For him, success means focusing on getting things done for yourself, while also helping others along the way. He says, “When others become successful, I automatically become successful.”
It’s his focus that makes him a great educator. He has spent as many as 30 years as a teacher, ensuring that his students find their success.
His impressive educational career is complemented by over 48 years of leadership experience, making him a valued contributor to global management thought processes. He has been a Fulbright Specialist, US Department of State; Adjunct Professor, MBA Program, IIT Stuart School of Business; Adjunct Faculty, School of Professional Studies, Northwestern University and Visiting Faculty IIT (BHU), Varanasi, under MHRD, Government of India’s GIAN program.
Leading Business Excellence, Inc, he has helped many Fortune 500 companies with Baldrige Performance Excellence Award assessment. An American Society for Quality (ASQ) Fellow, he has been a former Vice President of its National Board of Directors and served as a Chairperson for ASQ Chicago.
Dr Manu Vora’s magnanimity as a philanthropist has been many folds. For over 53 years, he has dedicated his life to community service. Few people get to feature among the who’s who; he, however, is a luminary. He is among the who’s who World, in the US, in the Midwest, in Science and Engineering, and in Global Finance and Business. And these are just a few of the accolades he has garnered over the years including 60 awards and honors for his professional excellence.
Childhood Influences
Manu was born to Shantaben and Kishandas Vora in October 1945 in pre-independent India. Recalling his childhood, he says, “My mother was a very caring person and imparted good family values to my brother, Mahesh, and me. She passed away when he was just four; later, his father passed away at 35 when he was six. He was a successful businessman and a part-ner in a yarn-spinning company since young. He believed in dedication, hard work and helping others. I have learnt it all from him.”
He shares an incident. “It was 1959; I was in grade 8 when a freak accident with a firecracker left me blind for about 24 hours. I had third-degree burns on my face and eyes remained shut because of the residue that had entered them.” He did not lose his eyesight but rather gained an insight into the lives of visually impaired people, influencing him to start the Blind Foundation for India in the US in 1989. It serves over 15 million visually challenged people in India and has raised huge funds for free eyesight check-ups for two million people. It is now in its 34th year of operation and the journey continues.
Scholar Heads to the US
After high school, Vora studied science for two years at Khalsa College, Bombay, and obtained a BTech (Hon) in Chemical Engineering at IIT (BHU), Varanasi.
His decision to come to the US was influenced by the lack of opportunities in India and his commitment to studying further. “I was a rank holder at IIT (BHU), and my goal was to find a good institute in the US to enhance my academic abilities and find good employment. At the time, chemical engineering jobs in India required connections to get into the industry, and as I come from a trading family, I had none.”
His life in the US began as a Tata scholar. He did his MS and then later a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago. Looking back, he feels fortunate to have landed in the right place at the right time. “I came to Chicago and studied at an institute with superlative education, established a great network of friends and gained knowledge of technology and philanthropy at the campus.”
Not content with his academic achievements, Vora decided to get an MBA (Marketing Management) from the Keller Graduate School of Management, Chicago. All this while, he was working and was laid off by one of his companies. Later, AT&T Bell Laboratories scooped up this bright young man. “It took me to New Jersey and then back to Illinois in 10 months. I stayed with the company for more than 17 years and developed expertise in quality management.”
Inspired to Educate
His struggles in his formative years made him realize that good education is the key to success. “Having faced a rough phase in my childhood, my focus was always on education. I knew it was the key to finding decent work opportunities and accomplishing better things. The resources I was able to access have been useful in supporting others as well.”
Over the years, Vora has made education his weapon to empower his students. “We need to first engage students in the classroom, excite them with practical applications, motivate them with resources and ultimately challenge them to find solutions.”
Affiliated with over 680 educational institutions across five continents, he is a thought leader and speaker, who is celebrated as a visionary in the fields of business excellence and quality management. Other achievements include 1250 presentations around the world including TEDx talks, authoring a chapter in, Six Sigma for Transactions and Service, a publication by McGraw-Hill, publishing over 75 scholarly articles and writing over 50 blogs on quality management.
Success Lies in Giving Back
When he started teaching in India in 2000, Vora realized that the brilliance of the talent pool, both at academic and executive levels was overshadowed by a lack of soft skills such as leadership, decision-making, time management, teamwork and project management. So, in 2013, he decided to address this. “I started a Leadership Excellence Series (LES) with 12 sessions at IIT (BHU). We expanded it to over 100 colleges and universities throughout India to provide knowledge on life-long soft skills, which I feel is lacking in academic curricula. We started calling it Gyan Daan (Gift of Knowledge) that has benefited more than 11 lac people in India.”
It is no surprise that The World Book of Records, London, recently felicitated him for his service as a member of the AICTE NEP 2020 Implementation Plan Committee and his social work spanning over 52 years. This is in addition to 40 awards and honors he has already received for his prolific community service.
A Familial Passion: Societal Development
Vora has been able to give back to society only because of his family’s support. Dr Nila and he met in 1974 in the US and got married in the same year.
“She is always with me and supports me in everything.” She is an Internist and Endocrinologist before retiring a few years ago when COVID-19 hit. She volunteers for India Development Service, which works in India at grassroots levels supporting NGOs in education, environment, healthcare, livelihood and women empowerment. He adds, “Other than love, care and concern, we are bonded by a common thought process of giving back to society.”
Both their children, Ashish, Business Partnership at Confluent, and Anand, Product Part-nership at LinkedIn, also help out.
Despite his busy schedule, he ensures striking work-life balance. “I walk almost 4 miles a day for the last 12 years and I lost a good amount of weight. To keep my mind sharp, I read. I like to update my knowledge and stay relevant with today’s generation of students, so I read Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly and MIT Sloan Management Review. Of course, entertainment is important and I enjoy watching Indian television programs.”
It is clear that Dr Manu has achieved the pinnacle of success and beyond. Yet the formula to reaching those heights remains simple. “We all have the capacity to give back and we should all exercise this capacity. I have always maintained that success is in lifting others as we climb up.”
“Ultimately,” he wisely adds, “none of us is going to take anything, be it knowledge or money, with us. So why not give it back while we can?”