Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is President and Chairman of Sparta Group LLC and founded Cascade Communications and Sycamore Networks. He has chaired and funded several other companies and is a life-member of the MIT Corporation. Jaishree Deshpande is a Trustee of Deshpande Foundation and the Treasurer of Sparta Group LLC, a family investment office.

The Deshpande Foundation supports Social entrepreneurship and provided the founding grant for NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) and Deshpande Center at MIT. Jaishree currently serves as a Trustee for the Museum of Science and is involved with HESTIA Fund – a fund established to support after school programs for low-income children in Massachusetts. Jaishree Deshpande worked for the Indian Space Research Organization in Bangalore, India until 1980 before moving to Canada. After moving to Massachusetts in 1984, she worked for several companies and taught courses in computer.

Gururaj Deshpande holds a B. Tech. from Indian IIT-Madras, M.E. from the University of New Brunswick, Canada, and Ph.D. from Queens University, Canada. He co-chaired the National Council to support President Obama’s innovation and entrepreneurship strategy from 2010 to 2015. Jaishree received a Master of Science in Physics in 1975 from the Indian Institute of Technologies (IIT), Madras, India. She also received a Master in Computer Science in 1989 from Boston University.