Biren Bhuta, Founder, DISOM- Servant Leaders for Public Life
In this episode, Ashutosh Garg engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Biren Bhuta, Founder of DISOM- Servant Leaders for Public Life. Biren is a former Chief of the Corporate Social Responsibility at Tata Steel and was heading the Corporate Social Responsibility interventions of the company.
Podcast
Overview
In this episode, Ashutosh Garg engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Biren Bhuta, Founder of DISOM- Servant Leaders for Public Life.
Biren is a former Chief of the Corporate Social Responsibility at Tata Steel and was heading the Corporate Social Responsibility interventions of the company. He started his career as a corporate banker with Standard Chartered Bank; switched over to television journalism, initially as a reporter and later, as a presenter with NDTV. His next stint was as consultant for Tata Steel in the Chhattisgarh Project, where he gained insights into the tribal way of life in Bastar. He has also spent time in Odisha, working on an IUCN project to mitigate environmental impact on olive ridley turtles.
Biren is an engineer and has a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata
Biren talks about the three key milestones in his life. The banker turned television anchor explains how he transitioned well through different phases of career. The visionary elucidates the working and methodology of DISOM, the leadership school. Biren explains how candidates are selected to DISOM’s fellowship programme. He describes how his school trains fellows in a progressive and unconventional way.
Biren, who has experience working in different roles in different industries, tells what his source of inspiration is- the one thought that keeps him going.
#Banker #Anchor #DISOM
Profile
Biren embarked on his career with a multinational bank in Chennai. Soon, he gave it up to cut his teeth as a broadcast journalist with NDTV, where he reported on business, finance and the economy extensively, and created a series called India Business Report for BBC and a home series on corporate sustainability called Beyond Business.
The search for a deeper engagement with India then took him to the indigenous heartland of Bastar in Chhattisgarh. Here began a life-long love affair with tribal communities that reshaped his worldview; he believes that to save the world we must embrace indigenousity, which holds in its womb the true principles of sustainability. Biren’s longest stint has been with Tata Steel, as the Chief of Corporate Social Responsibility. In this capacity he worked on the whole spectrum of community development in tribal Jharkhand and Odisha. It led him to co-envision a countrywide tribal identity programme, Samvaad, which, to date, remains one of the sub-continent’s biggest international indigenous conclaves.
The rich output convinced him to co-create a funnelled national Tribal Leadership Programme, yet again a pioneering initiative. He left the company in 2018. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta, a fellow of the Management Development Programme from the Ross Business School in Michigan, and a recipient of the Gurukul Fellowship from the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Biren serves on the board of several prominent non-profits — Gram Vikas in Odisha and SeSTA in Assam.
He is also on the CSR Advisory Council of Tata Metaliks in West Bengal. Previously, Biren has briefly but passionately worked for the conservation of the Olive Ridley sea turtles in Odisha, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Biren loves Urdu poetry and Hindustani classical music.
