Ranganath Nayak

Chairman and CEO (retired)

Examiner Club Historian

PAST EMPLOYERS:   Cytel, Inc., also Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., Tata Motors, Arthur D. Little, Inc., Boston Consulting Group

I was a student in a Jesuit School in Bombay, and am now a retired businessman, living in Belmont.

I am a mentor to entrepreneurs, a student of creativity and innovation, and a volunteer in helping a public elementary school in Boston.

Soon after my arrival in the USA in the Fall of 1963, I met my wife-to-be, Sandy Tompkins, at an Israeli folk dance in the Radcliffe Quad. We had a wonderfully happy marriage, during which I learned that there was more, much more to life beyond STEM. She was an archaeologist-cum-social anthropologist.

During my working life, I spent 8 years doing hard-core Mechanical Engineering, after receiving a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. I then was in Management Consulting for 24 years, during which I wrote two books on Innovation, Breakthroughs! and Product Juggernauts. I then ran a startup doing advanced statistical work for clinical trials of medicines for 14 years, before completing a successful sale of the company. It continues to flourish.

My time is spent now in volunteer activities, among which are: mentoring young entrepreneurs at MIT, helping the principal of a public elementary school in Boston, working on civic problems in the town of Belmont, MA, and helping the Examiner Club to flourish and thrive.

I love to cook, discuss philosophy, politics, and science, and to go for walks. I want to replace my front lawn with a native habitat of plants that invites birds, butterflies, and beneficial insects, and holds rainwater. I am getting help from the St. Kateri Conservation Center. I believe this is a way to fight climate change, a topic on which I have given two talks at the Examiner Club.

I joined the Examiner Club in 1988.

WEBSITE:
www.prnayak.org

HIGHLIGHTS:
One of my volunteer activities: MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service

My volunteer work in K-12 education: Friends of the Bradley, an elementary school in the Boston Public Schools


Publications of Interest: