Mr Uday Vijayan founded ‘Beyond Carlton’ after the loss of his young son in the Carlton Towers fire tragedy on Feb, 23, 2010. He felt the need to reach out to the other families and see if they could not only share their grief together but also work on getting accountability for the accident. Professionally, Uday has over 20 years experience in the field of marketing and communication and is the founder of an agency - “Experience Ideas” that pioneered the concept of ‘experiential marketing’ in India. He brings an interesting combination of entrepreneurship and profit center management besides strategic marketing thinking.

Mr Prithvi Chintapalli Reddy is an entrepreneur by profession. He is the Managing Director of Plasma Private Limited, a company manufacturing Precision Mechanical Engineering components for the export market. He is also the Co-Founder of Smartvote.in, a Citizens Campaign for Good Governance. SmartVote is actively involved in encouraging more people to participate in the electoral process and vote by making an informed choice. He is also a Trustee and President of Adarsha Vidya Samsthe, a model rural school in Addagal village, Srinivaspur taluk, Kolar district, Karnataka and an active Member of Rotary Club of Bangalore.

Dr. Shankara Prasad is the Chairman and Managing Trustee of Sampoorna Swaraj Foundation which focuses on implementing information and communication technology solutions at the village level to enable participatory democracy and facilitate accountable and transparent local self governments, such as Gram Panchayat and Municipalities. He is also Founder – CEO of Inkroma E-Business Solutions, in Bangalore, which focuses on developing Enterprise Portal ERP Software and Knowledge Management solutions for Indian and Commonwealth Government organizations. Dr. Prasad is an active e-governance evangelist and his passion is to bring Six Sigma process methodology and philosophy into the Indian government domain. Prior to starting the software product company in the e-governance domain, he spent more than 20 years working in the computer chip manufacturing industry and has worked for the major semi-conductor companies. Dr. Prasad was awarded the 1998 IEEE award for “Major Educational Innovation” for innovation in the delivery methods of engineering education.

Major Promod Kapur graduated from the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun and joined Armored Corps in June 1957. He was adjudged the Best All-round Gentleman Cadet and awarded the Sword of Honor. He participated in both the wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1972. He is currently on the Board of Directors of a leading company (Alupro Building Systems Pvt. Ltd.) in the structural glazing industry which provides the building industry with facade systems and building products, including structural glazing/curtain walls, windows, doors - mostly a combination of aluminum and glass products. He has been an active participant and closely associated with several civic and welfare groups in Bangalore. He is a founder Life member of Citizens Action Forum, President of the Koramangala Initiative, and President of Koramangala United Citizens Association. He has been a part of several working groups, more particularly with respect to Master Plan (CDP 2015), restoration of water bodies and environmental issues.

Dr. Ruth Manorama is widely known for her efforts to bring to the mainstream, Dalit issues, especially the precarious situation of Dalit women in India. Herself from the Dalit community, Dr. Manorama is famous for coining the term "Dalits among the Dalits" to describe the women of this backward caste. This has highlighted the plight of Dalit women in the community and the media. She has also contributed enormously to breaking the upper-class, upper-caste image of the women's movement in India. In 2005, she was one of 1000 nominees for the '1000 women for the Nobel Peace Prize' campaign. In 2006 she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award.

Mr. Rajendra K Misra is an entrepreneur and a member of ABIDe Task Force. He is also the Managing Director of Tenet Holdings, has served as an adviser to the Rajasthan government, and is the co-chairman (infrastructure) at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), South. A member of the Karnataka government’s empowered committee on infrastructure; he was declared the winner of the Lead India Campaign, launched by Times of India, in 2008.

Mr Muralidhar Rao is the founder member of “praja.in”, a non-profit citizen networking platform that promotes constructive discourse and encourages engagement on local civic issues. It is a growing internet based local community with 4000 registered members and over 35000 unique visitors every month. He is a Member of the Lok Satta Party - Karnataka, Working Group, Koramangala Initiative - an active resident welfare group in Bangalore, and the Indian Liberal Group. He is also a member of Hasiru Usiru, a tree protection group working to sustain the greenery in and around Bangalore. He is a Permanent Invitee to all meetings organized by various Civil Society groups in Bangalore, like CAF, Janaagraha, Public Affairs Centre, CIVIC, PROOF, Environment Support Group, etc. He was instrumental in starting the ‘Yelli Iddira?’ service for tracking BMTC’s Volvo buses through SMS, using GPS-based technology, in association with C L Infotech Pvt Ltd, Bangalore. He was the charter President of the high-rise housing complex, comprising 140 units, where he resides and also a team member of a capacity building exercise (essentially providing the Civil Society perspective) targeted at City Municipality officials (specifically of Tirupathi, Puri, Ujjain & Kottayam), under a ‘Ecocity Program’, organized by ‘Centre for Sustainable Environment and Heritage’, New Delhi, in partnership with INWENT ( International Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH), and GTZ (German Technical Co-operation), under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment & Forests, GoI, during Aug/ Sept, ’06.

Mr Amar Murthy is the Managing Director of Town Essentials Pvt. Ltd. (www.towness.com). He is one of the initiators and core group members of SmartVote, a campaign to get better leaders elected. He has conducted many projects to raise the awareness of citizens to elect better leaders. He is also a member of the Governing Council for a village school – Adarsha Vidya Samsthe.

Ms. Anita Reddy is the Founding Trustee of AVAS and has worked voluntarily with urban poor communities living in the slums of Bangalore and Chittoor and in rural communities living in the villages of A.P, Karnataka & T.N. Her work includes the promotion of various model re-housing projects for slum dwellers, establishing a number of pre-schools and activity centers for children from slums, forming women and youth groups for creating awareness and responsibilities towards self-help and community health, encouraging adolescent girls towards becoming self-reliant, promoting vocational and skill training programs and self employment generating schemes etc, all of which have helped many urban poor and slum dwellers. She was awarded the Padma Shri this year (2010) for yeoman services to the society.

Dr Ashwin Mahesh is the co-founder of India Together and one of its lead editors. He is also the CEO and co-founder of Mapunity, a startup that develops technology to tackle social problems and development challenges in India. He is adjunct faculty at IIIT Bangalore and researcher on urban governance issues at IIM Bangalore. Dr Mahesh is also Urban Research Strategist for the Government of Karnataka and a member of the Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure Development (ABIDe) Task Force. His main interest is in the potential of information and communication, coupled with technology and management, to promote the public good in India, especially through better capacity for public administration.