About

Shadow a CEO is an innovative and unique programme organised to celebrate the ‘Joy of Giving Week’. Under this programme, one of the most anticipated and talked about initiatives in the ‘Joy of Giving Week’, students of select business schools can participate in an online auction to spend an entire day with a CEO of their choice. The CEO then contributes an equal amount, if not more; the collective corpus going to a charity of the CEO’s choice. Shadow a CEO serves the dual purpose of mobilising funds for charity and providing students with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet and learn from some of the biggest names in Corporate India.

The initiative was first organised by the Indian School of Business (ISB). In the first two years (2009 and 2010) of its launch the initiative has had immense success. Each year an outstanding number of CEOs have taken part in this endeavour. This includes N R Narayana Murthy, Chairman of the Board and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies, Adi Godrej, Chairman, The Godrej Group; R Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, Tata Sons; Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman and MD, Biocon Ltd.; Chanda Kochhar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, ICICI Bank Limited and Sanjay Nayar, Chief Executive Officer and Country Head and many of the same calibre.

Shadow a CEO – 2011 is planned to be bigger than what it has been in the past. This year the initiative will be open to a select set of other school apart from ISB, namely – IIMA, IIMB, IIMC and XLRI. The initiative will be driven by a core team comprising of alums of the mentioned school along with support from student teams in each campus.

Shadow a CEO is organised as part of the ‘Joy of Giving Week’ , a national movement that aims to engage more than a crore Indians in different "acts of giving" through money, time, resources and skills- spanning the Corporate, NGO and Government sectors, and also schools, colleges and the general public. The Week is designed as a "public platform" and is being co-ordinated by GiveIndia, a non-profit organisation whose mission is to promote "giving".

This concept works very well because of its motive-to raise awareness amongst future business leaders and current CEOs about the 'Joy of Giving Week' while simultaneously motivating students to participate by giving them a platform to boost their careers, the dream of any business school student.