Dr. Prof. Dhruba Kumar Gautam is the Vice Chancellor at Mid-West University and a Professor of Strategic Management. He has done a Ph.D. in Strategic Management and gained a two degrees in MBA, and MPA, all from Nepal, and a Diploma in Changing Perspectives on culture from Stockholm University, Sweden. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) Thailand, a Board member of the case study center of Birala Institute of Management and Technology (BIMTECH) Delhi, a Visiting Professor at Dong-A University, South Korea, Visiting Professor at Keio University, Tokyo, and a research associate at Texas Christian University (TCU), Neeley School, USA. He has delivered public speeches at Rutgers Business School (New York), Neeley School of Business, (Texas), Youngstown State University (Ohio), Jilin University (China), Mongolian National University (Magnolia), National Economics University (Vietnam), and others. He has visited leading universities in Europe, America, and Asia for academic activities, research, and presentations.

Professor Gautam has served as a member of the Human Resource Projection Team - 2019; and Team - 2022 formed by the Cabinet of the Government of Nepal and submitted the projection and strategy outcome of human resources of the country to the Prime Minister of Nepal. He worked as a team member and visited the China University for curriculum designing at the postgraduate level. He worked as an expert member to design strategic human resource policies and programs for the Attorney General of Nepal. Professor Gautam did the research for the National Planning Commission of Nepal to forecast the human resources with policy implications. As an expert, he served to be a member of the economic policy advisory committee, an expert member of the revenue advisory committee, and budget expert at the Ministry of Finance, Government of Nepal, and an expert member of the human resource development plan for Nepal Rastra Bank (Central Bank of Nepal).

Professor Gautam is associated with many academic forums including the Academy of International Business (AIB), board member of AIB South Asia Chapter, The Academy of Management (AoM), The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), International Federation of Scholarly Association of Management (IFSAM), International Federation of East Asian Management Associations (IFEAMA) and International Human Resource Management (IHRM) and is working being as a national representative on behalf of CRANET research network and elected secretary of IFEAMA.

He has actively participated and presented papers at International conferences including ILO, APROS, ISLE, IAM, ICBC, ICMC, IFSAM, AIB, IHRM, APAM, JAM, IFEAMA, and many others. The findings of his research have been published in internationally reputed (Scopus ranked) Journals: Organization Science, Journal of Management Studies, Employee Relations, Benchmarking: an International Journal, International Journal of Law and Management, International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching and Learning, Asia Pacific Journal of Business, South Asian Journal of Global Business Research, Sage Open, International Health, FIIB Business Review, and others. He is the author of a few textbooks and edited volumes published from Nepal and abroad.