• The road toward a board seat
• How to build a road map
• What skills are required
• How to avoid political traps

About the speaker:

Currently Mr. Merchant serves as a partner at transformation focused, private equity firm in New York. Previously his roles included, Executive Vice President, COO, and Member of the Executive Committee at Fannie Mae. In this role, he led and transformed Technology and Operations groups. Mr. Merchant was Senior Vice President and CIO at Merrill Lynch. In this role, he managed the global technology organization helping growth of all businesses by transforming platforms such as electronic trading, wealth management, etc. at Merrill Lynch.  Mr. Merchant is known for transforming global technology and operations organizations into a business-aligned function that enables the organization to scale rapidly and increase productivity.

Mr. Merchant has also held senior leadership positions at Cooper Neff and Associates, Lehman Brothers, Sanwa Financial Products and Dresdner Bank.

Mr. Merchant serves as a Board of Director at Level 3 Communications (NASDAQ:LVLT), Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FICO). Mr. Merchant served as Board of Director at Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:JAVA), He also serves on the board of several privately held firms.  Mr. Merchant serves as the board of advisors to American India Foundation (AIF). Mr. Merchant is a frequent speaker at CIO, TiE Global, and NASSCOM.

Mr, Merchant holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Bombay University, M.S. in Computer Science from Memphis University, and M.B.A. from Temple University.