Nawshir Mirza is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (qualifying in 1973) and a graduate in commerce from the University of Calcutta’s St. Xavier’s College. He is noted for his work toward improved governance in the corporate sector. He has spoken often at conferences on this subject and has designed for various professional and business associations programmes to prepare people for director roles. Nawshir was closely involved in the development of the Tata group's governance guidelines.

Nawshir is now a director on the boards of Exide Industries Ltd. (www.exideindustries.com) and Thermax Ltd (www.thermaxindia.com ). He has been chairman of the boards of Foodworld and Health & Glow. He has also been a director of Tata Power Co. Ltd., Mphasis Ltd., Tata Industries Ltd. and Esab India Ltd.

He has been President of the Institute of Internal Auditors, Calcutta, and President of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, Western India. Nawshir also served as a member of the governing committee of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry and was co-chair of the Indo-Irish Business Group. He was deputy chairman of the British Business Group, the chair being traditionally occupied by a British national. Nawshir is noted for his contribution to the accounting profession, being a speaker or the chair at many professional conferences in India and abroad. He has been involved in the authoring of a few professional publications of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

In 2003, Nawshir decided to devote more time to philanthropic causes and to his own interests and opted to prematurely retire from E&Y. He worked as the country head of Jardine Matheson Ltd. for over ten years after retiring from the profession in 2003.

In the past few years, Nawshir has thrown himself into the need to create awareness of the serious threat to the planet from climate change. Recently, he has joined the governing council of TERI (https://www.teriin.org/).

For over a decade he was de facto managing trustee of the Childline India Foundation (www.childlineindia.org.in), an all-India NGO for abused & distressed children. He has been the Honorary Treasurer of the Indian Red Cross, Maharashtra (www.indianredcross.org/west-india.html). He is a trustee of the Narielvala Fire Temple. He is a director of Leher, (http://leher.org), an NGO for developing preventive approaches to child protection.

Early career

Most of Nawshir's career was spent with S.R. Batliboi & Co./Ernst & Young (www.ey.com/INDIA) and its predecessor firm, Arthur Young. He joined the company in 1967 as a trainee accountant and was with them till his retirement in April 2003, except for a one-and-a-half-year stint in industry from 1973 to 1974 when he was a factory accountant with the Tata group.

During his career with S.R. Batliboi & Co./ Ernst & Young, Nawshir held various positions including those of audit partner (1974 – 2003), Director of Client EDP Services (1984-86), National Director of Financial Services (1995 - 2000), National Director of Audit & Accounting Services (1993 – 2003) and Managing Partner, Western India (1989 – 2002). Till his retirement from the firm, he sat on the firm’s Council, its governing body, since its formation. He was in the Calcutta office till 1988, when he moved to the Mumbai office. He spent six months in the London office in 1977 – 78.

As National Director of Audit & Accounting Services in his firm, Nawshir led a team of 600 auditors in the Indian practice while implementing transformational change in the methodologies and culture of that practice line. Post the acquisition of the Andersen India team, he successfully integrated the nearly 200 audit professionals, including eight partners, who came with the combination. During his leadership of the Western India practice, the Region grew from one office with one partner and 15 people to a Region of two offices with 12 partners and 400 people. After the Andersen combination, the Region reached 30 partners and 700 people.

In his various roles, Nawshir had extensive involvement with international initiatives of the firm, requiring working with multi-cultural teams.

Nawshir was born in 1950. He is married to Perveze, and they have a daughter, Meher.