Insights to visionary leadership from Kalam at CIMA, PIMA forum

Highly respected Asian leader Dr. Abdul Kalam, the former Pre-sident of India, will be in Sri Lanka late next week.

He is scheduled to speak on Visionary Leadership in Challenging Times at an exclusive forum jointly organized by CIMA and PIM Alumni (PIMA) for its members on Sunday 22 January from 5.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. in Colombo.

Dr. Kalam served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007 and was popularly known as the People’s President.

A renowned aerospace engineer, professor (of Aerospace engineering), and first Chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology Thiruvananthapuram (IIST),  He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour in 1997.

Before his term as India’s president, he worked as an aerospace engineer with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). He is popularly known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and space rocket technology. Kalam played a pivotal organizational, technical and political role in India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974. Dr. Kalam has even been circled with various controversies as many scientific experts called him a man with no authority over “nuclear physics” and a man who just carried the works of Dr. Homi Bhabha and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai.

He is currently a visiting professor at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, Chancellor of Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology Thiruvananthapuram, a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Anna University (Chennai), a visiting professor at Indian Institute of Management Indore, and an adjunct/visiting faculty at many other academic and research institutions across India.

In May 2011, Dr. Kalam launched his mission for the youth of the nation called the What Can I Give Movement. Dr. Kalam better known as a scientist, also has special interest in the field of arts like writing Tamil poems, and also playing the music instrument Veenai.