Manu K Vora

Education

Vora has a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering (from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago), a Masters Degree in Marketing Management (from Keller Graduate School of Management, Chicago) and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (from Banaras Hindu University, India).

Academy

Between 1993 and 2005, Vora was an Adjunct Professor for the MBA Program at the IIT Stuart School of Business. Since 2008, he has held the same role at the DeKalb College of Business, Northern Illinois, teaching, "Quality Assurance Project Management" in the Quality Assurance & Regulatory Science graduate program. Since 2006 he has been a visiting professor at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, India teaching the Total Quality Management course in both the regular and executive MBA programs.

Vora taught ASQ Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) preparation classes at AT&T Bell Laboratories (now Lucent Technologies), to create 89 CQEs.

Board memberships

Vora sits on the Board of Advisors of the Cooperative Association of States for Scholarships (CASS) Program at the Broome Community College in Binghamton, NY.

Awards

In 2008 the Clerk’s Office in Chicago awarded Vora the 2nd Asian American Community Leadership Award.

In 2011, the National Ethic Coalition of Organizations (NECO) awarded Vora the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for “outstanding contributions to [his] community, nation and the world.” Also that year he received the U.S. President’s Call to Service Award. The following year the Illinois Institute of Technology presented him with the Alumni Medal.

In 2013 he received the Spencer Hutchens Medal for Social Responsibility.

In 2014 Vora was selected by the Asia Pacific Quality Organization APQO for the Harrington/Ishikawa Medal which is “given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the advancement of quality in the Asia Pacific region.” In May 2015 he was honored by the ASQ “for his innovative contributions and achievements in quality.”

Earlier on in his life, Vora at different stages was the recipient of other awards including: J. N. Tata Endowment Scholarship for Higher Education in USA, Distinguished Service Award, Save the Children Foundation, the Paul Harris Fellow Medal, The Rotary International, the Eugene L. Grant Medal, the IIT Professional Achievement Award and the E. Jack Lancaster Medal.

Philanthropy

Vora established the Blind Foundation for India (BFI) in 1989, where he is also President. The organization has raised more than $3.5 million, which has enabled it to perform 95,000 free cataract operations, purchased 83 mobile vans for conducting eye camps, distributed 9,500 Braille kits to blind children and helped over a million visually-impacted people in India. Since 1970, he has raised over $8 million for a variety of charitable and professional causes.

Between 1986 and 1999, Vora was also Chairman of "Save The Children Holiday Fund Drive" at AT&T Bell Laboratories/Lucent Technologies, sponsoring 52 children in 19 countries globally.

Other projects he led include: blankets for East Pakistani Refugees, clothing for the poor, water drinking projects in India, and medicine and technology transfer to Seth G. S. Medical College and K.E.M. Hospital, Mumbai.

Publications

Vora has written articles for various publications. These include: the UK’s Total Quality Management Journal and TQM Magazine, as well as the ASQ Quality Engineering Journal, ASQ Quality Progress Magazine, American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal, India Abroad, Oil & Gas Journal, World Oil, and International Petroleum Encyclopedia.

Speaking presentations

Vora has delivered more than 385 presentations over the world on the subject of business excellence and quality management.

Included in this was two TEDx Talks in 2013 (at TEDxIITBHU and TEDxIIT Chicago).

Acclaim

According to a Clinical Research Associate at the University of Chicago, Ashish Thakkar, “Vora is a very good professor with extensive knowledge about “Project Management” and did a very great job by covering very useful “Harvard Business Review” articles in the class. The class was a good source of learning various project management tools and it was made great by Dr. Manu Vora. I think this class is one of the best classes that I have ever attended. He is very approachable, dedicated, and well-organized professor. I highly recommend Dr. Vora as a professor.”

Regulatory Affairs Consultant, Sylvia Palmer described him as being “an outstanding instructor with a unique teaching style and his course is one of the best learning experiences I've had. The wealth of information that he shared, company profiles, guest speakers, Harvard Business Review articles, and his own personal principles taught me how effective project management is accomplished. He created in me a great sense of confidence in my ability to manage any type of project. I highly recommend Dr. Vora.”

Corporate Account Manager at bioMerieux, Jeffrey Stockman said he was “an excellent professor of Quality Project Management principles. His experience and mentoring style were delivered in a professional and digestable forum. I would recommend Manu to others who are looking to gain such insight from his experiences.”

Senior Manager at Bank of America, Ankit Kapoor said that he “provided guidance to me during the empirical study while I was a student at Great Lakes Institute of Management, I completed the research on the topic "How Business Excellence Drives Customer Satisfaction" with an hypothesis: If the internal processes inside the organization improves then it will also improve customer satisfaction.

Through the guidance of Dr. Vora all the 2 students other than me were encouraged to think and look for solutions by themselves and only after that Dr. Vora would come and share his thought process at any given point of the research work. The style of his guidance is exemplary and I learnt a lot by doing an empirical study work under him.”

Founder of Nonprofit Consultancy, Paul Quin described Vora as being “among the most inspiring and thoughtful leaders in Quality and Change Management today. His intellectual capacity and thoughtful analysis of situations and business cases he has adjudicated place him in a class of distinguished national voices serving in academia and industry!”