Board Of Directors

Joy Ambassadors

Shalini Samtani

Chief Joy Spreader

Shalini and her husband founded the Spread the Joy Foundation after their youngest child was hospitalized for an extended period of time. Shalini has a diverse background in law, real estate, and interior design, but her true passion lies in bringing joy to hospitalized children. Her vision is to change the dialogue about childhood diseases to a more positive, joyful, and purposeful one.

Adrian Brown

Chartered Public Accountant and Chartered Investment Manager

Adrian Brown is a seasoned investment professional with over 20 years of experience. He began his career at Deloitte and for the past 17 years, Adrian has been with RBC Wealth Management, a top ten global wealth management firm.

Adrian is a Chartered Public Accountant and Chartered Investment Manager in Canada and has lectured at McGill University, teaching graduate-level Accounting courses. He holds both a B. Comm and Graduate Diploma in Accounting from McGill University and is a proud contributing alumni to his alma mater.

Passionate about community involvement, before joining Spread the Joy, Adrian acted as Treasurer and Board Member of Youthlink.

Adrian is a proud father to three young children and enjoys building Lego with them as often as possible

Amit Raut

Treasurer

Amit has become a forerunner in the digital marketing industry. He has further branched out his lead gen roots in performance-based marketing with the formation of a highly specialized team under AdSugar. AdSugar has been ranked by Inc. 5000 as the 100th fastest growing private company in America in 2018.

Asha Bakshani

VP Finance

Asha is the Executive Vice President of Finance at Lightspeed HQ, a publicly listed company in Montreal, Canada. Asha has been instrumental in helping the company scale from a small startup to a $2.5B company in the last 5 years.

Edison Lee

Creative Director

Edison is a video, motion graphics, and animation generalist with over 20 years of experience producing promotional content. Edison founded Move-Foundry, a fully featured production house focused on 2D and 3D motion graphics and animation. Yes, you guessed it! He’s the one who produced “The Airship!”

Dinesh Melwani

VP Legal

Dinesh is a transactional attorney at Mintz whose practice encompasses M&A transactions, strategic investments, entity formation, and angel, seed, and venture ﬁnancings – topics on which he regularly guest lectures at institutions such as MIT, Sloan School of Management, The Broad Institute, MassChallenge, and The Capital Network.

Chirag Patel

Head of Business Development

Chirag is a small business owner and investor who has started, owned and operated multiple businesses in retail and service industries. Currently he focuses his time in developing multi-family projects in Philadelphia/NJ market while consulting and investing for small business owners. Chirag has extensive experience in operations, finance, M&A, development & Real Estate. He enjoys his down time with his wife and 3 children.

Shikha Sarin

Director of Strategy and Partnerships

Shikha has over 17yrs of experience working in Financial Services managing business transformation initiatives, change management, strategic planning, financial analysis, content and project management. She has a strong ability to critically evaluate, develop & execute on high-value strategic partnerships and complex organizational initiatives. She is currently a Director at Golub Capital.

Vaishali Deshpande

VP Events

Vaishali is the Founder and CEO of an event planning firm that specializes in large scale South Asian Weddings and related events. She has over 20 years of experience working all over the United States as well as the Caribbean, Mexico and Europe. She focuses on putting together various logistics for the event and designing new trendsetting ideas for her creative and inspired clientele. In her free time, she enjoys spending it with her 1 year old son and husband.

Gregory M. C. Orleski

Gregory M. C. Orleski brings over 25 years of leadership across startup and established organizations in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. His work has spanned national and international settings in the pharmaceutical industry, where he has provided strategic, creative business and legal guidance to help organizations grow and achieve their goals.

Passionate about making a meaningful impact—especially in the lives of children and families—Gregory brings not only a depth of expertise but also a heartfelt commitment to community service. He is ecstatic to be a director of the Canadian chapter of Spread the Joy, and is deeply inspired by the organization’s mission to bring happiness and comfort to hospitalized children across Canada.

Gregory is married, a father of three, and a grandfather of two toddlers. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his wife, family and grandchildren—often gathered around a good puzzle and toy trucks and indoor racetracks.

Gregory holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and French Language from the University of Alberta, and Common Law and Civil Law degrees from McGill University.

Krystina Restaino

Krystina Restaino is a Managing Director at BlackRock, where she leads strategic initiatives that connect people, products, and purpose. She currently oversees a global team focused on developing seamless, integrated, and AI-driven experiences across the Client Journey on desktop, web, and mobile channels. With a background in digital transformation and a passion for building inclusive, high-impact teams, Krystina brings a thoughtful, people-centered approach to innovation. She is honored to support Spread the Joy’s mission of delivering happiness and healing to hospitalized children and their families. Outside of work, Krystina enjoys the simple moments—especially getting creative with Play-Doh alongside her two boys.

Lucky Samtani

Lawyer and Entrepreneur

Lavesh known by everyone as “Lucky” is a lawyer and entrepreneur. Currently, Lucky is a founder of a pharmaceutical company that began operations with 5 people and now employs 1200+ worldwide where he heads up the business development function and is also the General Counsel. For more than a decade, Lucky practiced law at some of the world’s most prestigious law firms, Baker & McKenzie, (Singapore and Chicago), Wilson Sonsini (Palo Alto), Kramer Levin (New York), and Weil Gotshal (New York) and also served as Global Head of Legal at Ranbaxy and Vice President and General Counsel for the North American operations of Ranbaxy. In this role, Lucky negotiated one of the largest consent decrees in the United States and oversaw legal victories in patent challenges & settlements for Lipitor®️, Diovan®️ and Aricept®️ and has been featured in Fortune Magazine for his work in this area. Lucky is licensed to practice law in New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois and holds a joint Bachelors dual degree in Government and History from Claremont McKenna College. He received his Juris Doctorate from Columbia University School of Law and is fluent in several languages. At Spread the Joy, Lucky has been working tirelessly to launch Classic Cars, and in 2024 his work with a 1968 Camaro was featured at the prestigious SEMA show in Las Vegas where he was interviewed.

Joy Ambassadors