Rustom Desai, MBA ’95

Rustom Desai is a global tech executive with 25 years of demonstrated success in building businesses in the US and internationally. As an executive at Corning Incorporated, he held leadership positions in a variety of industries including Semiconductors, Consumer Electronics, and Telecommunications. With deep experience in General Management, Product Management, M&A & Global/Emerging Markets, the organizations Rustom has led have has repeatedly delivered outstanding revenue and profit growth. As a global citizen, he has lived and worked in the US, China, Taiwan and India.

Rustom is a trusted board director. His expertise spans Family, Public and JV boards.

• He is Independent Director and Chair, Nomination & Remuneration Committee, of a publicly traded, woman run, family-controlled company. He is recognized as a relentless proponent of profitable global growth.

• He is the Board Chair of his family office wherein he has led the implementation of its generational Succession Plan and has fundamentally changed the scope of its activities.

• He has been on many JV boards delivering outcomes aligned with Corning’s objectives.

• He is on several advisory boards including that of Logix Guru (IT services company in PA) and the Emerging Markets Institute & Praxis Center for Venture Development at Cornell.

As visiting faculty at Cornell’s Johnson College of Business, Rustom teaches two MBA courses:

• Strategic Alliances: This Strategy elective arms its students with real-world weapons to envision, negotiate, govern, manage, and exit alliances. It is targeted at students with interest in M&A, consulting and general management.

• Family Enterprise Management & Governance: This is a must-take course for students that see a future engaging with Family Enterprises-be it as owners, managers, consultants or bankers. It lays the foundation for what is unique about them and goes deep on some of the many critical aspects such as Governance, Succession Planning, Raising External Capital, & Managing Conflict.

More recently, Rustom has turned his attention to the impact of AI on education: he received an Artificial Intelligence Fundamentals credential in 2024 and continues to integrate AI into his course materials and flow.