At the Annual General Meeting and Gala Dinner of the World Zarathushti Chamber of Commerce, three Zarathushtis all from the USA, won the three awards presented.
Edul Daver of New Jersey USA won the 2014 Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Nina Godiwalla won the 2014 Professional of the Year Award. Shirin Kumaana-Wadia (a Parsi Khabar co-founder) won the Young Professional/Entrepreneur Award for 2014.
The Awards were presented to Edul and Shirin by Lord Karan Bilimoria. Nina could not attend due to prior commitments.
The Gala Dinner at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dubai began with a warm welcome by WZCC Secretary Behroze Daruwalla. Minocher Patel, a public motivational speaker then gave a wonderful talk about what Happiness means to all of us and many spend all their lives striving to achieve it, without realizing that it is in the now and here. Fitness guru Mickey Mehta spoke about how living healthy was a holisitc process, both of body and mind.
Then Chief Guest of the evening Lord Karan Bilimoria spoke of his journey as an entrepreneur and used his journey with Cobra beer to emphasize some of the finer points of entrepreneurship and running businesses.
This was followed by the much awaited awards ceremony.
Edul Daver lives in New Jersey. Over an illustrious career spanning a few decades he started with and then finally became the owner of a metal coating company, one of the largest in the US. In his response to the award, Edul spoke of the unflinching support of his wife Niloufer as the backbone of a successful entrepreneurial journey. More about Edul here
Nina Godiwalla lives in Texas. Nina Godiwalla is a thought leader in leadership and diversity who is currently the US Director of Diversity for Norton Rose Fulbright, one of the largest law firms in the world. She is also the bestselling author of Suits: A Woman on Wall Street. The New York Times describes the internationally acclaimed book as the “Devil Wears Prada” of investment banking.
Nina is often sought out as a leadership expert by prominent institutions including The White House, Harvard Business School, NASA, Smithsonian, The Wall Street Journal Executive Task Force, and TED Conference. Before becoming an internationally recognized speaker, she spent almost a decade working for Fortune 500 corporations. Along with Barbara Bush and Sandra Day O’Connor, Nina was honored into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame. In 2012 she accepted an invitation by the White House’s Office of the President to serve on its Leadership Roundtable. She also serves on Governor Rick Perry’s Business Council. She is often featured in major media including USA Today, Forbes Magazine, Elle Magazine, NPR, ABC News, and CNN.
Nina holds an MBA from Wharton, an MA from Dartmouth, and a BBA from The University of Texas.
Shirin Kumaana-Wadia lives in New York. As a young professional Shirin has been involved in design projects all over the world focusing in hospitality design. She also started her own design firm Mazda Design that pursues unique design projects in the USA and India. She is also into Salsa and other Latin dances and is a photographer with recent exhibitions in India and upcoming ones in 2015. Shirin spoke about how design in all walks of life can help everyone from individuals at the single scale to cities, nations and mankind itself at the collective level. More about Shirin here
The event ended with a vote of thanks to the WZCC executives and to the organizers of Enterprise Dubai 2014.