Tuesday, January 28th, 2025
Ebell Club of Santa Ana
718 Mortimer St, Santa Ana, CA 92701
6pm Reception; 6:30pm Program
With Panelists:
Matt Kawecki, Quad Team Lead, US State Dept
Dr. Rafiq Dossani, Senior Economist RAND Corp
Gunjan Bagla CEO, India Practice Amritt, Inc
Parking is Complimentary
Speaker Bios
Matt Kawecki
Matt joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 2010. In July 2024, he began his latest diplomatic assignment as Quad Team Lead in the Department of State’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Prior to working in the Office of China Coordination from 2021 to 2024, he worked as senior advisor in State’s Office of eDiplomacy, serving as a bridge between IT professionals and diplomats in the field. In 2019 he received his Master of Arts in War and Society Studies degree from Chapman University in Orange, CA. From 2015 to 2017 he was deputy chief of the political and economic section in U.S. Consulate General Jeddah, Saudi Arabia following a diplomatic assignment in Cairo, Egypt and language training in Muscat, Oman. During his first diplomatic tour in U.S. Embassy Beijing, he worked as staff assistant to Ambassadors Gary Locke and Jon Huntsman, and as an economic officer covering rural development, food safety, and competition policy. Before joining the Department of State, Matt designed and managed a Contemporary China Studies publication program for Brill Academic Publishers and taught history and literature at Dongbei University in Shenyang, China. He graduated in 2004 with a Bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Duke University, where he was mascot for Duke’s basketball and football teams. He speaks and reads Mandarin Chinese and Arabic.
Rafiq Dossani
Rafiq Dossani is a senior economist at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He works on Asian development and security, trade, and technology issues. Recent projects include the equities of middle powers in the event of a cross-Strait conflict, China’s AI exports, China’s grand strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative, and Track II diplomacy between the United States and China.
Previously, Dossani was director of Stanford University’s Center for South Asia and a senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in finance from Northwestern University; an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta; and a B.A. in economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.
Gunjan Bagla
Gunjan Bagla is founder and CEO of Amritt, Inc, a boutique consulting firm that specialized in guiding American companies and their executives to success in their dealings with India. While its clients are from all over North American, organizations with a strong So Cal presence who have benefitted from Amritt’s expertise include Axonics Inc, Biocom California, Boeing, Caltech, Hewlett Packard, Korn Ferry, Northrop Grumman, Parker Aerospace, Sydnexis, Teledyne, Walt Disney Co, Wonderful Co and many others.
He is the author of the acclaimed title “Doing Business in 21st Century India: How to Profit Today from tomorrow’s most exciting Market” and was the technical editor on John Wiley’s Doing Business in India for Dummies (2007). Gunjan writes about business with India for the Harvard Business Review. He has been quoted for his India expertise in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times and has appeared on National Public Radio, BBC Radio and TV, Fox Business Cable and Bloomberg TV to talk about India. This will be Gunjan’s third appearance on stage with the Orange County World Affairs Council.
He created the executive seminar “Business with India” for Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California and has also taught executives at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Phoenix, Arizona. He is a mechanical engineering graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology and currently past President of the IIT Alumni Group. Gunjan completed his MBA with honors from Southern Illinois University.
Most recently Gunjan was featured in the Los Angeles Daily News and on LAIst Radio and website for his work to convince the Indian Government to open a new Consulate in Los Angeles.
