Bio

Parmesh Shahani is an author and a passionate advocate for LGBTQ inclusion in corporate India who has guided many of the country’s leading companies on their inclusion journeys. Most recently, he founded and ran the award winning Godrej India Culture Lab for a decade, between 2011 and 2021 and also served as Vice President at Godrej Industries Ltd. Parmesh’s first book Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India (Sage) was released in 2008 and his second book Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace (Westland) was released in August 2020 and won the CK Prahalad Award for Best Business Book of 2021. Parmesh holds an MS in Comparative Media Studies from MIT. He is a TED Senior Fellow, a Yale World Fellow, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He is a member of the FICCI taskforce on diversity and inclusion and a board member of KHOJ International Artists’ Association, and Breakthrough.