research Methods in Social Sciences. Dr. Shah has published over 100 research-based papers, articles, case studies and technical notes in peer-reviewed national and international journals in the areas of Corporate Responsibility, Business Ethics, Integral Education, Humanized Healthcare, Social Entrepreneurship, and more. Dr. Shah has authored three books: ‘Soulful Corporations’, ‘Win-Win Corporations’ and ‘The Tata Group’.

Through his research, he has interviewed over 200 executives, leaders and subject experts across reputed national and multinational corporations and industries in India, USA and Europe including the Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan Business School, Boston University, INSEAD, Copenhagen Business School, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the United Nations and more. Through his decade-long research, he has curated insights on best-in-class practices in Corporate Strategy and Responsibility, and a knowledge base of multi-sectoral, multi-industry and multi-stakeholder leadership insights of a collective experience of 5,000 years, which he presents at diverse platforms.

As Editor-in-Chief of the Sathya Sai University’s Publications Division, he compiled and edited over two dozen books on Indian Ethos and Values. On multiple occasions, he has addressed large gatherings of nearly 5,000 people on themes relating to Values-Based Education and Management, Leadership, Social Responsibility and Service, Youth Empowerment, Indian Culture and Spirituality, Vedanta and Unity of Religions.

Dr. Sunder Iyer is an alumni of Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning. He was in the first batch of students to join Swami's college at Puttaparthi in 1979. He completed his graduation, post graduation and subsequently earned his PhD. in Banking and Finance. He, then continued to teach at Swami's University until 1994.

As with all students of his times, brother Sunder had innumerable occasions of being close to Swami and learning from His direct divine presence. He had the privilege of being a personal attendant of Swami for a short period, during his student days. During these months of close encounters, brother Sunder not only witnessed Swami in His day-to-day life, but also was privileged to be personally guided by the avatar. Later, in 1992, Swami was gracious to personally perform the wedding of Sunder with Maya in Prashanti Nilayam.

Sunder 's passion is practicing and teaching yoga and he was the only student that received a gold medal for yoga, from the Divine hands during the 1984 convocation of the Sai University. Every thing he learnt about this wonderful science, he learnt at Swami's Lotus Feet and from the masters who would visit the ashram. His passion for spreading the message of Sai through yoga and meditation, has taken him around the world, conducting yoga and meditation camps. At the age of 50, brother Sunder took an early retirement from his IT career. He has now dedicated his life to spreading the message of traditional YOGA through the principles of Sanathana Dharma. This is his life's mission. In 2013, Sunder was ordained as an Ecumenical Minister by the Ecumenical Ministry of the Unity of All Religions in Ojai, California.

Dr. Sunder Iyer and Maya Iyer have currently set up Kaivalya Yoga Gurukulam, an International Center for Yoga, Vedanta and Human Advancement. This is a not-profit Charitable Trust run under the auspices of KYG USA Inc. The website is www.kyg.org

Sunil Kasturi has been in Swami’s fold for the last 30 years, the last 20 of which have been within centers in Region 5 (Iowa), Region 6 (Oregon and Washington) and Region 7 (Northern California). He currently serves as the Young Adult Advisor for Region 7. Sunil completed an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Iowa, and an MBA from Duke University. Sunil started off his career in Product and Program Management roles in the computer hardware/ software industry and then moved to management consulting over the last decade. Currently, as the Managing Director of Propeller's San Francisco office, he oversees all firm and client-facing functions and is accountable for the firm’s performance and results. Besides being an integral part of embodying and fostering firm culture, this includes P&L management, business development, recruiting, client satisfaction and account management. His interests include music, cooking, travel, and running.