University of Mississippi. Photo: The original uploader was Enjoybeta at English Wikipedia ., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olemisslyceum.jpg)
Gallery of Niranjan Shah
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University of Mississippi. Photo: The original uploader was Enjoybeta at English Wikipedia ., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olemisslyceum.jpg)
Niranjan S. Shah is an American structural engineer and business executive who co-founded Globetrotters Engineering Corporation, a Chicago architecture and engineering firm, in 1974. Born in Gujarat, India, in 1944, he trained as an engineer in India and the United States before building his career in Chicago.
Background
Niranjan S. Shah was born on December 13, 1944, in Gujarat, India, to Shamaldas R. and Agiyarsi Shah. Gujarat is a state on the western coast of India. Business profiles describe him as having grown up in a small village without electricity or running water.
His engineering education took place in India before he moved abroad. He completed his degree in 1967 and married Pratima Agrawal in 1969. In 1970 he immigrated to the United States with his wife, seeking wider professional opportunities.
Education
Shah earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree in civil engineering in 1967 at Birla Engineering College, which was part of Sardar Patel University in Gujarat. The university was established in October 1955 by an act of the legislative assembly of the then Bombay Province and was named after Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the independence leader who later served as India's Deputy Prime Minister. It began as a rural university in Vallabh Vidyanagar, an educational township planned as a centre for higher education.
Birla Vishvakarma Mahavidyalaya, an engineering college in the same township, was founded in 1948 with donations from the Birla Education Trust, on the initiative of Vallabhbhai Patel. The engineering education available there reflected the early post-independence effort to build technical training in Gujarat.
Shah then studied at the University of Mississippi, which was chartered in 1844 and is the flagship public university of Mississippi. He received a Master of Science there in 1971. In 1991 he attended a program at Harvard University, an institution founded in 1636 that is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States.
Shah's professional career began in Chicago with Sargent & Lundy Engineers, where he worked as a structural engineer from 1974 to 1976. The firm, established in Chicago in 1891, was a long-established engineering company whose work centred on power plant and electrical transmission construction.
In 1974 he co-founded Globetrotters Engineering Corporation with William Moore, starting from a modest office on Chicago's South Side. The firm's first major break came in 1977, when the Illinois Department of Transportation retained it as prime consultant for a rehabilitation of the Edens Expressway (I-94) in Chicago. Shah has served as chairman of the board since 1976, and the firm grew into a full-service architecture and engineering practice serving public and private clients.
According to the firm's history, its projects have included O'Hare International Airport's Terminal 5, the Midway Airport terminal expansion, the McCormick Place West Expansion and Chicago's Deep Tunnel project, along with the rehabilitation of U.S. embassies abroad. Later, the chairman appointed Ajay Shah, who had served as the firm's general counsel and chief operating officer, as chief executive officer.
From 1982, Shah served as principal-in-charge of Mbuc, a undertaking connected with the United States Department of Commerce that covered Gary, Indiana, Milwaukee and Indianapolis.
Achievements
Registered professional engineer in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Louisiana.
Co-founded Globetrotters Engineering Corporation in 1974 with William Moore, helping build a small Chicago office into a full-service architecture and engineering firm serving public and private clients in the Midwest.
Views
Shah has publicly emphasized the importance of the people who work for his firm, stating that its staff have always been its best asset. The firm's history presents the values with which he and his partners built the company as a guide for its future development.
Membership
Shah is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, founded in 1852 as the oldest national engineering society in the United States, and of the National Society of Professional Engineers, which was formed in 1934 to represent licensed engineers who practise in professional settings.
He served on the Economic Development Commission of Chicago, an advisory body concerned with the economic development of the city, from 1992. From 1991 to 1992 he was also a member of the Board of Regents of the State of Illinois, which governed the state's public university system, and of the University of Chicago Visiting Committee, a body of outside advisers to the private research university founded in Chicago in 1890.
From 1991 Shah has been a trustee of the Federation of Indian Associations in Chicago, a nonprofit umbrella organization founded in 1980 that brings together Indian community associations in the Chicago area. In 1994 he was appointed to the board of trustees of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, which Congress established in 1986 to support undergraduate study in mathematics, science and engineering.
He is also a member of the Harvard Club of Chicago, the regional alumni club of Harvard University in the Chicago area.
American Society of Civil Engineers
,
United States
National Society of Professional Engineers
,
United States
Economic Development Commission of Chicago
,
United States
1992 - present
Board of Regents, State of Illinois
,
United States
1991 - 1992
University of Chicago Visiting Committee
,
United States
1991 - 1992
Trustee
Federation of Indian Associations, Chicago
,
United States
1991 - present
Member of the board of trustees, appointed by President Bill Clinton
Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation
,
United States
Harvard Club of Chicago
,
United States
Connections
Shah married Pratima Agrawal on November 30, 1969. The couple have two children, Smita N. Shah and Ajay N. Shah. His parents were Shamaldas R. and Agiyarsi Shah.
Together, Niranjan and Pratima Shah endowed the Shah Center for Business at McHenry College in Illinois, a public two-year institution serving McHenry County.
Father:
Shamaldas R.
Mother:
Agiyarsi Shah
child:
Smita N. Shah
child:
Ajay N. Shah
Served as chief executive officer of Globetrotters Engineering Corporation.
Wife:
Pratima Agrawal
Married on November 30, 1969.
References
Clinton White House
A White House announcement of President Bill Clinton's appointment of Shah to the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation.
US Congress
A statement entered in the Congressional Record by Representative Joseph Crowley honoring Shah on receiving the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
