Abhay Samant is Chief Software Engineer at NI and Lecturer in the ECE department at UT Austin. He has been a volunteer with Hindu Charities for America, dba as EC4A, for over a year now. Abhay believes that the principle of Sewa, defined as a selfless act that aims to protect and help the underprivileged, is considered as one of the biggest dharma or religious duties in Hinduism.

He is volunteering for the EC4A Gala because it helps raise funds for providing vocational scholarships to deserving, low-income adults who aspire to bridge the income gap and create a growth environment for their families.

Dr. Mamta Motwani Accapadi is a mom first. She is mother to SaayaAccapadi, and when she is not in a dance studio, or on an athletics field, Dr. Mamta serves as a higher education consultant. She recently moved back home to Austin, TX.

Dr. Mamta has served as a national leader in higher education for over 15 years. Most recently, she was the VP for University Life at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to that role, she was VP for Student Life at Rollins College- the first person and woman of color Vice President in the history of that institution. She has served as a leader and educator at Oregon State University, University of Houston, and The University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Mamta is nationally recognized for her impact in higher education- particularly for her sustained leadership and focus around advancing social justice and equity issues for historically and systemically under-represented communities. In 2020, Dr. Mamta was recognized as one of the top 35 women leaders in higher education by Diverse Issues in Higher Education.

She attended The University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in microbiology, as well as a master’s and Ph.D. in higher education administration.

Online technology and startup veteran, known as SEO’Brien for an extensive past in the search industry, Paul works in Venture Capital Economic Development, serving investment in entrepreneurs. With a passion for media innovation and investment, Paul seeded MediaTech Ventures, a media industry venture development group.

Former Venture Partner in Meaningful Ventures, O'Brien is Founder and Director of Funded House and Director of Founder Institute for Texas.

Historically, a seasoned marketer with an early career at Yahoo! and HP. From there, Paul led the early growth of startups such as Outright.com (Acquired by GoDaddy), Zvents (Acquired by eBay’s Stubhub), and MicroVentures (Venture Capital). Paul has an unusually strong technical background considering the role he tends to play today; he built websites in the '90s and continues to engineer and produce content at seobrien.com. He was featured in the book, Online Marketing Heroes, and frequently speaks at startup and media conferences.

Ashok Kumar is Vice President , Engineering and Operations at AT&T Cybersecurity. Ashok is leading the Gala sponsorship and marketing efforts

Ashok is passionate about 3 things

Family - Spending time with his 2 children, wife , parents and puppy Laddu 

Technology - Designing and alining technology platforms to preferred business outcomes 

People - Ashok loves to serve people , and is always looking for ways to work with a team 

Pragya Sen is an IT professional/Entrepreneur but her passion and creativity goes beyond that.
Pragya is founder of PS Productions LLC - a platform for arts, events and creativity. She has brought to Austin A-list bollywood artists like Arijit Singh 2022 and successfully drawn a crowd of over 4000 people.

Her accomplishments include receiving multiple Empowered women awards in the last 4 years. She has been recognized for the many ‘first endeavors’ in Austin initiated by her.

She is also a pageant winner and holds 3 titles of beauty with purpose. She is passionate about public speaking, writing, philanthropy and mentoring. She has hosted many shows and and coordinated fundraising events in Austin. She advocates creativity and talent, child education and women empowerment!!

Pankil Matalia is an IT Program/Project Manager working at a fortune 100 multinational company in Austin, TX. He graduated from University of Mumbai, India, and has received his MIS in Computer Science from NIIT, Mumbai India. Pankil is very passionate about community services, which he started at a young age of 15 accompanying his mother in several charitable events in Mumbai, India.

He has served in several community boards and committees. Some of the notable services are: While in Cedar Falls, IA, he was on the board and president for IANEIA (India Association of NE Iowa), for 4 years. After moving to Austin, TX in year 2011, he joined Jain Sangh of Greater Austin (JSGA) as a board member, and then serving as a President for 5 years, he along with other community leader, also helped establish Austin’s first Jain community center. Pankil has also received “United States Presidents – Volunteer Service Award”, for his dedicated volunteering services to EC4A.

Meet Vaishali Tendolkar -  an enthusiastic and exuberant community Leader.  She is actively involved in cultural, religious, volunteer, and community service projects in Austin area. She has been with Education and Careers for America for the past seven years executing various roles and responsibilities and currently serves as the  Vice President for EC4A.

Professionally she is dedicated to serve the State of Texas through her career as an Environmentalist. Vaishali is a passionate singer, and performs professionally at private and fundraising events. She is also an avid cuisine connoisseur and her hobbies include gourmet and traditional cooking, spiritual reading, yoga, meditation and spending time and traveling with her family.

Vaishali truly believes that sharing your happiness and your blessings daily with someone in need is the highest form of living a charitable life!!!