BOSTON— Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce will honor entrepreneur and philanthropist Desh Deshpande with the prestigious Distinguished Bostonian award.
The Chamber represents over 1500 businesses in the Greater Boston area and helps drive, innovation, leadership, business advocacy within the Greater Boston community.
Deshpande will be honored on May 10th along with two other Bostonians. Other honorees are: Joe Grimaldi, Chairman Emeritus, MullenLowe; and Margaret H. Marshall, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and Senior Counsel, Choate Hall & Stewart LLP.
On April 14, the Boston Museum of Science honored the Deshpande Foundation and Desh and Jaishree Deshpande with the Stars of STEM Award in recognition of their support of the Museum and other institutions in educating the next generation of scientists and engineers.
The Deshpande Foundation’s programs and events at MIT and UMASS Lowell – and in Canada and India – have helped to turn STEM innovation into STEM entrepreneurship. At the Museum of Science, the Deshpande Endowment for Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math has supported programs that engage girls in technology learning as well as expansion of the Living Lab(r) in the Discovery Center.
Deshpande, one of the nation’s leading philanthropists and a trustee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), serves as Chairman of the Akshaya Patra Foundation USA. Well known as the co-founder of tech giant Sycamore Networks, Deshpande also founded Cascade Communications Corp. and is a founding investor in other companies such as Airvana, Cimaron, Webdialogs and Relicore.
He is chairman at Tejas Networks and HiveFire, as well as president and chairman of Sparta Group LLC. He serves as a life-member of the MIT Corporation, and his support has made possible MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.
