Digital
Thomson Reuters names Twinkle Barpanda customer success director for Asia
Two-decade client-success veteran to steer regional relationships and transformation
GURUGRAM: Thomson Reuters has appointed Twinkle Barpanda as customer success director for Asia, handing a cross-market operator the task of deepening client relationships and driving value across its corporate and legal products in the region.
Barpanda will oversee customer success across South-East Asia, India and China, a remit that spans some of the company’s fastest-growing and most complex markets. The hire underlines Thomson Reuters’ push to pair technology and data with sharper client engagement in Asia.
She brings more than 20 years of experience leading cross-cultural teams, managing change and transformation projects, handling key accounts, and driving quality, business development and process streamlining. Team development and coaching sit high on her agenda, alongside a strong focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, with an emphasis on putting people first.
Barpanda joins from NielsenIQ, where she served as global deployment leader for tech and durables, planning and executing a global transformation programme designed to reshape how clients are serviced and insights delivered. Her brief covered deployment planning, execution and monitoring, internal and external change management, KPI design, and cross-functional coordination. She also led global customer-success operations and governance for the same vertical, focusing on service transformation and process discipline.
Before that, she spent more than 18 years at GfK, rising through the ranks to regional leadership. As director, client success for APAC, she led customer success for sectors including telecom, consumer electronics, appliances and printers, spanning pre-sales, insights and client experience. Earlier, as APAC quality director for customer success management, she focused on diagnosing quality gaps and tightening client-management processes across the region.
Her long India stint at GfK covered analytics, client servicing, quality management and business development. She helped build new product-category tracks, managed point-of-sales tracking businesses in appliances and electronics, delivered fact-based consultancy and strategic insights, and presented to global clients. She also handled portfolios of multiple consumer-durable clients while leading account teams and setting up new client-specific studies from scratch.
Barpanda began her career at Info Edge India, working in search and recruitment roles before moving into research and client advisory.
With Asia’s clients demanding sharper insights and faster outcomes, Thomson Reuters is betting on a leader who blends process rigour with a people lens. In the race to retain clients, service is the new sales—and Barpanda steps in to keep both humming at full tilt.
Digital
Ethical AI must benefit society, not dominate it, says WFEB chief Sanjay Pradhan at IAA event
At Mumbai event, ethics expert urges businesses and governments to shape AI responsibly
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence may be racing ahead at lightning speed, but its direction must still be guided by human conscience. That was the central message delivered by Sanjay Pradhan, president of the World Forum for Ethics in Business (WFEB), during the latest edition of IAA Conversations held in Mumbai.
The session was organised by the International Advertising Association (IAA) and the Artificial Intelligence Association of India (AIAI) in association with The Free Press Journal at the Free Press House on 7 March. Addressing a packed audience, Pradhan called for stronger ethical leadership to ensure AI remains a tool that benefits humanity rather than one that governs it.
“Artificial intelligence has rapidly become one of the most powerful technologies humanity has created,” Pradhan said. “It is unlocking breakthroughs in medicine, science and creativity at a pace unimaginable just a few years ago.”
But he warned that the same technology carries serious risks. AI, he noted, can amplify disinformation faster than facts can travel, compromise privacy, deepen discrimination and disrupt millions of livelihoods. Referencing concerns raised by AI pioneers such as Geoffrey Hinton, often called the godfather of AI, Pradhan stressed that the real challenge is not whether AI will shape the world, but whether humans will shape it with ethics and wisdom.
Structuring his talk around four guiding questions, why, what, how and who, Pradhan introduced the audience to WFEB’s emerging AI Ethics Partnership, a global platform aimed at advancing responsible artificial intelligence. He outlined four priority concerns that demand urgent attention: disinformation, bias and discrimination, data privacy and job security.
To make the idea of ethical AI easier to grasp, Pradhan offered a simple metaphor. Ethical AI, he said, is like a three layered cake. The outer layer represents the visible value ethical AI creates for businesses and society. The middle layer is organisational culture that moves ethics from written codes to everyday practice. The innermost layer, however, is the most crucial, the conscience of individual leaders.
Drawing from Indian philosophical thought through WFEB co-founder Ravi Shankar, Pradhan noted that while artificial intelligence can reproduce stored knowledge, true intelligence is boundless and rooted in conscience, creativity and compassion. Practices such as breathwork and meditation, he suggested, can help leaders develop the calm clarity needed for ethical decision making.
The event also featured a discussion with Maninder Adityaraj Singh, chief of staff and head of innovation at Rediffusion Brand Solutions Pvt Ltd, and Yash Johri, lawyer, Supreme Court of India.
Opening the session, IAA India chapter president Abhishek Karnani, highlighted the need for industries to understand and engage with AI responsibly.
“AI has to be befriended and understood,” added Rediffusion managing director and AIAI national convenor Sandeep Goyal. “Its ethical use will determine whether it becomes a friend or a foe.”
As AI continues to reshape industries and societies, Pradhan ended with a simple but powerful call to action. Businesses, governments and individuals must work together to ensure that the algorithms shaping the future reflect human values rather than just cold logic.
