I would encourage you to email us such published success stories of our community members so that we can share this information with our members. Please email me at dganju@earthlink.net or Arun Koul at akoul@ftghome.com .
With best wishes,
Deepak Ganju
1.Shri Pran Tiku, MA
PRAN TIKU - Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) and Chartered Financial Consultant (CHFC)
Principal and founder of Peak Financial Management, Inc., Mr. Tiku has been offering clients a controlled, full service approach to financial planning with tailored investment management programs since 1985.
In 2005 Worth Magazine named Pran Tiku as one of the nation's top 100 advisors. Previously, in 2004, they had selected him as one of the nation's 100 most exclusive wealth advisors. In 2004 Medical Economics named him one of the 150 best financial advisors for doctors. The firm's clients benefit from Mr. Tiku's extensive knowledge and expertise in the financial industry and his keen ability to identify market trends.
Pran Tiku is a seasoned veteran of the financial services industry, having spent over twenty-five years working with clients in various capacities. He is involved in numerous industry consortiums and trade organizations, having served as program chairman for the Boston Society for the Institute of Financial Planners and Vice President of the Boston Chapter for the International Association for Financial Planning. In 1991 Pran Tiku was admitted to the registry of Financial Planning Practitioners.
Having published several articles on the topics of investment and money management in nationally recognized newspapers, magazines and industry publications, Pran Tiku has contributed articles to local and national media and is called upon regularly by the local print, radio and television media as a resource for insight into the financial markets. He has frequently been on Bloomberg TV, CNBC and is a frequent guest on CNNfn. In the past, Mr. Tiku has taught financial planning courses as well as conducted seminars on financial and investment topics.
2.Shrimati Sharda Cherwoo, NY
Helping them mind their business
Sharda Cherwoo
SUMA TEKUR engages Sharda Cherwoo, the first woman partner of Ernst & Young, in a free-wheeling discussion on her career, life and being a woman boss.
The so-called achievers seldom tread the routine path. Even if they do, the difference is there for all to see. What usually clicks is a mix of the ordinary and the unique, and sometimes a dash of passion. Here is a
woman manager who has a passion for people and a passion for perfection as well.
And this combination has done wonders to her career. It was no accident that
Sharda Cherwoo, America’s Director of Tax Operations in Ernst & Young, United States of America
, became the first woman partner in E&Y (Stanford, Connecticut office) in 1991. She is also the only woman of Indian origin to become a partner in what was then known as the ‘Big 6 Accounting Firms’ in the US.
Sharda did a flashback on her career, life and womanhood, on her last day as CEO of the India operations of E&Y in Bangalore. “There was no question of denying marriage and before I knew, I was married and in the US,” she says. It was then, Sharda explains, that she started focusing on her career. “In school, I dreamt of becoming a doctor. But in the US, it is one of the most difficult professions to pursue,” she says.
Sharda graduated from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut with a BS in Accounting. She was the valedictorian (top student) of her graduating class. In her final year of college, Sharda appeared for the Certified Public Accountants examination, which is equivalent to the Chartered Accountancy Examination. Sharda joined E&Y right out of college in 1982 and it took her nine years to move up the ranks and become a partner, but she says that that is what she set her eyes on and nothing would distract her. She came to Bangalore in February 2002 to head the India operations of E&Y.
Right from selecting the colours for the interiors to choosing a theme for the office décor to recruiting accountants for her team, the Bangalore office of E&Y is her baby.
Being a woman manager, according to Sharda, requires a bit of extra effort. “It is difficult till people learn and understand you,” she says.
A brief tour of the office gave a glimpse of what the employees at E&Y think of their CEO. Dressed in ethnic, they were seen scurrying down the corridors. A surprise party was being planned for Sharda later that evening. A voice boomed on the microphone in the office and the celebrations had started. Sharda smiles and says, “I will miss this place”.
3.Shri Anil Kaul, OK
Doctors develop test to detect sign of miscarriage
By MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer
6/26/2006
One perk of working at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa is that the campus is across the street from Promenade Mall.
That's convenient, especially when you're looking for a good metaphor to describe the zigzagging path that medical research can take. "It's like shopping at the mall," explains Dr. Mark Martens, vice chairman for research in the obstetrics and gynecology department. "You can start out looking for one thing, but you might find something completely different. And that's OK."
In this case, Martens and his research partner, Dr. Anil Kaul, set out to discover why some women get infections and some don't. Instead, they found a remarkable new way to determine how likely a woman is to have a miscarriage or give birth prematurely.
And a similar test also can determine how likely a women is to develop certain forms of cancer that affect reproductive organs.
The research involves a protein called DAF, for Decay Accelerating Factor, that occurs naturally in the human body. DAF can protect a clump of cells from being attacked by the body's immune system -- a good thing if that clump is an embryo. But a bad thing
By measuring the level of DAF in a patient, Martens and Kaul can predict how likely she is to miscarry or, with a different application of the same research, how likely she is to develop cancer. With that information, doctors could begin preventative treatments, Martens said.
"This is kind of like a pre-Pap Pap test," Martens said. "We're going to be able to detect problems years earlier, and that's a big part of the battle with cancer: catching it early. It's very, very exciting."
Yes, Martens and Kaul find their jobs quite exciting.
But fast-paced? "Fast" is a relative term. A four-minute mile seems incredible if you're running, but in a car that's called a traffic jam. Martens and Kaul have been working on this research for 10 years, "and we're probably another 10 years from where we want to be," Martens said.
By the standards of medical research, that's zipping right along. But they realize that patients don't necessarily see it that way. "It's frustrating to see a patient who has had a miscarriage and to think that if we could have had more time, if this had happened a couple of years from now, we could have done something," Martens said. "But that makes us work harder and make progress."
The research could move more quickly, but that would take more funding -- and funding is hard to find for this kind of preventative research, Kaul said.
If a researcher discovers a new drug for treating cancer, pharmaceutical companies will scramble to finance that discovery because they can make a fortune selling that drug, Kaul said.
"But if we keep you from getting the cancer," he said, "who makes money?"
At the current pace, it will take at least 10 years for this research to be in widespread use for detecting or preventing cancer.
But it will be applied much sooner for preventing miscarriages and premature births, the researchers said. "In two or three years, I think," Martens said. "We're going to change the way pregnancies are handled." He imagines, in the near future, a woman taking an at-home pregnancy test and, if positive, immediately taking another at-home test.
Who knows? It might be called "the Tulsa test" or the "Martens-Kaul test." And it will tell a woman, with near 100 percent accuracy, whether she is likely to miscarry.
"If the test is negative, it gives her peace of mind," Martens said. "If it's positive, she knows to begin treatments right away to prevent it. What woman isn't going to want to know this?"
4.Shri Sanjay Razdan, FL
High technology makes open surgery unnecessary for organ removal
Dr. Sanjay Razdan
By Alfredo Arango
Medical Editor
Those extremely painful surgeries, requiring huge incisions, sometimes extending all the way from the abdomen to the back, that urologists performed to save their patients' lives, have almost become part of medical history. In the centers where medical technology is most advanced, the majority of the cases are being resolved through very small incisions using robots and other highly sophisticated instruments.
"There are two very common problems patients have, both in the United States and in Latin America: kidney stones and renal or prostate cancer. As a matter of fact, prostate cancer is the second most common type in men, after lung cancer. Now we can deal with these and other highly complex conditions using robots, laser rays and laparoscopic instruments that make open surgery unnecessary," says Dr. Sanjay Razdan, a urological surgeon affiliated with the Cedars Medical Center of Miami.
The term 'laparoscopic' refers to a small camera which is inserted into the patient's body making it possible to view the surgical procedure from within.
"There are many ways to treat prostate cancer. The traditional one involves open surgery causing the patient to bleed a lot, often requiring a transfusion. This means several days in the hospital, and then recovery takes weeks and the incision is very painful. The modern laparoscopic and robotic equipment make it possible to perform surgery through very small openings. For example, when I use the robot called DaVinci, I sit at a console from which I control the robotic arms that perform surgery on the patient; the procedure is completed in half the time and the patient returns home the following day, and after five to six days is able to go back to work. I can also perform laparoscopic surgery without using the robot," adds Dr. Razdan, who subspecializes in laparoscopic and minimally invasive endourology and oncology.
Another condition in which patients can benefit from this advanced technology is renal cancer.
"Traditional renal cancer surgery required a very long incision, almost a foot long, which was made on the patient's flank, and sometimes it was necessary to remove some ribs to get to the kidney, which was very painful, the patient then had to stay in the hospital for five or six days. Now we make incisions that are about the diameter of a pencil, through which we insert very slender instruments that we use to wrap the kidney in a plastic bag, so as not to disseminate the cancer in the area, and we then remove it through an incision measuring about four or five centimeters."
Also, big stones that are stuck in the kidneys can now be extracted in a less invasive way, without making an incision at all.
"We insert very slender instruments through the urethra and the bladder, and go higher up to the kidney. We find the stone and extract it without performing any kind of surgery. The patient goes home the same day. Sometimes, if the stones are too big, there is a possibility several types of therapy will be needed," adds the physician.
These extractions are performed when the stones are large, because when they are small there are other procedures that can be used that are not invasive at all, such as lithotripsy, which uses ultrasound to disintegrate the stones into particles small enough to be eliminated in the patient's urine.
"There is hardly any bleeding in the laparoscopic and robotic surgeries we now perform, and there is hardly any pain because the trauma to the surgical or adjacent areas is minimal. Consequently, the risk of infection and additional complications is reduced. Without a doubt, these procedures are safer. This is particularly important when dealing with older patients or patients presenting other medical conditions such as cardiac disorders, which would make a prolonged open surgery very risky," states the urologist.
Another attractive feature for the patient is that, when compared to traditional open surgery, these high-tech procedures are less expensive. "The hospital stay is the highest expense of all; so it stands to reason that if the patient is hospitalized for five days the cost will be much higher than if he is discharged the same or the following day. That is another advantage of minimally invasive procedures," concludes Dr. Razdan.