Dara Khosrowshahi

Dara Khosrowshahi born May 28, 1969) is an Iranian-American businessman and the chief executive officer of Uber. Khosrowshahi was previously CEO of Expedia Group, a company that owns several travel fare aggregators. He is also a member of the board of directors of BET.com, and Hotels.com, and previously served on the board of The New York Times Company.

Khosrowshahi is on the list of "Prominent Iranian-Americans" published by the Embassy of the United States, Tehran.

Khosrowshahi was born in 1969 in Iran into a wealthy family and grew up in a mansion on the family compound. He is the youngest of the three children of Lili and Asghar (Gary) Khosrowshahi. His family founded the Alborz Investment Company, a diversified conglomerate involved in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food, distribution, packaging, trading, and services.

In 1978, just before the Iranian Revolution, his family was targeted for its wealth and his mother decided to leave everything behind and flee the country. Their company was later nationalized. His family first fled to southern France. They were planning to come back to Iran if the revolution failed, but when that didn't happen, they immigrated to the United States, moving in with one of his uncles in Tarrytown, New York. In 1982, when Khosrowshahi was 13 years old, his father went to Iran to care for his grandfather. His father was not allowed to leave Iran for 6 years and therefore Khosrowshahi spent his teenage years without seeing his father. In 1987, he graduated from the Hackley School, a private university-preparatory school in Tarrytown. In 1991, he graduated with a B.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Brown University, where he was a member of the social fraternity Sigma Chi.

Career

In 1991, Khosrowshahi joined Allen & Company, an investment bank, as an analyst. In 1998, he left Allen & Company to work for one of his former clients at the bank, Barry Diller, first at Diller's USA Networks, where he held the positions of senior vice president for strategic planning and then president, and later as chief financial officer of IAC, another company controlled by Diller.

In 2001, IAC purchased Expedia, and in August 2005, Khosrowshahi became CEO of Expedia. Ten years later, in 2015, Expedia gave him $90 million in stock options as part of a long-term employment agreement, conditioned on him staying with the company until 2020.

In June 2013, he received a Pacific Northwest Entrepreneur of the Year award from Ernst & Young.

In 2016, he was one of the highest paid CEOs in the United States. During his tenure as CEO of Expedia, "the gross value of its hotel and other travel bookings more than quadrupled and its pre-tax earnings more than doubled." Under Khosrowshahi, Expedia extended its presence to more than 60 countries and acquired Travelocity, Orbitz, and HomeAway.

He forfeited his un-vested stock options of Expedia, then worth $184 million, but Uber reportedly paid him over $200 million to take the CEO position. He also serves on Uber's board of directors.

Khosrowshahi's main task was to clean up the image of a company that had become one of the most despised in the country, in part due to revelations about Uber's corporate culture. He replaced Kalanick's once-inviolable 14 values, which contained such items as "super pumped" and "always be hustlin'," with eight values focusing on "customer obsession." At all of his public appearances after taking over, Khosrowshahi stressed the message, "We do the right thing. Period."

Khosrowshahi's net worth is estimated to be at least $170 million as of June 2023.

Yogi Adityanath

Yogi Adityanath (born Ajay Mohan Bisht; 5 June 1972) is an Indian Hindu monk and politician serving as the 22nd and current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, in office since 19 March 2017.

He was appointed as the Chief Minister on 26 March 2017 after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the 2017 State Assembly elections, in which he was a prominent campaigner. He has been the Member of Parliament from the Gorakhpur constituency, Uttar Pradesh, for five consecutive terms since 1998.

Adityanath is also the Mahant or head priest of the Gorakhnath Math, a Hindu temple in Gorakhpur, a position he has held since the death of his spiritual "father", Mahant Avaidyanath, in September 2014. He is also the founder of Hindu Yuva Vahini, a Hindu Nationalist organisation. He is often considered a Hindu nationalist due to his controversial views. He has an image as a right-wing populist Hindutva firebrand.

Adityanath was the youngest member of the 12th Lok Sabha at 26. He has been elected to the Parliament from Gorakhpur for five consecutive terms (in 1998, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 elections).

Adityanath's attendance in Lok Sabha was 77% and he has asked 284 questions, participated in 56 debates and introduced three private member Bills in the 16th Lok Sabha.

He was a prominent campaigner for the BJP in the 2017 assembly elections in the state of Uttar Pradesh. He was appointed Chief Minister, of the state on Saturday, 18 March 2017  and sworn in the next day on 19 March, after the BJP won the assembly elections. The illegal slaughterhouses in Uttar Pradesh faced shutdowns from the administration after his becoming the Chief Minister. Yogi ordered the forming of anti-romeo squads. He imposed a blanket ban on cow-smuggling and stay on UPPSC results, exams and interviews till further order. He imposed a ban on tobacco, pan and gutka in government offices across the state and made the officials pledge to devote 100 hours every year for the Swachh Bharat Mission. After becoming the CM of UP, he kept around 36 ministries for himself.