AI & Technology · Public Policy · Strategic Advisory · Advisor, Center for Digital Future, USC

Manoranjana Gupta

Experience That Spans Every Side of the Story

Manoranjana Gupta works at the intersection of policy, technology, and strategy — advising governments, corporations, and institutions on how emerging technology reshapes governance, industry, and public life. She is an Advisor at the Center for Digital Future at the University of Southern California, President of the Strategic Advisory Council at the Indian Chamber of Commerce, an author whose writing spans artificial intelligence, geopolitics, and public policy, and an international speaker who has addressed forums from Davos to Delhi. 

Her advisory work spans three decades and fifteen sectors — from AI governance to corporate regulatory strategy — built on relationships across India's political, media, and civil society landscape, from village communities in the Northeast to central government ministries. What distinguishes her is not theoretical expertise, but a practitioner's understanding of how these worlds intersect — she has reported on, built, and advised within the same terrain she now helps her clients navigate.

What has never changed is the instinct that brought her to Guwahati in 2004: that the places and people a society chooses not to hear are precisely where the most important stories are.

Overview

Manoranjana Gupta advises governments, corporations, and institutions at the intersection of policy, technology, and strategy. Her current work spans AI governance and public-sector transformation, strategic advisory to enterprise and government, and public policy across fifteen sectors, from healthcare and energy to infrastructure and information technology.

She works with large corporations navigating government engagement. Be it policy advocacy, regulatory strategy, stakeholder mapping, and public affairs – she is adept at translating complex, fast-moving landscapes into decisions that hold.

Media Launches

TELEVISION

  • Northeast Television (NETV)
  • Northeast Hi-Fi (NE Hi-Fi)
  • NE Bangla / Hamar TV
  • Focus TV
  • HyTV / Metrofocus, Hyderabad
  • Frontier TV

PRINT

  • Asian Age,Guwahati
  • Northeast Age, Guwahati
  • Northeast Reporter, Guwahati

RADIO

  • Radio Oo La La
  • FM stations at Shillong, Agartala, Guwahati, Itanagar

ADVOCACY & ADVISORY

At the Table

Advisory work spanning AI governance, public policy, geopolitics, corporate strategy, and government affairs — translating complex, fast-moving landscapes into decisions that hold.

Current Advisory Roles

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA #02

Advisor, Center for Digital Future

Working on the policy, societal, and governance dimensions of emerging technology with a particular focus on AI's implications for democracy, public institutions, and global development.

Academic Synthesis
CORPORATE SECTOR #03

Senior Advisor & Consultant

Advising large corporations on regulatory strategy, government engagement, and navigating complex policy landscapes across industries including mining, energy, and infrastructure.

Industry Strategy

Public Policy & Northeast India

Manoranjana has been deeply involved in public policy outreach for the Government of India, working primarily with tribal communities across the Northeast. She has worked closely with the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region and all eight northeastern state governments on policy measures designed to strengthen support and protection for indigenous tribes. 

Her work on the ground has spanned health, nutrition, sanitation, agricultural innovation, and the economic empowerment of women. She has developed policy frameworks for some of the region's most remote communities — creating channels for dialogue between ethnic groups and the state where few previously existed.

She brings the same integrated approach to civil society as she does to government: working across NGOs, philanthropic organisations, and media to build response strategies that hold across all stakeholder fronts, not just the regulatory one.

Corporate Communication & CSR

Corporate communication is one of Manoranjana's core areas of practice — specifically, the gap between how large companies communicate and what communities, regulators, and civil society actually need to hear. Her view is that companies engaging only with the government, while ignoring the media, NGOs, and the public, create their own opposition. A regulatory approval won in Delhi means little if the community on the ground was never brought into the conversation — that gap is where most corporate reputational crises actually originate. 

She works with clients to deploy CSR strategically — not as a compliance exercise, but as a tool that simultaneously serves advocacy, business, and national development goals. The result is communication that builds long-term trust rather than managing short-term reputation. 

She works closely with internal teams across legal, communications, journalism, and development expertise — integrating social media with traditional stakeholder engagement to ensure messages reach the right audiences through the right channels, treating a regulator and a local community leader as different audiences requiring different language, not a single message broadcast uniformly.

Media Pioneer

Manoranjana began her career in the early 1990s as a journalist with India's leading national media organisations — covering finance, politics, and policy for publications including The Financial Express, The Business Standard, and Asian News International. 

In 2004 she took a decision that defined her career: she moved to Guwahati and launched North East Television — NE TV — the first private 24-hour satellite news channel dedicated to the eight states of Northeast India. 

Broadcasting in fifteen languages to an audience of fifty million people who had no independent regional broadcaster, NE TV filled a gap that national media had ignored for decades. What followed was a media group spanning six television channels, two FM radio stations, and print publications across the region — making her one of fewer than a handful of women to have built and led a media institution of that scale in India.

Affiliations

Professional affiliations, advisory appointments, and industry memberships across technology, policy, media, and international affairs.
  • Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO)
  • Press Club of India
  • Delhi Union of Journalists
  • Foreign Correspondents Club
  • National Union of Journalists (India)
  • International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
  • Indian Media Center — Northeast Coordinator

What Sets Her Apart

Most advisors bring either media experience or policy knowledge or business understanding. Manoranjana brings all three — combined with thirty years of relationships built at every level of India's political, media, and civil society landscape, from village communities in Nagaland to the offices of central government ministries. The insight she offers is not theoretical. It comes from having reported, built, advised, and delivered in the same terrain she now helps her clients navigate.

AI & Technology

Artificial intelligence is not a future problem. It is a present governance challenge — and most of the institutions being asked to regulate it were not built for it.

Manoranjana Gupta brings to this question something most AI commentators do not: a practitioner's understanding of how governments actually make decisions, how public policy gets written and rewritten under pressure, and how technology companies, civil society, and regulatory bodies interact in practice rather than in theory.


Her commentary, advisory work, and international speaking on AI addresses the questions that matter most: who governs AI, and by what authority? How do democratic societies preserve agency in the face of algorithmic systems they do not understand? What does responsible AI deployment look like in the Global South, where the stakes and the starting conditions are different from Silicon Valley? And how do India and its institutions position themselves as both users and shapers of the AI era?

Experience

Los Angeles, USA

Advisor, Center for Digital Future

University of Southern California

Davos, Switzerland

Delegate

World Economic Forum

India / International

Strategic Public Affairs Advisor

Vedanta Resources & others

USA & India

Special Correspondent

Asian News International (ANI)

India

Associate Editor

The Financial Express · The Business & Political Observer · The Business Standard

International

Syndicated Columnist

North America · Europe · Middle East

USA (Cable) · Australia

Documentary Producer

Doordarshan International Channel

India

Media Consultant

Smashits.com · Express News Service · News Network of India · Indian Media Center

Geopolitics

The world is reorganising. Alliances that held for decades are under strain. New technology powers are emerging. The rules-based international order is being renegotiated in real time — and the outcome will be shaped as much by strategic communication, economic statecraft, and soft power as by military capability. 

Manoranjana Gupta has spent thirty-five years watching how India engages with the world — and where its strategic communication falls short of its ambitions. She has participated in international forums from Davos to diplomatic engagements across twenty countries. She writes and speaks on India's geopolitical positioning, the technology dimension of great power competition, and what the next decade of global realignment means for business, policy, and democratic institutions.


Her perspective is neither purely academic nor narrowly commercial. It is the perspective of someone who has sat in the rooms where these decisions are made — and who understands the gap between the public narrative and the operational reality.

GET IN TOUCH

Work With Manoranjana

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