Dr. Manu Vora gets Asian American Community Leadership Award


Chicago: Honorable Dorothy Brown, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, presented the second Asian American Community Leadership Award to Dr. Manu K. Vora at the eighth Annual Asian American Heritage Month Program here recently. The award was presented to him “in recognition of his outstanding leadership and contributions to community-based organizations and citizens of Cook County and beyond.”

Honorable Ashok Kumar Attri, counsel general of India in Chicago, highlighted Dr. Vora’s contributions over a long period in the Chicagoland
area. Mr. Attri specifically acknowledged excellent work done by the Blind Foundation for India (BFI). BFI’s charter is to prevent and cure blindness and educate and rehabilitate over 15 million blind individuals in India.

Dr. Vora is the founding director and president of BFI, which has raised over $3.5 million for visually impaired people in India. For more information on BFI, Visit www.blindfoundation.org.

Dr. Vora is chairman and president of Business Excellence, Inc., a global quality management consulting firm. He has over 30 years of leadership experience guiding Fortune 500 companies with Malcolm Baldrige assessment in the areas of leadership development, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and continuous process improvement. As an adjunct professor, he teaches “Quality Management” and “Supply Chain Management” at Stuart School of Business at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago. He currently teaches “Quality Assurance Project Management” at the School of Continuing Studies at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

Dr.  Vora  is  a past vice president of American Society for Quality (ASQ), ASQ  Fellow,  and  Certified Quality Engineer. He served on the Affirmative Action  Advisory  Committee of Switching Systems Business Unit at AT&T Bell Laboratories for a number of years in Naperville, Illinois. Dr. Vora gave a keynote  address on “Leveraging Diversity for Organizational Excellence” at the  2008  Asian  American  Heritage  Month  Program  at  Alcatel-Lucent in Naperville, Illinois.

Dr.  Vora  has  B.S.,  M.S. & Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and an MBA with Marketing  Management.  He  served  as  a  Chief  Judge  at  Illinois  Team Excellence  Award  Program  from  1993-1999  and as a Judge on the Board of Examiners  of the Asia Pacific Quality Award since 2004. He has published a chapter on “Managing Human Capital” in the book “Six Sigma for Transactions and   Service”   by   McGraw-Hill  in  2005.  He  has  delivered  over  200 presentations  on  business  excellence  and Total Quality Management (TQM) topics around the world.  Dr. Vora has been recognized with numerous awards from  ASQ  including  ASQ Grant Medal, Lancaster Medal, Testimonial Awards, and  ASQ  Chicago  Section’s  Joe  Lisy  &  Founder’s  Award.  He  received Professional  Achievement  Award  and International Alumni Leadership Award from   IIT,   Paul  Harris  Fellow  Medal  from  Rotary  International  and Distinguished Service Award from Save The Children Federation.