Born and raised in the great subcontinent of India, Rooji Sugathan calls himself a citizen of the world, resonating the thoughts of the nobel laureate R. Tagore's poem"Where the mind is without fear". Rooji's fascination for Information technology started in the year 1993. Learning to write code in a small dust free air (shoes not allowed) conditioned computer lab where the room was filled with computers that took in 5 ½ inch flop discs, and DOS was the environment with COBOL and FoxPro the reigning players. It didn’t take long for Rooji to realize that his fascination was more with systems and process design than in the mere art of writing code on the monochrome screens – color monitors, windows were still a distant dream. After three years of juggling books, floppy disks, and computer labs this fascination came to a temporary halt when educators handed him a diploma in software engineering. Computer was an expensive and delicate product, and was mostly found in offices rather than at homes. Although Rooji was fortunate to a PC at home with windows 95, he was pursuing his second fascination, (subconsciously it might be first) English literature.

As a graduate student of English Literature, he pondered over various intellectual discourses and philosophical arguments, like the purpose of human existence, religion, the essence of human life, and trying to understand the teaching and the works of great minds like Plato, Shakespeare, Kant, Jung, T.S. Elliot, Gandhiji, Thoreau, Conrad, Hemmingway and many others. This kept his mind in a constant state of flux or confusion, don’t get me wrong, this was as enjoyable and fruitful experience, he proclaims! And Rooji strongly believes that this experience plays a major role in his thought process even today and it helps him to better understand the human behavior. But like all good things the equilibrium of intellectual challenges was disturbed by the economic call for survival. Intellectual thought is great for your mind and your heart, but for human existence one has to satisfy ones hunger. This great call led Rooji in to the realms of the western civilization to another great nation The United States of America, the land of opportunity and capitalism.

Now Rooji was on his second graduate program, this time in the field of business administration with specialization in management of information systems (his first fascination). It was the late nineties and the world was on the cusp of a new millennium, it was the dawn of the internet revolution, exiting age for anyone who knew how to spell the word computer. The internet bubble was still expanding and the great Y2K problem was approaching fast and was still making money for technologist. After two years of intense course work, Rooji graduated from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in the year 2000. Literature and philosophy were placed on the back burner and the pursuit of business and technological knowledge was put on the forefront. The capitalistic race was on!

Business knowledge acquired while doing business is far more endearing than just reading them on paper. The graph of experience sky rocketed as he played various corporate roles like that of, a technical consultant, a project manager, and a product manager for an international software development firm. He was designing and implementing business and ecommerce systems throughout the world in various market segments. It has been about eight years, running the race and the enjoyment of just being a participant in the race was diminishing of him. So he decided to change directions again. Rooji is now in pursuit of knowledge! As a doctoral student of Management Information systems he gets to engage himself in intellectual and philosophical discourse in the field of technology. This he hopes is the perfect marriage of his two fascinations literature/philosophy and technology. And the beginning of a new romance!

1. St. Charles, Missouri (2000 - Current)
2. Carbondale, Illinois (1998 - 2000)
3. Chennia, Tamil Nadu (1991 - 1998)
4. New Delhi (1986 - 1991)
5. Mumbai, Maharashtra (1983 - 1986)
6. New Delhi (1974 - 1983)
7. Thrissur, Kerala (Born)