Adjunct Faculty

Paresh Shah

Paresh Shah is an experienced entrepreneur, executive and management consultant. He is currently founder and managing director of Forge Advisors, a leading management consultancy. Forge Advisors works with executives from corporations, governments and non-profit organizations to help them achieve their business goals. Forge Advisors specializes in growth/competitive strategy, new business/product creation, distribution, globalization, entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship, business process engineering, strategic alliances and managing in rapidly changing industries. It serves Fortune 500 and high growth clients (see website www.forgeadvisors.com)

Prior to joining Forge Advisors, Paresh was the Senior Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Sales at Cidera, a broadband wireless satellite networking company. While at Cidera, Mr. Shah and his team sold Cidera’s services to strategic accounts and forged alliances with content providers, satellite companies, telecommunications and hosting providers, and hardware vendors. Also, Mr. Shah led the acquisition of Mainstream Data services, which was spun off as an independent company in 2001. Mr. Shah, as a member of the executive team of Cidera helped raise over $75 MM and prepare for an IPO in 2000.

Prior to Cidera, Mr. Shah was Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Aether Systems (Nasd:AETH), a wireless data communications firm where he led all aspects of marketing and advertising and established partnerships and pioneer customers in the emerging industry of wireless data applications. Prior to Aether, Mr. Shah was founder and CEO of SafeExchange, a secure commerce software and services firm which was sold in a transaction to a publicly traded firm. Mr. Shah has founded and advised numerous other start-ups throughout his career.

Mr. Shah’s consulting expertise derives from his experience as a senior engagement manager at Monitor Company, a strategic consultancy formed by several Harvard Business School professors including strategist Michael Porter. Mr. Shah led teams of management consultants helping Fortune 500 executives with competitive strategy. As part of the leadership, he helped grow the firm from 150 to 1000 employees worldwide. Mr. Shah also held positions at Gemini consulting and served as Operations Manager and Program Manager for Aerospace and Defense Systems at Northrop Grumman Corporation.

Mr. Shah received his MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and authored two business school case studies in marketing and distribution. He also started Tribeca Designs, a home and office products company while in his second year of business school and sold it after graduation. Mr. Shah graduated first in his engineering class with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maryland in Mechanical Engineering. Honors included Chancellor's Prize, Phi Kappa Phi, Dramatic Arts Scholarship and President of the Honors Student Association.

Mr. Shah is an Adjunct Professor in the MBA program of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, guest lecturer on strategy and strategic alliances in the MBA program at the Kogod School of Business at American University, Lecturer and affiliate of the Alex. Brown Center for Science and Technology Entrepreneurship, lecturer on new business creation at UMBC, President of the Wireless Industries Council – Harvard Business School Technology Alumni Association, and advisor to the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship.

Mr. Shah served as an officer of Harvard University from 1993-1996 and as a resident tutor in Leverett House. He serves on the Board of Directors of the TiE-DC/ICEO (the largest executive networking organization in the Washington/VA/MD region www.tie-dc.org), is a Charter member of TiE (a global organization of entrepreneurs www.tie.org), and as a founder and board member of UFx Fairfax Travel. Mr. Shah was appointed by the Governor of Maryland to serve on the Board of Directors of the Maryland India Business Roundtable.

pshah@forgeadvisors.com