All Cohorts
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 13
Aashir Sutar
Desai and Associates
Aashir Sutar is the VP and Principal at Desai and Associates, a mission-based innovative finance advisory firm focused on designing and structuring blended and outcome-based financing solutions for public, philanthropic, and private sector capital providers. He has worked extensively with NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, CSRs, and philanthropic organizations to increase the quantum of social finance in India for the last ten years. His work spans various roles enabling increase in the efficiency of fund utilization - across organizational strategy, and programme design. He is a computer science graduate with a master's in business administration from the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India.
Anna Joy
Concern India Foundation
A Social Development Professional with 28 years of experience in the areas of health, education, community development, and conservation. Invested in creating impact through analyzing social problems, engaging with multi-stakeholders, and designing & and implementing scalable solutions that enable sustainable change. A self-motivator, mentors, and coaches teams in improving their skills in management and leadership. Worked on diverse, complex, and multi-stakeholder projects. Like ideating with the engagement of key stakeholders on social problems, designing programs and developing strategies. Further, like to see these strategies being converted into projects which includes training, and developing systems, and process for the team to implement and create impact. Still a learner with a quest to make a sustainable impact in human lives.
Anupam Nidhi
Hindustan Zinc
Anupam Nidhi currently heads CSR at Hindustan Zinc Limited and Director-Zinc India Foundation. In her earlier stint she has held leadership positions in CSR and played pivotal role in corporate i.e. Siemens India and Reliance Group and development sector organisations of repute like Lead India and SEWA. She has been in managing and leading roles for past 23 + years. Currently, based in Udaipur she has experience in both the corporate and development sectors with roles spanning from advisory, strategic planning to execution. She has spearheaded a large number of multi-dimensional projects across India in both commercial and purely development domains - including in Micro Finance, Project Management, Crisis Management, Employability, Entrepreneurship Development and Environment. She has also led key roles in the sphere of Sustainability.
Arun Murugesh
Saahas Zero Waste
Arun started his career in the waste management industry in the UK working as a product manager. He has core competencies in leveraging mechanization and automation to recover resources from waste. Following this, Arun set up a reverse logistics system for recycling of Thermocol waste in Bangalore. He currently leads the MRF & EPR verticals at SZW. EPR has proven instrumental in the recovery of plastic packaging waste and diversion from landfills. Arun has implemented various projects that pave the way to upgrade the informal workforce. Arun has also conceptualized and executed various MRF models for the processing of inorganic waste.
Deepali Sinha Khetriwal
E[co]work
Deepali has extensive research and implementation experience in e-waste management in India and Europe and has published several papers in peer-reviewed journals on the topic. She has worked as an expert consultant on e-waste for international development projects as well as private sector companies. She was instrumental in setting up the capacity development activities of the StEP Initiative, a UN-supported forum on the e-waste problem. Currently based in Mumbai, she has a doctoral degree from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, having written her thesis on e-waste forecasting, especially from a consumer behavior perspective. She is also a certified EMS auditor.
Dr. Mairi Mackay
Ex. British Council
Mairi is an economist, writer and ambassador for a more compassionate and conscious economic system. Currently working as a freelance consultant, Mairi was previously responsible for establishing and growing the British Council’s Global Social Enterprise Programme across 30 countries. Taking a systemic approach this programme empowered social entrepreneurs with skills training, access to funding and incubation and investment opportunities whilst supporting policy leaders worldwide to create ecosystems in which impact focused enterprise and investment could thrive. Her 20-year career as an economic development professional includes serving as Head of Greater China for the Scottish Government - championing collaborative opportunities for Scotland's economy. She holds a 1st class Business degree and a PhD in Collaboration and Economic Development from the University of Strathclyde Graduate School of Business.
Garima Dutt
YES Foundation
Garima is a purpose-driven professional inspired by the ability of individuals and organizations to make a positive contribution to society. A postgraduate from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and a certified Sustainability Leader from London Business School, Garima has over 17 years of experience across sectors. Having worked in positions of increasing responsibility across Tata Motors, Reliance Foundation, and GSK Pharma, Garima has built and implemented business-aligned CSR strategy and sustainability frameworks.
Harpreet Ghai
Aspire Impact
A seasoned professional leading the Knowledge Development vertical at Aspire Impact. With 12+ years of experience in financial research and data collection, she is helping Aspire raise awareness of the Impact ecosystem by way of research publications around impact investment ideas, emerging sustainability roles, market projections, and climate change. Harpreet is also contributing to new product development.
Kanika Pal
Unilever
Kanika Pal is an award-winning CSR and sustainability professional with 18 years of experience. Presently she is heading sustainability for Unilever South Asia where she is responsible for the strategy, performance, and delivery of sustainability, along with advocacy & and thought leadership on ESG. She holds a master's degree in CSR from Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand, and an advanced management in public policy from the Indian School of Business. A TEDx speaker and recipient of numerous accolades, including the 'Global Women in Leadership Award 2022' and 'Asia’s Top Sustainability Superwomen 2020,' she actively contributes to global initiatives, such as the World Economic Forum and USAID's SAWIE.
Kishor Raichandani
PROPARCO
Kishor working as a Senior Investment Officer in the PROPARCO South Asia office in New Delhi. He is part of the Financial Institutions and Inclusion team and specifically the Financial Inclusion and Innovation team. As part of this team, He is responsible for making debt and equity investments in the Inclusion domain in South Asia and South Asia where PROPARCO can play a role by providing much-needed capital to private enterprises – it may be profitable or non-profits. His objective is to create a more financially inclusive society by providing capital to the companies, that bring the Bottom 40% of the population and financially excluded women into the formal financial system. Before PROPARCO, he worked with institutions like SIDBI, Capgemini, Indian Overseas Bank, and Oracle.
Kuldeep Singh
Seva Foundation, USA
Kuldeep is leading the India and Bangladesh program portfolio with a California, USA-headquartered global non-profit, Seva Foundation. His work focuses on ensuring affordable and accessible quality eye health in collaboration with 100-plus hospitals serving more than a million patients annually. He is on the board of management and Treasurer with “Vision 2020: the Right to Sight, India’. He is an Acumen Fellow and Swedish Institute’s Leader Lab (YCF) Fellow. Kuldeep transitioned into the social sector after a decade of work with the Indian Government including NITI Aayog, Ministry of Rural Development, and NRDC India. He is a management graduate from Lucknow University with advanced studies in sustainable development from EPFL Switzerland. He is a published author in the world’s leading peer-reviewed journals including the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, The Lancet Regional Health, and the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Lopa Gandhi
Ugam Education Foundation
Lopa Gandhi has over 25 years of experience in the field of education. She is the founder of the Ugam Education Foundation. Ugam works to transform KGBVs and empower adolescent girls in Jharkhand. She has vast experience in teaching adolescents, curriculum design and development, gender issues, HR management - coaching and training, program design, and evaluation. She has worked in various senior positions with some of the leading social sector organizations. Besides education and girls' issues, she is an avid reader and bird watcher. Loves mountains is often found there.
Nelson Deb
The Eco Hub
Nelson Deb founded The Eco Hub in 2012, a pioneering social enterprise in the northeast region of India that engages marginalized women to produce sustainable menstrual products, eco-friendly paper stationery and handloom with Kantha embroidery. Nelson has done his Bachelor's in English (Hons) and has a Diploma in Fashion Design and Boutique Management along with Animation and Multimedia, from Bangalore University. He has been certified as a WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) consultant and an MHM (Menstrual Health Management) facilitator by WASH United, Berlin. He has over 5 years of work experience as a Web Design Consultant for a leading web design Australian firm. In 2018 he co-founded Bodhana NGO which works in the space of WASH, breast cancer, and gender. Nelson is the India partner for the Oscar-winning short documentary Period - End of Sentence, 2018, The Pad Project based in Los Angeles, and a former fellow at the World Professional Congress at Washington DC. He is a documentarian, enjoys traveling, and is an art fanatic.
Nikhil Pingle
Magic Bus India Foundation
With over 23 years of experience in corporate, management consulting and the development sector Nikhil brings a wealth of expertise in strategy, operations, and large-scale transformation programs. As a consultant with the Big-4, Nikhil has engaged with corporate clients across diverse sectors, including Automotive, Engineering, Industrial Products, Consumer Products, and Healthcare. At Magic Bus, Nikhil leverages his experience to develop the scale-up strategy, manage innovation projects and strategic initiatives, and organization-wide performance improvements. Nikhil is a Mechanical Engineering graduate from VJTI - Mumbai University and holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Ahmedabad.
Pankaj Singh Thakur
Head Held High Foundation
Pankaj is an Acumen Fellow and CEO of Head Held High Foundation and is currently working on creating inclusive rural solutions to eradicate poverty for underserved and unrepresented communities. Before becoming a part of the development sector, Pankaj spent over two decades in for-profit global organizations managing strategy, planning & and operations in international markets across the EU, Australia & US.
Prarthana Borah
CDP
Prarthana Borah is a Climate and Sustainability Educator with over 25 years of experience. An institution builder, she has served as Country Director of two global not-for-profits, CDP and Clean Air Asia. At CDP she has been driving corporate climate action through disclosures with 45% annual growth during her tenure and set up the SBTi incubator. She was responsible for developing air quality indicators for smart cities and city air action plans at Clean Air Asia. Prarthana also guides start-ups on environmental impact initiatives as an advisor and mentor.
Rohini Kaul
The Kantar Foundation
Rohini, a dedicated development sector consultant, is committed to fostering an ecosystem that enables diverse stakeholders to collaborate effectively, driving a larger, positive impact on communities. As a Senior Consultant at Kantar India Foundation, she spearheads key engagements with experts, grassroots-level partners, and recipients to collectively influence and create progressive policies. A friend, mentor, and advisor to NGOs, she strives to achieve impactful outcomes at scale. Rohini firmly believes that compassion, meaningful collaboration, inclusivity, and a long-term vision are crucial in realizing a more sustainable, just, and equitable world.
Shubhangi Bochare
Bajaj Finance Ltd.
Dr. Shubhangi Bochare, a seasoned program and project management professional, currently serving as the Deputy National Lead in Corporate Social Responsibility at Bajaj Finance Ltd. Managing portfolios in Child Health, Livelihood, and Skill development with a 100 Cr. budget, I excel in strategy development, partner guidance, and data management. With a background in Hospital and Health Management, holding a Master's degree, and a Bachelor's in Ayurveda.
Sowmya Suryanarayan
Aavishkaar Capital
Sowmya heads the Impact and ESG function at Aavishkaar Capital and is responsible for delivering significant Impact, Gender & ESG value across Aavishkaar various Impact Funds and portfolio companies. She brings over 16 years of experience and has been the Vice Chairperson (South) of the IFCCI CSR Committee in 2018-19, and IVCA’s Impact and Inclusivity Council since 2022. In 2023, Sowmya won the ‘Sustainability Impact Leader Award’ from the Honourable Governor of Maharashtra, India. She holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from Stella Maris College, Madras University, and has completed an Executive Education Program on Social Finance from Said School of Business, University of Oxford, and on Creating Value in CSR from the Indian School of Business (ISB) and has done a GRI Professional Certification Program on Sustainable Reporting using Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards.
Sumit Tayal
Give Grants
Sumit joined Give as a volunteer for the India Covid Response Fund and stayed on because he was inspired by Give's mission of making giving bigger and better. He is now the CEO of Give Grants, where he works with CSR donors to maximize their social impact. He also continues to play the COO role across Give. Sumit's journey spans consulting, private equity, and business operations. He earlier led the India investment team for Helix Investments, a US-based $100mm private equity fund. He was also the COO for Net scribes, a data and insights firm, and consulted for large Indian corporates while at KPMG, after completing his MBA from IIM Bangalore.
Swarna Manjari Behera
HDFC Bank
Swarna is an accomplished M&E professional with over 15 years of experience in the social development sector and CSR. She has gained experience in program strategy development, monitoring, learning and evaluation, research, training, and capacity building in multiple thematic areas such as Natural Resource Management, Environmental Sustainability, Maternal & Child Health, Communicable Diseases, Ageing, Microfinance and livelihoods, Education, Community Based Disaster Preparedness, Shelter Development and Governance System. Currently, leading the research and impact activities in HDFC Bank CSR.
Swati Mittal
Aeka Advisors
Swati is a CA, LLB who started her career with Deloitte, worked with Corporate USA, and then spent more than a decade in the nonprofit sector, heading global Finance, Legal, Admin, and HR for a global foundation, operating in 20 countries. ESG (sustainability) is a space that she has been following and have been wanting to contribute to. In 2022, resigned from the CFO role and joined Aeka Advisors, to provide advisory and support to multiple organizations that form a part of the ecosystem for the social sector and to help organizations achieve their sustainability targets.
Tanwi Kumari
Microfinanza
With over 15 years of experience, focusing on inclusion and market systems development, Tanwi is currently the Regional Head for Sustainable Finance SSEA at MicroFinanza, which has more than 70% of the global market share in ratings for both energy businesses and financial service providers. MicroFinanza works with investors and DFIs, providing due diligence, assessments, and technical expertise for the sustainable and responsible finance industry. She provides strategic support to develop global standards for digital financial services and ESG tools to strengthen global practices. Before this, she served for more than a decade in various roles at Accion and Center for Financial Inclusion, a global think tank, where she focused on developing innovative financial fit-to-purpose products, conduct global advocacy, and advisory projects on consumer protection, research on increasing digital payments, identifying data risks, study mapping catalytic capita and green asset financing project for smallholder farmers.
Vineet KKN ‘Panchhi
The Jai Hind Project
Vineet KKN 'Panchhi' is a Communication Consultant, Filmmaker, and Writer. As the founder of 'Word of Mouth Media,' his writing, poetry, and cinematic creations impact both corporate and social realms. He leads 'The Jai Hind Project,' aiming to foster new Indian role models and make social activism appealing to youth. Inspired by Matt Langdon's philosophy - 'The opposite of a hero is not a villain, i's a bystander', Vineet and his team meticulously document grassroots organizations' heroism through films, as well as offering storytelling and filmmaking training. With a post-graduate degree from XLRI, Jamshedpur, and a Leadership Psychology certificate from Oxford, Vineet's journey unfolds on www.VineetPanchhi.com.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 12
Aman Preet Kaur
Bajaj Finserv
Aman Preet Kaur is a dentist by qualification who transitioned to public health and pursued MBA in Public Health from IIHMR Jaipur, have been a practitioner of public health since 2015. She has been part of piloting the Khushi Baby project in Kotda block of Udaipur in collaboration with Seva Mandir and Yale University (digitization of immunization records at rural and tribal levels through NFC). This was followed by the implementation of the Model Health District plan in UP through the National Health Systems Resource Centre (MoHFW), then she was part of implementing NABH across Seventy-Five District Hospitals in UP through UPHSSP (World Bank Project). She also worked in the capacity of Surveillance Medical Officer for WHO in UP and Uttarakhand.
Currently, she is developing the portfolio for Persons with Disability under Bajaj Finserv CSR.
Aniket Doeghar
Haqdarshak
Aniket is the Founder and CEO of Haqdarshak, a social enterprise working to support individuals and micro-businesses to avail the benefits of government welfare schemes. He has been building Haqdarshak for the last seven years and has been awarded as one of the Global Social Innovators of the Year, 2023 by Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Motsepe Foundation, and World Economic Forum and is a Schwab fellow 2023. An alumnus of SRCC, Aniket has been a Teach for India, Acumen, & Unreasonable fellow. He was on the advisory board of Teach for India for 2 years and is also currently on a Board of trustees for the YP foundation. He was awarded the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia in 2019.
Archana Chandrikadevi
IIM Udaipur
Archana Chandrikadevi, currently heading Development and Sustainability Initiatives at IIM Udaipur, focused on resource mobilization and partnerships. Having worked across Social (INGO/NGO/Grassroots), Philanthropy, Government, and Management Consulting for the Public and Private Sector and exposed to ground-level realities and issues, she believes that philanthropy and CSR can lead to substantial change, institutionally and individually. She is committed to levelling the field so that individuals and institutions are able to develop to their full potential, adding value and impact to society.
She holds a B. Tech in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from CET, Trivandrum, and an MBA from IRMA. Anand.
Arvind Sridharan
Aspire Impact
Arvind S is passionate about driving positive social and environmental change through data-driven impact assessments. As the COO of Aspire Impact, he has co-created India’s 1st standards-based Impact assessment & ratings framework for corporates and non-profits, providing them with the means to empirically & strategically drive social and environmental impact. His career spans across ESG/Impact consulting, Banking, Telecom, ITES, and Retail which has helped him develop a wide range of skills that enables him to bring unique perspectives to the table.
He is an MBA-Finance by qualification, a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and a Corporate Business Excellence assessor.
Ashish Mehta
Second Nature Sustainability Solutions
Ashish has a 20-year corporate experience spanning engineering, investment management, and big-data analytics (at Emerson, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, dunnhumby) - melded in the last 6+ years as an entrepreneur in socio-ecological and impact investment domains - as the founder of Second Nature Sustainable Solutions and Co-founder of MinusCO2. Ashish is driven by the imperative to address, at speed, the three-pronged challenges of climate change, social inequity, and ecosystem degradation. He believes the Impact Economy’s ethos to simultaneously achieve Profit and Purpose has the potential to forge lasting impact.
Ashish has an M.S. from the University of Cincinnati, 20+ articles in periodicals/books/journals, and 8+ patents.
Atiya Bose
Angan Trust
Atiya has worked to secure justice and rights for marginalized communities in the US and India for the last 25 years. She joined Aangan in 2007 and led the development of the country’s first Standards of Care Tool for shelter and rescue homes with UNICEF. As CEO, she leads Aangan’s work on engaging government and civil society to advance children’s rights, building community agency, and demonstrating the power of community-based models to prevent serious child harm. Atiya has served on various governmental committees – MWCD's Working Group for Child Rights (Twelfth Five-Year-Plan); JJ Act Review Committee; Convenor, Expert Committee on Model Homes; and conducted national advocacy and training on children’s issues. She has also been a private investigator, a filmmaker, a journalist, and a teacher!
Captain Amitabh
Tata Steel Foundation
An alumnus of Officers Training Academy, Chennai. Commenced career as Second Lieutenant in Indian Army in 1995 and was fortunate to be part of key combat operations, viz- Op-RAKSHAK (Counter Insurgency Operations), Op– VIJAY (Kargil), Op MEGHDOOT (Siachen Glacier) and Op PARAKRAM.
Joined Tata Steel in the year 2003 and has contributed in various areas of Corporate Services as Head Security (Mines Division), Executive Officer to Vice President (Corporate Services), Head Administration (Medical Services), and Head Sports (Tata Steel). Currently, leads the skill development function of CSR as Head (Skill Development). He is the Hon. Secretary of Tata Steel Skill Development Society, a member of the CII National Committee on Skills, member of the State Council of Vocational Training, Jharkhand.
Chandan Kr Sharma
Goonj
Chandan Sharma has been working with Goonj for the last fourteen years. Currently, he serves as the Chapter Head of Bengaluru. He strongly resonates with every bit of what the community at Goonj stands for. In addition to his work under Bengaluru's demography, he also coordinates closely for Pan India resource generation and southern region operations at Goonj.
Chandni Bedi
Navjyoti India Foundation
Chandni Bedi has been co-creating and implementing practical resolutions to complex social problems in rural and urban set-ups, especially related to environment and gender, for the past 19 years. Currently, she works with Navjyoti India Foundation. She is also pursuing her research on understanding and creating inclusive, liveable, and sustainable cities in relation to urban water management. With an academic background in environmental management, her affirmation is that humans can co-exist with their fellow inhabitants on this planet earth. She has represented at various National and International forums, has been a TEDx speaker, won multiple awards, and has contributed articles in books and journals.
Dr. Piyoush Malhotra
National Health Authority
Dr. Piyoush is an oral surgeon by passion and a senior consultant to the government’s most prestigious healthcare assurance scheme in India. Also a technology and startup enthusiast with a keen interest in the clinical healthcare startup space. He practiced as an oral surgeon for the initial few years of his career, later did his master’s in healthcare management, and worked with two startups successfully scaling their operations. He is fortunate to be a member of the founding team for Health Financing and Technology Assessment (HeFTA) at the National Health Authority, to utilize scientific research evidence for appraisal of newer health technologies by assessing the comparative quality, safety, efficacy, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness.
Gaurav Shah
ISDM
Gaurav has experience of working in the private sector and the development space (microfinance, health, impact investment, education), largely as a management consultant with P&G, American Express, Azim Premji Foundation, Lok Capital, etc. He has more than a decade of experience across the 3 main segments of education (Pre-School, K-12, and Higher Education) and has worked both in for-profit and not-for-profit social enterprises. Gaurav has an MBA from IIM Calcutta (2003) and a B.E., and an M.Sc. from BITS Pilani (2001).
Geetanjali Jha Chakraborty
Motivation India
Geetanjali has over two decades of experience in the social and corporate sectors and has expertise in non-profit strategy, program design and implementation, and human resource management. She is on the board of three social sector organizations: Apnalaya, TNS India Foundation, and Vihaan. She previously held leadership roles in Concern India Foundation, CHILDLINE India Foundation, and ARMMAN. She has an MA in Social Work and an LLM in Human Rights and Criminal Law.
Irwan Malhotra
Givfunds Social Ventures
Irwan Malhotra is the co-founder/trustee at Givfunds Social Ventures with the purpose of providing low-cost capital to social enterprises, creating sustainable societies, and reducing social, economic & gender inequalities. Givfunds empowers women entrepreneurs with financial, entrepreneurial & digital training. Givfunds also provide access to nano-credit to low-income entrepreneurs to build a sustainable credit history and (re-)integrate them into the financial system. He has also set up a learning center for slum children & running a boutique financial firm, Vencap United. He is an Engineer and MBA with a passion for Education, Social Enterprises, Kashmir & Manchester United.
Kanika Bhatia
WWF
Kanika works with WWF-India Secretariat as Manager-Conservation Alliances. She is an MBA(Marketing) from DAVV, Indore. She has worked in Sales, Marketing, Fund Raising, Project & Donor relationship management across Finance, Education, Livelihood & Healthcare themes in organizations including Kothari Pioneer AMC, Franklin Templeton Investments, Deutsche Asset Management, Aspire Impact & Deepak Foundation. She also supported Aspire Circle secretariat for two years (2014-2015) and managed retreats for fellowships for Cohort#1-4.
Rachana Bhusari
NSE
Rachana is Vice President at the National Stock Exchange of India Limited and is responsible for the Social Stock Exchange and Investor Awareness initiatives of NSE. She has led the function of primary markets for fundraising equity and debt for Corporates, Start-ups, and SMEs. She has worked tenaciously for the development of the securities market for SMEs by creating an enabling ecosystem. Represents NSE at various committees of SEBI for the development of primary markets, including the new age economy companies.
She is Post Graduate in financial management and Law graduate with 23 years of experience of working with NSE. She has in her earlier role at NSE handled regulatory functions like Investigation and Surveillance, Member Supervision, and compliance monitoring for listed entities and brokers.
Radhika Sood Nayak
Sufi Vocalist & Composer
Radhika discovered her love for Sufi music through the poetry of Baba Bulleh Shah and Shah Hussain. Her journey with these songs has taken her to the Mumbai Kabir Festival, Rajasthan, Malwa, Telangana, and Delhi Kabir Yatras, Kala Ghoda - Make in India Festival and other spaces.
She dedicated her first Music Video, ‘AsāN‘, to ‘Goonj’ as a fundraising medium for the Covid affected. Radhika's collaborative journeys with Lahore-based artists have led her to co-create music videos around the poetry of 16th-century Sufi faqeer Shah Hussein. After an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, Radhika worked with Unilever and ANZ Grindlays before immersing herself in music.
Raju Sharma
IndiGo
Raju Sharma is the Director of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at InterGlobe Aviation Limited (IndiGo), Gurugram. Raju leads the social initiatives of the Company in areas of Children & Education, Women Empowerment, Environment, and Heritage. He is an active member of the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) task force of IndiGo and plays a role in advancing sustainability elements within the Company and the associated CSR partner organizations.
An alumnus of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Mumbai, he completed his Master's in 1999 and since then has been working in the developmental sector.
Saloni Bhardwaj
Lotus Petal Foundation
A writer, journalist, and graduate of the University of Sheffield, UK, Saloni Bhardwaj started her career working with BBC Radio, UK. Over her career, she got exposed to more organized ways of philanthropic giving. She volunteered for various nonprofit in the United States- Big Brothers Big Sisters and United Way. She also ran the Cincinnati Fundraising Chapter for Dining for Women.
In India, she found purpose with the underprivileged children of Lotus Petal Foundation in 2013 and eventually moved from volunteering to the role of Co-Founder & CTO of the organization in 2020. Her valuable contributions have led to the organization attaining the Guide Star Award and Great Places to Work Certification. She recently received the first prize for her research paper on ‘Leadership at the Grassroots’ titled “I Have the Power.”
Shaveta Sharma Kukreja
Central Square Foundation
Shaveta is the CEO & Managing Director at Central Square Foundation. She is on the advisory board of the Language and Learning Foundation (LLF), Madhi Foundation, and Saarthi Education. She is also on the advisory board of India Leaders for Social Sector (ILSS) in line with her commitment to high-quality leadership for the social sector. She is a founding mentor to The Udaiti Foundation, which is working on women's economic empowerment. Prior to CSF, she worked at The Boston Consulting Group and Citibank. She has also been a visiting faculty member in the Human Resources and Organizational Behaviour disciplines at many business schools. Shaveta earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, and holds an MBA in Management from IIM, Bangalore.
Sundeep Mohindru
M1Xchange
Sundeep, by profession, is a Qualified accountant with more than 23 years of experience in Technology, Finance, and Consulting. Sundeep is the Founder and Director of M1xchange (TReDS) and Mynd group.M1xchange is a multi-award-winning online exchange for discounting Trade receivables for SME enterprises in India called TReDS. M1xchange has fulfilled the objective of financial inclusion by financing Receivables for SME enterprises in 1400+ cities in India, worth USD 7 Billion in the last four years. M1xchange is now working towards setting up of International Trade Finance System (ITFS) for the financing of global Trade transactions from GIFT City Gujarat.
Triansha Tandon
BCG
Triansha is a Coach (PCC-ICF) with Boston Consulting Group, a facilitator, a certified Psychodrama Leadership Practitioner, an ADHD coach, a coach trainer, a Psychodrama trainer, and a Communication Strategy Consultant. She has facilitated workshops on communication and behavioral skills and conducted individual and group coaching for leaders in corporations, social enterprises, and educational institutions for over 16 years Triansha has completed her Master’s Degree in English and Culture Studies.
Vaishali Samanta
Veddis Foundation
Vaishali Samanta, COO of Veddis Foundation, comes with cross-sectoral experience panning the Government as well as the social impact space. Previously, Vaishali was leading the Ministry of External Affairs’ diaspora engagement initiative to facilitate overseas philanthropy in the government's priority areas. On the board of the Alliance for Scaling Policy Impact through Research and Evidence (an initiative of J-PAL SA and Veddis), and Edumentum of Shibulal Family Philanthropic Initiative, she mentors social impact orgs on strategy and scale-ups and is deeply interested in building of credible evidence, process pathways for change and long-term measurable impact.
Wilma Rodrigues
Saahas Zero Waste
Wilma Rodrigues is the founder and CEO of Saahas Zero Waste (SZW), a social enterprise committed to implementing holistic zero-waste solutions across India. Wilma moved to Bangalore from Mumbai in 1995. She is a former journalist with the Times of India group and Business World Magazine. India got its first set of Municipal Solid Waste rules in 2000, and this was the trigger for Wilma to step into the waste management sector so as to support the implementation of the rules. She first set up NGO Saahas in 2001 and then a business model SZW in 2013.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 11
Abhishek Taneja
EarthJust Ecosystems Foundation
You can call him a Sustainability-Walaa. It is with reimagining "Sustainability Footprint" that his journey started. Abhishek has almost 20 years of experience working. Over these 20 years he has been associated with the Services Sector, Manufacturing Sector, Agriculture Sector and Social Sector and have had the chance to work across the world. For the last 7 years Abhishek has spent most of his time exploring the harmony between self & nature, exploring the definition of sustainability and building an organization (EarthJust) and a Farm (EarthFarm) based on his evolving understanding.
Anirban Ghosh
Mahindra Group
Anirban Ghosh has been working with the Mahindra Group since 1999 where he is currently the Group’s Chief Sustainability Officer. This role involves leading the strategy and implementation of the Group’s sustainability drive. Anirban has been recognized in the list “Top 100 CSR Professionals (Global Listing)” by World CSR Day. He was awarded the “India Sustainable Leadership Award” at the India Sustainability Leadership Summit and Awards. Anirban held roles in Sales, Marketing and Strategy in the Farm Business of Mahindra. He has also served as President of Mahindra USA. Anirban is a guest lecturer at business schools in India including the IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Indore.
Bahni Kumari Telenga
Indian Revenue Service
Bahni Kumari Telenga belongs to the tea garden community of Assam. Her hometown is Guwahati. She graduated with B.Tech. from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Durgapur, with a gold medal in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. Bahni worked for 2 years at Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL). While working, she cleared the civil services exams and joined the Indian Revenue Service (Income Tax), batch of 2018. Bahni is presently serving as Assistant Commissioner in the International Taxation division of the Income Tax Department, New Delhi.
Baidurya Bhushan Sen
Alokit
Baidurya is the co-founder of Alokit, an organization supporting school leaders (principals) from India’s government schools. He has worked extensively in the education sector over the last decade, firstly as a Teach for India fellow (2012) teaching municipal school children in Pune, as a school leader in rural Bihar working with Musahar students (a Mahadalit community), as a coach to school leaders (Principals, HMs) from Delhi’s government schools and finally as a designer of a leadership development program. He has been awarded the Dalai Lama fellowship (2020), a WISE Emerging Leader (2021) for his work.
Beate Weinzinger
Impact Hub
Responsible for operationalizing the Impact Hub networks‘ expansion efforts, Beate Weinzinger is committed to building thriving ecosystems for change. Passionate about seeding new social entrepreneurship communities across the world, she has delivered capacity-building programs for social entrepreneurship support organizations in the US, Azerbaijan, Bissau, Jordan, and Libya. Having supported 40+ communities across 5 regions in joining the network, Beate has strong experience establishing social entrepreneurship organizations within diverse ecosystems. Before joining Impact Hub in 2016, she worked for public and private institutions as a project manager in organizational development and human resources, improving and reinforcing strategies, structures, and processes for organizations with 100+ team members. Beate holds an MSc in Entrepreneurship from the University of Liechtenstein.
Bhavya Sharma
Urban Company
Bhavya Sharma is a Communications Strategist with ~ 14 years of experience, spread across B2B and B2C. She specialises in storytelling and building narratives, in streamlining unstructured thoughts and conversations into prose, creatives and videos. Bhavya has successfully set up communications teams at various organisations. And she is currently spearheading Communications and ESG at Urban Company.
ElsaMarie Dsilva
Red Dot Foundation
ElsaMarie D’Silva (pronouns: she/her) is the Founder of Red Dot Foundation (India) and President of Red Dot Foundation Global (USA). Its technology platform Safecity, crowdsources personal experiences of sexual violence and abuse in public and private spaces globally. Since Safecity started in Dec 2012, it has become the largest crowd map on the issue in India and abroad. ElsaMarie is one of the W7 advisors under the German G7 Presidency. She is listed as one of BBC Hindi’s 100 Women and has won several awards including Government of India Niti Aayog’s #WomenTransformingIndia award.
Jamuna Verghese
Dancing Rain Capital
Jamuna Rao Verghese is a seasoned global executive with experience in spearheading initiatives and driving growth in impact investment, enterprises and sustainable finance, debt and equity investment and business advisory. Notable accomplishments include development of the first securitization product in India and establishing the ‘Impact investment practice’ in PwC, much before these areas were considered ''cool''. Recognised as one of the Top 100 Powerful Women in Finance in India, 2019. Volunteered one year with the India government for the ambitious and most sophisticated digital ID program ‘Aadhaar’. Started mobile libraries for children in Gurgaon, and developed a platform to sell products inspired by tribal art. Lived in India, Singapore, USA and Uganda.
Jitendra Mishra
SIFFCY
Committed towards meaningful cinema, Jitendra Mishra is one of the few Indian film producers and promoters who have been able to create a benchmark in ‘Alternative methods of Film Production, Distribution and Promotion’ at international level. He has already been associated with more than 110 films in different categories and various capacities all together. The Last Color, Buried Seeds, Desires of the Heart and Human Oak are a few recent films among others. Awarded with several national and international accolades, Jitendra has been the festival director of India’s leading film festival and forum for young people - SIFFCY that he has designed for one of the most credible development organizations Smile Foundation.
Manjula Bharathy
TISS
Manjula Bharathy is Professor & Dean at School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Gender Studies at University of Rutgers, USA and Chief Operating Officer Kudumbashree Mission; Member Central Advisory Committee on Panchayati Raj, GoI and Member of Expert Committee on Decentralized Planning for the Sixth Scheduled Areas, GoI. Her areas of research include democratic decentralisation, social vulnerability (on women & indigenous communities) & local governance, gender and micro- credit programmes, political economy of the media and mediated governance. She has authored books and published many articles in international and national journals.
Matilda Lobo
IndusIND
Matilda Lobo, SVP – Head CSR IndusInd Bank comes with 25 + years of rich & diverse experience in Banking & Financial Service Industry and Social Development having handled senior managerial roles spread across Strategy, Business Development, Client Coverage, Risk Management, Operational Risk, ESG & CSR, Systems & Process Excellence in FIAT group, GE and Standard Chartered Bank. In her current role, as Head CSR at IndusInd Bank, she is responsible for delivering the Bank’s CSR strategic vision of empowerment of marginalised communities and a greener planet through Flagship Program on Holistic Rural Development as well Strategic Programs focussed primarily on Education, Inclusive Sports and Sustainable Environment with high SROI.
Meena Besoya
Goonj
Meena Besoya spent her childhood and did schooling in Delhi. An engineer by training but no more in engineering for many years and using system & process thinking in the work. She has travelled in the remotest possible parts of the country and has been a part of the partnership team also. She has evolved through the number of years at Goonj where starting from the entry level, worked on the data and co-ordinated extensively with volunteers, individuals, schools etc. to later handling the rural implementation data and the grassroot partnership network and events and then working closing of fine tuning the organizational processes and system, she wore different hats as and when required. Currently, she is involved in organizational strategies.
Pankaj Vinayak Sharma
Transform Schools, People for Action
Pankaj is the co-founder and CEO of Transform Schools, People For Action that impacts learning and school standards in secondary education. He is a seasoned social sector leader and entrepreneur. Over past two decades, Pankaj has led organisations, programme and operations in not-for-profit and investment settings. His sectoral expertise includes Education, Humanitarian Assistance and Health. Pankaj is an obsessive reader and music affniciado, runs on coffee and loves time with his large joint family.
Prashant Sharma
Positive Action for Child and Earth Foundation
Practising changemaker. Resolve water crisis by hastening water circularity through Greywater management (GWM). GW recycle-reuse impacts: 6 SDGs; existing water supplies; drinking water availability; water quality; public health; soil fertility; GHG emissions; GDP. It has positive economic/social/environmental impact. Prashant’s work: Design/build sustainable, low-cost, effective, scalable GWM solutions Awareness & behaviour change through effective IEC, enable & ensure every person is an initiator; Implement robust monitoring/maintenance parameters to measure impact; Optimise/standardise & use technology to automate O&M
Prerana Langa
Aga Khan Agency for Habitat
Over two decades of driving large scale impact. Built and scaled two corporate foundations for ICICI Group and YES BANK from scratch and worked with a non-profit to accelerate the transformation of an entire State (Punjab) in India. Currently working on climate action.
Purna Roy Chowdhury
Grameen Foundation India
Purna Roy Chowdhury is a development sector professional with almost 15 years of experience of working for women’s empowerment, gender justice, financial inclusion of women, child protection & participation, and development volunteerism. She has extensive exposure of working in multi-stakeholder and cross-cultural environment at the local, national and international levels. In her current role at Grameen Foundation India (GFI), Purna leads a women's empowerment project in Sri Lanka, and drive gender integration & mainstreaming within GFI's various functions and program implementation. Her expertise as a professional, her academic exposure, understanding of social issues and having empathy for the most marginalized and vulnerable, make her a driven and effective practitioner in the sector.
Richa Govil
Azim Premji University
Richa Govil is Director of School of Development at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. Her work focuses on agricultural livelihoods, farmer producer organisations, women’s livelihoods, micro-enterprises and social entrepreneurship. Early in her career, Richa led the growth of Asha for Education from a small student group focusing on basic education of underprivileged children into a multimillion-dollar organization with over 50 chapters across the world. During her time in the business sector, Richa developed and implemented business strategy for large and small corporates in the US and India. Richa is a co-founder of TREE Society, which offers training programs for micro-enterprises and producer organisations. Richa has a Ph.D. in Physics from University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A.
Rohitt Malhotra
Aspire Impact
Rohitt Malhotra is an Impact Professional who is associated with Aspire Impact which helps organisations measure their Social & Environmental Impact. At a personal level he has setup and is running one of the world's longest running Mangrove Cleanup and Conservation drive – Mangrove Marshalls. Through this campaign that started in 2017, they have been able to remove over 220 truckloads of debris and waste from the mangroves around Navi Mumbai. They have worked with students and local communities to sensitize them on the environment with a special emphasis on Mangroves.
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Shilpa Sehgal
Equanimity Investments
Shilpa Sehgal
Equanimity Investments
Sudha Srinivasan
The/Nudge Centre for Social Innovation
Sudha is CEO of Centre for Social Innovation, The/Nudge Institute and leads initiatives to create a thriving livelihoods ecosystem. Since its launch in 2017, The/Nudge CSI has incubated 100+ nonprofit startups, including 30 tech startups solving problems of poverty. Its $6Mn accelerator fund works with high potential nonprofits that are ready for growth and scale. The/Nudge Prize and the Indian Administrative Fellowship enable problem solvers from diverse domains to apply their capabilities to solve India’s most pressing developmental problems. Prior to The/Nudge, Sudha worked at Intel, where she spent nearly 13 years in various leadership roles. She has great passion for enabling organizations to ramp in scale and competence, and achieve audacious goals. Sudha is an engineer by training, and holds an MBA from IIM Lucknow.
Sudhir Subbaraman
Sattva Consulting
Sudhir Subbaraman is a Partner at Sattva Consulting, leading their work in the Global and Domestic Foundations. Sudhir has 25+ years of holistic and global experience across corporate & social sectors. This spans senior leadership and entrepreneurial roles in strategy, operations, consulting, people management and product engineering. Sudhir’s passion for social sector impact started with CGI India as CSR Champion. Sudhir and his CSR team have delivered social impact through trendsetting programs with STEM programs for ATL labs, Climate Action and public-partnerships around women safety. Sudhir holds B.Tech and MS degrees in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and an MBA from University of Michigan, Ross School of Business.
Suresh Sethi
Protean e-Gov
Suresh Sethi has over three decades of global experience in the financial services industry and works extensively in the financial inclusion space leveraging fintech and digital led innovation to make a difference. He is currently the Managing Director & CEO of Protean eGov. In his last role as the Founder CEO & MD of India Post Payments Bank, he established the largest inter-operable banking infrastructure for public good.
In his earlier assignments, he has worked with leading financial services companies such as Vodafone M-Pesa, Citigroup and YES Bank across multiple geographies covering India, Kenya, UK, Argentina and US.
Tanuja Abburi
Amazon
A seasoned global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion evangelist and thought leader. Designing and creating impactful diversity strategies, interventions and culture to impact workplace, people and communities.
Enabling Organization's culture and stakeholders to derive the value of inclusion that impacts the business.
Embedding the DEI Lens in business strategy and talent lifecycle. Building an inclusive and empowering workplace and work culture. Driving engagement and programs for Women, LGBTQ+, PWD and many other diverse groups.
Varun Kashyap
LetsEndorse
Varun is the Co-Founder of LetsEndorse, a social enterprise on a mission to solve social issues at scale. He is a graduate of Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, and pursued the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University in 2012. He was selected as a German Chancellor Fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2014 and as a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum. He is interested in leveraging the network effect, power of the community, and technology for good to enable large-scale social change and was selected for the Rajeev Motwani Fellowship in 2019.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 10
Aditya Raj Bhatia
Ujala Cygnus & Sehat Foundation
Aditya Raj Bhatia, Head - Outreach & Medical Education Wing at Ujala Cygnus Healthcare & Sehat Foundation, VP Kulwanti Hospitals. Holds a UG in B.Com (Hons.) from Delhi University & PG in M.Sc. (Hospital & Health Information Administration) from Manipal University. Throughout my healthcare career in 13 years, followed an open-door management policy and considering all suggestions from employees to help organizations improve. Advocating an inclusive system change with making impact at scale. Working for Healthcare with Sankalp of providing Affordable & Accessible “Healthcare for All”. Inspired by Life to See More, Do More, Be More, Have More, Give More.
Akshay Soni
The/Nudge Foundation
Akshay Soni, after his MBA, spent about 18 years (mainly with Morgan Stanley) in the capital markets focused on equity analysis across various sectors (IT services, Cement, Hotels, Shipping, Construction, Infrastructure, Capital Goods and Real Estate) along with thematic research to shape industry thought processes. After a sabbatical, he chose to move to the social sector, and came on board The/Nudge Institute 4 years back to design, start and run the largest (by grant size) early-stage non-profit accelerator in India. Focused on capacitation of founders and CXO teams at chosen non-profits, apart from providing direct funding and also connects into the funding eco-system.
Anandhi Yagnaraman
Catalysts for Social Action
Anandhi Yagnaraman has been in the Education & Non-Profit sector for over 20 years where she began as a Volunteer–Teacher drawn towards the cause. To further develop and equip herself, she completed her Masters in Educational Leadership & Management from the University of London. Anandhi has worked on programs that have been scaled across thousands of schools. She has had opportunities to consistently move on to bigger roles, demonstrating high levels of performance and leadership. Education and Non-Profit sector have remained her core areas and passion. Currently she is heading the organization that works for children who are under Institutional Care.
Deep Bajaj
Sirona Hygiene
Deep Bajaj is the Co- Founder & CEO of Sirona, an award-winning startup known for solving unaddressed intimate and menstrual hygiene issues faced by women with their unique products. They are most popular for India’s highest selling Menstrual cups - Sirona and PeeBuddy - India’s 1st Female Urination device Deep has won numerous awards including Business World ‘Young Entrepreneur Award’, ‘Social Entrepreneur of the year’ by Entrepreneur Magazine and has been on ‘Fortune’, ‘Economic Times’ and ‘Business World’ 40 under 40 list. He is an Alumni of ‘Australian National University’, Canberra and ‘Stanford Seed’. He also represented India at AIYD (India Australia Youth Dialogue) 2022.
Gayathri Ramamurthy
Capgemini
Gayathri Ramamurthy is a highly passionate and energetic human resource professional spanning about 20 years of experience with demonstrated ability to lead the function and effectively balance the organizational dynamics within a global environment. In her current position as the India Learning Head, she is building a learning culture aligned to business requirements for our employees to get the best for themselves and the organization. Her vision is to build a high-performance culture within the LnD team. Previously, she has held diverse responsibilities mostly in high growth business contexts within the Technology and professional services industry. She brings in deep functional insights to arrive at win-win solutions.
Gazala Shaikh
WNS Global Services
Gazala Shaikh has over 19 years of work experience in the Development domain, working with leading global corporate organizations & non-profit organizations, most of which have been recognized for their contribution in the field of CSR social work. She holds a post-graduate diploma in CSR & Sustainability from the Swedish Institute Management Program & Masters in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Gazala led diverse portfolios relating to Design and development of Corporate Responsibility strategy, framework, compliance processes, CSR branding & Communications, Development and implementation of programs and projects, Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact assessment and Stakeholder engagement.
Leena Kejriwal
MISSING Link Trust
Leena Kejriwal is a photographer and social artist. In 2015 she founded The Missing Link Trust, a campaign against sex trafficking with the single purpose of creating mass awareness. It won the Thomson Reuters Anti trafficking campaign of the year award in 2021. She has been honored with multiple awards for her work on this grave social issue: World Summit Award 2020, Her Story Woman On a Mission Award (2019), the mBillionth award for the Missing Game (2018), the YFLO Women Achiever Award (2016), and the Yes Foundation Changemakers Award (2015). She is also a TEDx Speaker.
Manik Dhingra
Shoonya Environmental Services
Manik Dhingra is the co-founder of Shoonya and Eywa Environmental Service Foundation. Shoonya works with market-based solutions to enable the implementation of a resilient solid waste management system in India. Eywa focuses on empathetic leadership development for the waste management sector. Manik was an Aspire Circle WASH community leader and a mentor for startups at the Climate Collective. Previously, Manik has served as a Sayajirao Gaekwad Fellow reporting to the Chairman's office at the Bank of Baroda in 2017. Manik has represented India at the 2015 International Antarctic Expedition where he volunteered in the collection of micro plastics in Antarctic waters.
Dr. Meenu Bhambhani
State Street
Dr Meenu Bhambhani is CSR and D&I professional with over 2 decades of experience in the area of human development with specialization in social policy. She started her career as a faculty teaching English Literature, and moved to work as Assistant Commissioner - Disabilities with Government of Rajasthan. Currently, Meenu heads Corporate Citizenship and Global Inclusion Diversity and Equity (GIDE) for State Street Corporation in APAC. Prior to joining State Street Meenu spent over a decade at Mphasis, a global IT conglomerate where she was instrumental in creating opportunities that provided high profile recognition opportunities for their programs especially around addressing systemic challenges to disability inclusion.
Narendranath D
Pradan
Narendranath is an Integrator PRADAN. He joined PRADAN thirty-three years back and have contributed to evolving ideas around rural livelihoods and women’s empowerment. As a field professional in PRADAN in Jharkhand and Rajasthan, Naren organised rural women in SHGs and implemented livelihood programmes. He has been involved in a number of national and international research efforts to build knowledge from practice. Naren set up the National Resource Centre for Livelihoods in PRADAN for informing the design of flagship development initiatives of Government and facilitate policy dialoguing. He sits on Board of many civil society organisations and also takes keen interest in fostering NGO networks. He lives in Delhi with his wife and daughter.
Neeta Hardikar
ANANDI (Area Networking and Development Initiatives)
Neeta Hardikar - Feminist leadership building with rural and tribal communities to initiate and deepen processes and strategies for gender mainstreaming with community-based organizations, CSOs and state-led programs for gender justice has been my core work. As a grassroots activist, researcher and facilitator, Neeta engages and influences the national and state-level campaigns and movements for people’s right to food, work, health and nutrition, social protection, and violence-free society for women and girls in India, something that energies her the most, but also disillusions her of late.
Nidhi Bansal
CARE India
Nidhi Bansal is the Executive Director at CARE India, leading Education, Livelihoods and Disaster Management programs. She holds a Post-Graduate degree in Home Economics from the SNDT University, Mumbai and has lived and worked in several countries across South Asia, Africa and North America. Nidhi has led Gender Equality and Child Protection teams in international NGOs like Oxfam and Plan International Canada. Her professional experience and technical expertise lies in strategic vision setting, designing high impact solutions and ensuring accountability to all stakeholders. Nidhi is recognised as a passionate gender equality advocate, a democratic and empowering leader, always striving for excellence.
Nidhi Bhasin
NASSCOM Foundation
Nidhi Bhasin has over 20 years of experience in the social sector, which gives her a unique perspective of how CSR has evolved in India. Currently she leads NASSCOM Foundation, with an agenda to use the power of technology to create positive social impact.
Nusrat Pathan
HDFC Bank
Nusrat Pathan is an accomplished professional with over 30 years of experience across the social sector, CSR & sustainability. Ms. Pathan currently heads the CSR and ESG functions at HDFC Bank. Prior to joining the Bank in 2006, she worked in the social sector for over 13 years. Ms. Pathan has been pivotal in creating the Bank's CSR roadmap & driving its implementation. The banks social Program driven under the flagship of Parivartan is amongst the top five CSR contributors, undertaking impactful social projects across India. She has also integrated Sustainability in the bank's CSR journey and is currently leading the bank’s commitment towards Carbon Neutrality by 2032.
Priya Naik
Samhita Social Ventures
Priya Naik is the Founder & CEO of Samhita Social Ventures, a social sector consulting firm that collaborates with companies, government & social organizations to co-create & implement impactful initiatives. Previously, Priya co-founded The Spark Group, an education incubator that delivered affordable education to low-income communities in India. She has worked with the International Finance Corporation, the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) & at Arthur Andersen. Priya has a Master’s degree in economics from Yale University, a Master’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a Master’s degree (and a Gold Medal) in Commerce from Mumbai University. She also holds an Executive Education degree from Harvard Business School.
Priyank Hirani
DataDotOrg
Priyank Hirani is the Associate Director for data.org's Capacity Accelerator Network, where he is distilling a network-of-networks model to cultivate 1 million purpose-driven data professionals by 2032. He leads the design and deployment of data capacity accelerators, starting with hubs in the United States, Africa, and India. He brings experiences across continents from the fields of water, health, space science, technology, and climate change to this role. Previously, Priyank has consulted with The Rockefeller Foundation and led University of Chicago’s Water-to-Cloud initiative. He has a bachelors from BITS Pilani, masters from Imperial College London and a PGD from Ashoka University.
Dr Ram Sharma
UPES, Dehradun
Dr Ram K Sharma has been driving academic transformation & innovation, internationalization, use of technology to solve access, quality & equity related issues and STEAM & experiential education across the higher educational organisations. He has expertise in setting-up green field universities as well as transforming brown field institutions & has held leadership roles across organisations such as UPES, Plaksha University, Shiv Nadar University (SNU), Amity University & KPMG India. Dr Ram has helped these institutions establish & transform verticals across learning & teaching, research, entrepreneurship & innovation, e-learning, & quality assurance including strategic interventions for rankings, & accreditations. He has been a Fulbright Scholar - University of California Berkeley & a Chevening Gurukul Fellow - University of Oxford.
Rema Mohan
NSE Foundation
Rema Mohan has more than 25 years of experience in education & CSR, and has worked with organizations such as Times Foundation, The Times Group, Smt. Sulochanadevi Singhania Trust (Raymonds Group) Ford Foundation & M.S.University (Baroda). Rema holds degrees in Management & Law, and is an alumnus of the Fortune – US State Department Global Women’s Leadership program. Currently she is the CEO of NSE Foundation promoted by the NSE Group. The NSE Group focuses on key developmental verticals of Primary education, Sanitation & Clean Drinking Water & Elder Care. Today NSE runs impactful large-scale programmes with State Governments across 10 States in key aspirational districts impacting the lives of 12 Lac + beneficiaries.
Ritesh Agarwal
Educational Initiatives
Ritesh Agarwal is passionate about improving learning outcomes in the public schools of India. He has been working with Educational Initiatives for the last 4 years and currently leads Ei Shiksha, a vertical of EI that exclusively works with low-income/government schools in India. Ritesh has rich experience in working with governments, institutional funders, and other key stakeholders in the social sector. He is well-versed with evolving trends in assessments, educational technology, policy, and developmental finance. Prior to Ei, he was an early member at the EdTech startup- ConveGenius heading their Growth and Partnerships wing. For a project with Ashoka University, he helped create the blueprint for the foundation of the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy.
Sanjay Dalmia
Open Links Foundation
Sanjay Dalmia has many years of experience of developing & implementing IT based products & solutions for large corporates. He is currently building IT based solutions for Education domain – to improve the quality of our education system. Sanjay believes education needs missionary rather than mercenary approach. The pedagogy and approach for K12 school education in India has been largely traditional. IT tools can be significantly transformational. He started Open Links Foundation in 2016. Before that he had over 25 years of corporate and start-up experience. Sanjay is a graduate of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad and has written one book - Financial Supply Chain – which has been published by McGraw Hill.
Shipra Sharma
Microsoft
Squadron Leader Shipra Sharma (Retd) is a Sustainability Lead with Microsoft’s Cloud Supply Chain Sustainability team, contributing to the company’s ambitious climate action agenda of being carbon negative and achieving zero waste by 2030. In a career spanning 20 years, Shipra has been an Indian Air Force veteran, led CSR & Sustainability teams for multiple companies in the banking, clean energy, and IT sectors, and a mentor to several NGOs and social entrepreneurs. Her passion to serve the society and planet, accompanied with a commitment to life-long learning, continues to empower her as a professional and as a person.
Supriya Dey
Vision Empower
Supriya Dey is the Managing Trustee of Vision Empower since 2017. She has worked for more than 2 decades in the software industry in India and abroad with multinationals. Supriya has also been the Chief Manager of Centre for Software and IT Management at IIM Bangalore. She has a BE Computer Science and Technology degree from IIEST, Shibpur and a Masters by Research degree in IT and Society from IIIT Bangalore.
Tasneem Raja
Indira Foundation
Tasneem Raja currently heads mental health at Indira Foundation – across India & USA. She initiated her career 25 years ago as a clinician involved in direct service provision in addiction and HIV/AIDS progressing to issues on social change & human development. In her previous role as the Lead for Mental Health at Tata Trusts, she led the development & implementation of innovative & scaled programs spanning the continuum of mental health care in Nagpur, Maharashtra. She has also worked independently as a consultant with The International Labour Organization (ILO) and National AIDS Control Organization (NACO). Part of her professional roles included collaborating with government and non-government organization.
Vidya Sastry
Action on Disability & Development India
Vidya Sastry entered the development sector in 1991 to market hand made products made by persons with disabilities. Since then, the focus of her work has been to build capacities of traditional artisans and persons with disabilities. Two of her significant roles have been as Central Coordinator of FACES, a project supported by the Confederation of Indian Industry to work with artisan communities and as CEO of the Crafts Council of India. As Executive Director of ADD India from September 2016, Vidya has expanded the direct intervention programmes and built capacities of Disabled Persons Organisations (DPOs) to progress toward independent functioning.
Dr Zahra Ladak Merchant
Agar Khan Health Board for India
Dr. Zahra Ladak Merchant has over fifteen years of experience in the space of Public Health, Healthcare Services and Organizational Leadership. Currently, she serves as an Honorary Chairman for the community-based, volunteer-driven Aga Khan Health Board for India. The Board addresses disease prevention, early detection and access (physical and financial) to health and wellness. She is also spearheading newer initiatives to address mental health, geriatric care and immigrant populations. Dr. Zahra holds a Master’s degree in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins University’s Baltimore campus and applies the health lens to catalyse socio-economic development.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 9
Anna Bruni Sabhaney
The Confluencers Ltd.
In 2018 I left my 10-year career in Civil Engineering to found The Confluencers with the mission of getting Non-Profits the recognition and agency they deserve. Through my Training Programme and Consultancy work, I have empowered tens of Non-Profit leaders to translate their mission into an Impact Narrative that resonates and transform their approach to Fundraising, building in-house capacity and long-term security. I seek to shift the balance of control between grant givers and grantees towards more equitable partnerships that focus on finding creative ways of reaching collective goals faster. I worked across the world for Private and Public Sector clients, delivering social impact programmes from concept to construction with a focus on climate risk, complex systems, rural livelihoods, inequality and water security. I was a Charity Board Member, a speaker, a moderator, a Member of the Global Alliance for Urban Crises and an industry mentor. I studied Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol and Entrepreneurship at MIT.
Anurag Agarwal
Aavishkaar Capital
Anurag Agrawal is Partner at Aavishkaar. As CEO of Intellecap earlier, he setup the Investment Banking Practice and incubated I3N (Intellecap Impact Investment Network) - India’s first impact focused angel network. He led incubation and acquisition of the 3 NBFCs - IntelleCash, IntelleGrow and Arohan.
Bhagyashri Dengle
APAC and Policy & Practice, Plan International
Bhagyashri Dengle is a development professional with over 30 years of experience in the field of development. Bhagyashri is currently the Executive Director for APAC and Policy & Practice at Plan International and is deeply involved in developing transformational strategies to ensure that 45 million girls in Asia and 100 million globally are able to learn, lead, decide and thrive by 2022, through advocacy and gender transformative programs. She has been bringing new techniques, innovations and diverse programs for gender equality and gender justice.
E.R. Ashok Kumar
Give India
Ashok is currently serving as the President of Give India, that exists to alleviate poverty by enabling the world to give. Give India is India's largest and most trustworthy giving platform for donors. Ashok is an experienced start-up CEO & an entrepreneur. He founded Scripbox, India's most trusted online investment service. Ashok & his wife pledged 50% of their wealth for charitable causes under https://www.livingmypromise.org/ platform. Prior to his own start up, Ashok has over two decades of rich and diverse B2B & B2C business experience with leadership positions at IT, Telecom & Hitech companies such as Wipro, Intel, Airtel & Cisco. He holds a Management degree from IIM-K and a B.E. in Computer Engineering from Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai.
Jayant Rastogi
Magic Bus India Foundation
Jayant brings over 28 years of managing teams to implement large scale innovations in both the social and private sector. Jayant has a commitment towards innovations that lead to social outcomes and prior to joining MB, co-founded a social venture focused on providing affordable healthcare. Jayant has also served as the Country Manager & CEO for Motorola Solutions and ASEAN Director of Novell. Jayant has a long track record of building partnerships and fostering collaborative relationships. This has been key to building Magic Bus’s fundraising capability with CSR groups and institutional donors. He has also successfully forged new relationships with government authorities at the state level across India and given MB Board members confidence in the direction of growth of the organization.
John Alex
Equitas Holdings
John Alex set up Social Initiatives to address requirements of small clients in the field of Health, Education, Skill Development, and Placement for unemployed Youth, inclusive model for PwD & transgenders, after joining the Management of Equitas in 2008. They won the 1st national CSR award from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
Joseph Roque Fernandes
IIT - IIT
After a successful career as a strategic consultant and start-up mentor and investor, Joe, in 2018 co-founded IITians for Influencing India’s Transformation (IIT-IIT), to scale social impact. Shaped early in his career by his experience at McKinsey and Company, Joe has developed a deep understanding of how businesses can take advantage of e-commerce, outsourcing, digitisation and automation, to scale successfully. He brings this critical thinking to the mission of IIT-IIT - harness the collective voice of IITians to enable social programs to nationally scale. Joe completed his MBA from IIM, Calcutta and his Bachelors from IIT, Kharagpur
Karthikeyan Ganeshan
Sristi Foundation
Sristi Foundation was founded in 2013 by Karthikeyan Ganesan, who has spent the past 15 years working with children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. After studying for a degree in Psychology, he returned to work at his orphanage to help create these opportunities. From then, it became his aim to provide disabled people a home and create opportunities for them to get training in order to live more independently and reach their full potential. Karthik founded the Sristi Foundation, a non-profit organization, based in Konamangalam Village (30km from Pondicherry). The organization runs several projects; all working to empower disadvantaged and disabled people. Sristi Village is an eco-friendly self-sustaining village for intellectually disabled people to live learn and grow. The Village is home to Sristi Farm Academy, a training programme for disabled people to learn practical skills that can be applied to daily life in rural Tamil Nadu. The aim of these projects is to ensure disabled people are provided with training that can help them live independently and generate their own income in the future. Sristi Foundation also operates Sristi Special School, a school for disabled young people from the area to obtain an education, fitted to their individual needs.
Kartik Desai
Asha Impact
Kartik leads the investment, ecosystem and policy activities at Asha Impact. He has led investments into eight social enterprises and helped build out the ecosystem and policy activities of the trust. Prior to joining Asha Impact, Kartik has over a decade of experience in venture capital, social entrepreneurship, investment banking and international development. He has worked with two of the largest impact investment funds in India, Lok Capital and Aavishkaar, as well as set up his own social venture, What’s up Bharat. Prior to this he worked for three years with Merrill Lynch in the investment banking team executing IPO, M&A and private equity transactions. He has done consulting engagements for organisations including the BTS Group, the UNDP and the Rockefeller Foundation. Kartik graduated from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and from Columbia University with a Master in International Affairs.
Lalitha Raghuram
Mohan Foundation
Lalitha Raghuram is a compassionate, enthusiastic and a high-integrity individual and as the Country Director of MOHAN Foundation. She has a rich, broad-based expertise in health care management arising out of 34 years of experience with leading eye care and not-for-profit organizations around the world. She started MOHAN Foundation in Hyderabad in 2002.
In the year 2004 Lalitha's passionate commitment to her profession transcended deep personal tragedy. In a tragic incident, her young 19-year-old son had a fatal road accident and was declared brain dead. Walking the talk, Lalitha and her husband took the heart-breaking but inspiring decision to donate their son's organs. For this brave and noble action, they were presented the CNN IBN Real Heroes Award. They received a trophy and a cash award of INR 5 Lakhs, which they have donated to MOHAN Foundation to further the cause of organ donation. Lalitha is an Ashoka Fellow, and received Rotary Vocational Excellence Awards and "Woman in Transplantation Hero Award" among several other awards.
Dr. Megha Bhargava
Income Tax, Mumbai
Megha is an IRS officer currently posted as Deputy Commissioner Income Tax, Mumbai. She has worked earlier in the Ministry of Defense as Chief Executive Officer. Before joining the Indian Civil Services, she practiced as a Dental officer under the Ex-Servicemen Contributory Health Scheme. Her passion for community service led her to join her sister to found an NGO, Samarpann which supports tribal schools in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. Samarpan has touched the lives of around 10,500 children in 41 schools in last 4 years.
Mihir Bhatt
All India Disaster Management Institute
Mihir R Bhatt leads All India Disaster Mitigation Institute in India, worked in over 53 cities and 80 districts, and over 9 states in India and 6 countries in the Asia Pacific . Currently he is working on understanding uncertainties and transformation in desert, delta, and coastal metro city areas in India; exploring temporality and hybridity in COVID 19 response by local authorities and NGO’s in South Asia; demanding universal social protection for informal sector and migrant workers in Asia Pacific.; documenting economic paradox of social distancing in national command and control approach to pandemic; and health and well-being blindness of current urban planning. He is a member of advisory committee of the Platform of Disaster Displacement, Follow-up to the Nansen Initiative , Geneva, Switzerland, since October 2016.
Murugan Vasudevan
Letz Dream Foundation
Murugan leads the Social Innovation Group for Cisco in India & South Asia. His team is responsible for directing Cisco’s social investments around critical human needs, education, and economic empowerment. This includes programs such as the Networking Academy and CSR investments. Cisco Networking Academy is a public-private partnership approach to tech skills development that currently reaches 300,000+ students a year in India & South Asia. On the social investments, Murugan leads overall CSR investment strategy, operations, and governance helping to establish the investment framework and strategic partnerships in India with a key focus on digital, sustainable, and scalable solutions.Letz Dream Foundation, Murugan will be setting up a new social innovation fund that will focus on accelerating tech-based Innovations for social development. The focus will be on post-pilot social start-ups (non-profit and social enterprises).
Nixon Joseph
SBI Foundation
Nixon Joseph is President & Chief Operating Officer, SBI Foundation. He joined State Bank of India in 1985 as probationary officer. As a career Banker, he worked all across India, in Bahrain and Tokyo. He has led SBI Youth for India fellowship program and CSR for the State Bank of India. He is the recipient of Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam award 2018 for excellence in public service and Dr Kalam Memorial Ignited Minds award.
Prabhat Labh
Grameen Foundation India
I am a social development professional with twenty-five years of work experience across the sectors of agriculture, enterprise development and financial inclusion, in Asia, Africa and North America. In my current role, as CEO of Grameen Foundation India, I successfully led the organizational turnaround of GFI, bringing it into operational self-sufficiency, and leading a significant growth and diversification in GFI's programming. I also led setting up of two subsidiaries of GFI to tap into different revenue streams such as fee-based services, grants, and earned revenue from a social business in order to drive scale and sustainability.
Earlier, at MasterCard Foundation, Canada I managed a US$ 100 million portfolio of programs focused on enhancing access to low-income communities across 18 countries in Africa. Before that, as Senior Technical Advisor at CARE USA, I supported different country offices of CARE across Africa.
Pranav Kumar
Dr Reddy's Foundation
Pranav is currently serving as Director-Operations, Dr. Reddy’s Foundation and leads Foundation's flagship skilling initiatives. As a development professional, with 16 years of experience Pranav has worked on Social Research, Disaster Risk Reduction, Child Rights, Livelihoods and Skill Development themes and also got opportunities to lead Change Management, Leadership intervention in Organisation (Arbinger), and managed large-scale Programs and Partnerships. He is also an author, his first book “Ira Ki Kahaniyan” (Children’s Poetry Book in Hindi) is his first small gesture to give back to the society, as all proceeds go to CRY (Child Rights and You).
Rashmi Lamba
Geena Davis,Institute on Gender in Media
Rashmi Lamba is the 'India Council Chair' at the 'Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media' (GDI). Rashmi initiated the first 'Global Symposium on Gender in Media' in Mumbai at the 'FICCI FLO Film Festival' themed on women empowerment, launched by Rashmi as the Festival Director and spearheaded the 'Mumbai Film Mart' at the MAMI Film Festival, initiated the Films Division 'MIFF HUB' to promote documentaries and curates for the 'Samabhav Travelling Film Festival' by MAVA (Men Against Violence and Abuse). She has held pivotal roles as Industry Director, Festival Producer and Jury Manager at leading international Film Festivals in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Toronto. As an Impact Producer, Rashmi is an Advisor at 'Good Pitch India' and promotes cause led films like a Jhalki, to end child trafficking, inspired by the Indian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Kailash Satyarthi.
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Ratna Vishwanathan
Reach to Teach
Ratna Vishwanathan
Reach to Teach
Ronak Shah
Sewa Mandir
Ronak Shah has spent nearly twenty years in the development sector. After seven years with Seva Mandir, he started Udaipur Urja Initiative, a community-owned company, which he led as Chief Executive for four years. He re-joined Seva Mandir in 2018 as the Chief Executive. Ronak holds a Master's degree in Environmental Planning from the Centre of Environmental Planning and Technology, and a Master's degree in International Development (Environment and Development) from the University of Manchester.
Dr. Smriti Pahwa
Social Impact
Smriti holds a doctorate in Nutrition along with a degree in Education as well as Management. She has worked at different full time as well as consultancy positions with various Government, Not for Profits, for profits as well as other social enterprises involved in CSR evaluations-MLE, Social Tech: Edu-tech and Health-tech systems. Smriti is the founder of "MOC" (Missed Opportunities Cognizant) mindset, an innovative entrepreneurial mindset that calls for Design Thinking, Collaborations and Partnerships for Integrated Action towards SDGs. In her recently published book “Of Missed Opportunities. One Too Many!” Smriti shares case studies of building cost effective high RoI Social Impact models through “MOC”.
Suchitra Marwah
Aspire Education
Suchitra Marwah is Director - Aspire Education, with the mission to provide value -based leadership training to middle & senior school students. After a decade in the corporate sector, she started her Impact journey with London-headquartered GSG through 2019. In July 2020, Suchitra became a Trustee of Aspire Circle.
Swapnil Joshi
Infosys
Swapnil Joshi is a Chevening Fellow in Leadership & Excellence at University of Oxford. He brings 17+ years of experience in design, delivery, consulting, pre-sales and sales functions. He is a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from university of Pune. He specializes in automation, IoT in buildings and application engineering of HVAC and building controls.
Tushar Thakkar
Dalberg
Tushar is focused on the intersection of the development and finance & investment sectors. He has advised a variety of clients, including USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Government of Andhra Pradesh, the British Asian Trust, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a large private sector eye care player, a global agri-commodity trader etc.; in answering both organization level and initiative level strategic questions. At Dalberg, he leverages close to a decade of prior work at Lazard, an investment banking focused on commercial mergers & acquisitions and fund raising.
Vidhya Y
Vision Empower
Vidhya is visually impaired since birth. She founded “Vision Empower” - a non-profit focusing on education in science & maths for visually impaired students. Vidhya also co-founded “Vembi Technologies” - creating assistive tech for the visually impaired. She is the first blind student to undertake Maths at a higher secondary level in Karnataka, & the first to pursue Computer Science in UG studies at her university.
Viiveck Verma
Recykal Foundation
Viiveck Verma is currently the Chief Impact Officer for Recykal Foundation - an entity engaged in transforming the lives of Safai Mitra in India. He is a TiE Hyderabad Charter member and is also a venture partner with Venture Catalysts Venture capital firm. He has served as a Senior Advisor to Telangana State Innovation Cell helping the state in Social Innovation and Impact. He is the Curator and Licensee for TEDxHyderabad and also the president for a social impact society called Society for Advancement of Human Endeavour (SAHE).
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 8
Adwait Hebbar
IndusInd Bank Limited
I am a career Banker with over 35 years of experience in multiple functions such as Investment Banking Risk Management, Credit Admin, Branch Banking, Treasury and Foreign Exchange, Training Head etc. Currently designated as EVP & Head – Corporate Services, IndusInd Bank. I am responsible for functions like CSR & Sustainability, Procurement, Safety & Security, Facilities & Administration and Outsourcing Governance among others.
As Head Corporate Services, at IndusInd, I have been recognised for introducing several innovative best practices and for building operational excellence that have contributed to the success of the Bank. In addition, I have been instrumental in building the CSR & Sustainability function for the Bank.
On the Sustainability front, IndusInd Bank was featured in the CDP India A-list and has been on the Leadership Board of CDP for four consecutive years. In addition, IndusInd Bank has been recognised as the frontrunner in the Financial Services sector in carbon emissions mitigation and management.
IndusInd Bank has won several awards and recognition including the National Award from Ministry of Corporate Affairs and has been highly appreciated Social and Environmental Programmes in the focus areas of Environment Sustainability, Education, Livelihood Enhancement, Healthcare and Sports.
Aman Bhaiya
SBI Foundation
Aman Bhaiya is a young professional working in the development and social sector. Before joining this sector, Aman worked as an Equity Advisor. He identifies as a perpetual learner and hopes to create path-breaking policy reforms and make a stark difference in the manner CSR is implemented in India. At present, Aman is the Assistant Vice President & Program Head of SBI Foundation. He is also one of the founding members of SBI Foundation and has been a vocal advocate for the critical importance of outcomes-based financing in CSR. Aman believes deeply in the concept of community of practice; the idea that your knowledge should be pooled, shared and collated for people who wish to access it. Aman holds a PGDM from IIM Shillong and B.COM from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.
Amit Garg
Global Development Incubator
Amit leads the livelihoods portfolio for the Global Development Incubator (GDI) in India. Headquartered in Washington DC, GDI has launched and scaled transformational development ventures and social impact solutions across the globe including but not limited to Co-Impact, Convergence, GFEMS, Unorthodox Philanthropy, Refugee Investment Network. Previously, Amit lead the regional program strategy and grants management for the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery (GFEMS) for India and Bangladesh. An incubatee of GDI, GFEMS is a Washington DC based fund backed by the US (J/TIP), UK (FCDO) and Norwegian (NORAD) governments in addition to private foundations and aims to combat human trafficking and forced labour. Previously, Amit led the philanthropy portfolio for Credit Suisse in India and the sustainability portfolio for Godrej Properties. In the past, Amit has worked with UNICEF as State Coordinator - Monitoring & Evaluation for the state of Bihar in India and been part of the founding teams of two early stage ventures focussed on healthcare education. Amit is an alumnus of Maastricht University having graduated with a double master’s in Public Policy and Human Development (jointly with United Nations University).
Anjani Bansal
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Anjani Bansal (Deputy Director, Global Development, Gates Foundation) Anjani Bansal leads private sector partnerships for the Gates Foundation in the India Country Office, with past experience in investments and blended finance in India and Africa across multiple sectors such as technology, agriculture, finance, livelihoods, and education. He worked in commercial and investment banking for several years and is most interested in leveraging innovation and investments in the private sector to drive large-scale impact. He is also an angel investor and strategic advisor to several startups and incubators.
Anurag Pratap
Capgemini
Anurag Pratap is the VP & CSR Leader-Capgemini, with over 23 years of experience in CSR, community development, project management / implementation, grant management, capacity planning and resource Management. He focuses on strategy and charter for Capgemini CSR, crafting relevant goals & policies for programs.
Aparnaa Laxmi Singh
EcoLib Foundation
Aparnaa Laxmi Singh, a state level Swimmer, is an HBS alumni, bilingual published author, poet and avid social filmmaker. A documentation Consultant with over 30 years of experience, she is a volunteer Road Safety Officer for the Gurgaon Traffic Police, and for Citizens group Gurgaon Action Plan. She is a Speaker on gender and rights, a performing arts Influencer and assists companies as a POSH and PSEA expert. She also ramp-walks to support social causes. She is Hon. Founder Secretary of NGO EcoLib Foundation under the aegis of which she initiated a MultiActivity Learning Centre for socio- economically marginalized children, a Self Defence Program "Chandi” for girls, “Behnon Aawaz Do” for victims of Domestic Abuse, and “Neki Kii Deewar” for Community sharing.
Bindi Chetan Dharia
Center for Social Impact and Philanthropy (Ashoka University)
Bindi is currently the Deputy Director at the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy at Ashoka University. She has previously worked with the Tata Trusts for Grant Relationship Management and also handled their Fundraising work for a year. Before that she was the program director for Technology at the Piramal Foundation for Education Leadership. Her earlier experience is in the space of engineering and operations with ArcelorMittal in Indiana Harbour, USA. She holds a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business School with a focus in social enterprise and entrepreneurship. Her life prior to that has been in Mumbai and she has bachelors in Electronics and Telecommunications.
Deepali Khanna
The Rockefeller Foundation
Deepali Khanna is the Managing Director of the Asia Regional Office of The Rockefeller Foundation. She leads the Foundation’s initiatives to catalyze strategic collaborations in Asia. Deepali has worked in the development sector for closer to four decades with organizations such as The MasterCard Foundation, Plan International, and UNICEF around the world. She is a founding member of South Asia Women in Energy (SAWIE).
Harish C Sadani
Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA)
Harish Sadani is a co-founder and Chief Functionary of Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA), India’s first organization of sensitive men working since 1993 to stop and prevent gender-based violence on women (much before international bodies talked about male-engagement to address gender). Harish has done his Masters in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences and has been engaging and mentoring thousands of adolescent boys and young men across India to address issues on healthy relationships, masculinity and sexuality-related matters, using out-of-the-box methods. Currently, he is also a Consultant to Corporates, Universities and NGOs on anti-sexual harassment at workplace and other gender matters.
Harish’s past experience in developmental sector includes managing the Corporate Social Responsibility of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals Limited, working in leading voluntary organizations Child Rights & You - CRY and Blind Men’s Association – BMA.
Harish is a TEDx Speaker and has been invited by national and international bodies like UN Women and UNFPA to share insights and build capacities of various stakeholders on addressing issues of gender-based violence against women.
In recognition of his pioneering work, Harish has received Ashoka Changemakers Prize, Maharashtra Foundation Award, Sandvik India Gender Diversity Award amongst other prestigious awards.
Jyotsna Lall
Aga Khan Trust for Culture
After a bachelors In Zoology from Delhi University, I decided to join the Institute of Rural Management, Anand as I wanted to do something different. At that point, I wasn't sure what that different was but I thought IRMA was a good option that could help reach my goals.
I have been working in the development space since 1988 that Includes working Intensely with communities in villages around Ranthambhore National Park and Nizamuddin Basti as well as in a donor/coordination role. I have worked in the spaces of education, health and livelihood. I am a founder member of two organisations In Rajasthan - Gramin Shiksha Kendra and Basic Health Services.
I have been working In the Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative since 2011 and in a way, this uses all the experience that I have gathered over the years in the areas of health, education, livelihoods, community development and management.
My project aims to use heritage conservation as a stepping stone to Improve the quality of lives of people. I anchor the socio-economic programmes that Include education, health, livelihoods, sanitation and solid waste management through a public-private partnership.
Jyotsna Sitling
Forest Department, Govt. of Uttarakhand
Jyotsna Sitling is the first female tribal Indian Forest Service officer of India. With a career of 30+ years, she has worked at the helm of both state and central governments of India. As an institutional entrepreneur, she has created participatory institutions, policies, instruments and programs in areas like biodiversity, poverty, gender, livelihoods, watershed, agribusiness, entrepreneurship and skills. During this work, she has handled government projects and multilateral/bilateral projects with WFP, European Union (EU), GIZ, IFAD, IDRC, ICIMOD, UNESCO and World Bank. She continues to work passionately at the intersection of market, equity and environment. Presently, she is working on ecosystem for social enterprises in India. Ms. Sitling is IIM Bangalore alumnus and is a recipient of Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar 2004-05 and Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration 2006-07 for her outstanding contribution to the public service of the country. She has recently joined as Principal Chief Conservator of Forests - Van Panchayat in Uttarakhand after completing her tenure as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.
Kartik Kilachand
IITians Influencing India’s Transformation ( IIT-IIT.org)
Kartik Kilachand, a US based serial entrepreneur (having co-founded several successful ventures including Tasty Bite, Maaza Mango, Edusynch), hit the "Pause/Refresh " button on his life about five years ago - and switched ears from being an entrepreneur to being a social impact entrepreneur. Over the five years, having entered this sector as on outsider, he met many social impact enterprises in India and abroad. (Kenya/South Africa/Bangladesh/Brazil) and the one common thread he discovered was the inability of India's NGO's to achieve scale and hence meaningful impact at National Scale. Thus, was born IIT-IIT.org (han 2018 - a non-profit entity), an enabling platform which harnesses the collective power of of IIT Alumni (300000+strong globally) to help scale India's social sector with meaningful impact. The focus areas are Education, Healthcare, Livelihoods (including water for livelihood) Improving outcomes in these areas would accelerate the case of India's upward movement on the Human Development Index (currently 130/189)
Kartik has recently relocated from New York, USA to Delhi, India.
A graduate of IIT Bombay, Mr Kilachandholds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University; an MBA from UC Berkeley & the Advanced Management Program degree from INSEAD, France.
Meenal Patole
AGORA MICROFINANCE INDIA LTD
I have completed my master’s from JNU New Delhi in Political Science and International Relations and MPhil from IIT Mumbai in Planning and Development. I started my career with the British Council in Mumbai as Asst Development Services Officer, move to join a microfinance and livelihoods consulting firm EDA Rural Systems Pvt Ltd (Now merged into MCRIL) and work there for over 6 years. Post this, I worked as Advisor to ACTED (French INGO) for Tsunami Rehabilitation work in south India, work with CARE India as expert for tsunami rehabilitation and microfinance in south Asia and south east Asia region. In 2008 I decided to turn into entrepreneur and founded Takshashila Development Services that focused on urban Microfinance in Mumbai with detailing policies and process that client oriented and impact driven. In 2011 I co-founded Agora Microfinance India Ltd with principal investor Agora Microfinance NV and thus into full-fledged strategy and management for a microfinance programme. From April 2020 I will be moving into Mentor/Director role for the Company focus on driving Vision/Mission and Strategy planning. In my career I have had the fortune of associating with a number of governments, non-government, private and public sector bodies and with keen interest on last mile impact. I also have focused on developing internal policies and systems that are gender sensitive, benefit the ultimate user and are efficient and effective.
Mohan D Sharma
Development Support Centre, Ahmedabad
Mr. Mohan Sharma is presently the Executive Director at DSC, Ahmedabad and possesses professional experience of 23 years in the field of PNRM and rural development. He is a graduate in Agriculture Engineering and post-graduation in Business Management.
He has served other organisations in the capacity of Director such as DSC Foundation; a section 25 for Profit Company involved in research and consultancy, GUjPro, a state Farmer Producer Company (FPC) and Krushidhan, a primary FPC in Gujarat which serves small and marginal farmers. Mr. Sharma is a Governing Board member of Indian network of PIM, a registered Society, GoI. Mr. Sharma has been involved in designing and co-coordinating national award-winning programmes such on Participatory Irrigation Management, Integrated water Resource Management and sustainable agriculture in MP, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. He documents practices to feed training, research and policy changes.
Moutushi Sengupta
John D & Catherine T MacArthur Foundation
Moutushi is a social sector professional with more than 26 years of leadership experience in developing, executing and evaluating organization wide and program strategies, with development institutions of global repute. She has had several opportunities to lead and work with multicultural and multi-disciplinary teams to identify and access context-specific windows for action, to achieve systemic changes aimed at reducing the impact of a diverse set of development challenges. This has involved engaging in depth with diverse sets of stakeholders, including federal and state-level policy makers, think-tanks and thematic experts, grassroots institutions, regulatory bodies and peer donor institutions. Specific areas of expertise include developing and executing program strategies, institutional grant making, developing frameworks for measuring results for interventions supported and in establishing appropriate management reporting arrangements. In addition, Moutushi is registered as an Associate Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, US and has coached several leaders from the non-profit sector in the last two years.
Prachi Jain Windlass
Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, India LLP
As a member of the leadership team, I am responsible for the strategy, deployment and management of foundation’s investments in India to transform the lives of urban low-income communities through improved education, livelihoods and financial inclusion. This manage a portfolio of start-ups, NGOs and large-scale government partnerships.
Having spent more than ten years at the foundation, I am passionate about the area of data driven education and performance linked financing across sectors. Have spearheaded the foundation’s work in multiple ways, including creating role model states for systemic transformation of public education systems, incubating and growing EdTech solutions and creating an evidence base for performance linked financing pilots.
Prior to this, I have over 10 years of diverse set of operational and leadership experience in India and US, at Boston Consulting Group, Gurgaon office and in the telecommunications sector at Qualcomm and Motorola in USA. I have a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, a master’s degree from University of Southern California, Los Angeles and MBA from the University of Chicago.
Pradeep Nair
Ford Foundation
Pradeep Nair has over 25 years of global experience across US and India. He started his career in Silicon Valley in technology and strategy, then moved to the social sector, working for leaders like President Clinton, Mayor Bloomberg and Paul Volcker. He currently leads Ford Foundation in India.
Pradyut Bhatacharjee
SeSTA (Seven Sisters Development Assistance)
Pradyut Bhattacharjee is the current Executive Director of SeSTA. He is an Engineer by education and has been a development professional for the last 18 years, leading teams and projects during his stint with Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) in Jharkhand & Chhattisgarh; he has varied experience of promoting & nurturing women collectives, grooming young professionals, organisation development processes. Pradyut is also an empanelled National Resource Person of NRLM supporting State Rural Livelihood Missions (SRLMs) across North-Eastern states. He has worked on value chains of Lac, vegetables like tomato and brinjal. He has long experience of working on institution building, social mobilization and sustainable livelihoods. He has worked as Chief Executive Officer of one of the largest Women Cooperatives in Jharkhand, working on input and output linkages. Pradyut has been engaging with rural poor under different projects in collaboration with APPI, ITC, TATA Trusts, UNDP, TWC, IFAD, TRIFED, WFP, MORD, NRLM and local administration in several areas of Jharkhand,
Chhattisgarh and North East Region of India. He has been leading Seven Sisters Development Assistance (SeSTA), a premier development organisation of North-East India since 2015. It is one of the few professionally managed development organisation o NE comprising of a bunch of young professionals.
Pranav Deepak Kothari
Educational Initiatives Pvt Ltd
Pranav Kothari is the Chief Executive Officer at Educational Initiatives (EI). During his tenure, he has overseen several large-scale assessment projects with state governments and deployed Mindspark - EI's Personalized Adaptive Learning Software - to help students learn Language and Mathematics.
Prerna Mukharya
Outline India
Prerna Mukharya is the Founder of Outline India - a for-profit social enterprise that works to create social impact through data. Her research start-up focuses on how data is collected, and impact is measured for running social schemes and programs by academics, policy makers, private stakeholders, and the Indian government. Founded in 2012, Outline India has worked across 26 states, over 9000 villages and interviewed over 4 million stakeholders. Prerna just launched Track Your Metrics (TYM) – a tech tool for quick impact assessment by small NGOs, government bodies and big funders, equipping the former with means to secure more funding and the latter to hold their grantees accountable. The Android app/web-based platform aims to change the way we track and finance social programs at ~0-unit cost. Prerna was featured on Fortune magazines’ 40 under 40 list for her work with ground level data in 2017 and 2018. She was featured among the top 25 businesswomen in India by Forbes in their annual issue featuring women leaders running profitable companies in 2018. She was also among the top 40 women changemakers in the 2018 annual list by India Today and among the 25 most powerful Businesswomen in India, by Business Today, in 2019.
In 2018, she was awarded the Chevening Fellowship at Oxford University by Rolls Royce and the UK government. She was also declared a Raisina Fellow in 2017, awarded by the Ministry of external affairs and ORF. She is an Australia India Youth Dialogue fellow, 2015. She holds an MA in Economics from Boston University.
Rathish Balakrishnan
Sattva
Rathish Balakrishnan is the Co-founder and Managing Partner at Sattva. He has extensive experience in conceptualising and implementing strategic large-scale solutions in the social impact sector. He has contributed significantly at governmental policy level in education and skill development.
Sachin Sachdeva
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
Sachin is the director of Paul Hamlyn Foundation's India program. He is an alumnus of Delhi University and IRMA. He has worked with a wide variety of organizations beginning with the corporate sector and moving then to build a career in social development. He has lived and worked closely with village communities sharing their joys, their energy, their dilemma’s, their repression and their aspirations, and then gone on to set-up a range of social development organizations which could hopefully address some of their realities. He set up ARAVALI for the government of Rajasthan as an initiative to look at collaboration between government and the social sector, and has been a joint founder of path breaking institutions such as Ajeevika Bureau and the Rajasthan Sharam Sarathi Association which have set the agenda for working on labour and migration. Action research and Training for Health which has led research and action on reproductive and child health and Gramin Shiksha Kendra which has fore worded the role of communities in elementary education. In Afghanistan, he helped set up the rural development initiative of the Aga Khan Foundation. As Director of the PHF's India program he is committed to supporting emerging social development organizations and sees their role as important components of a vibrant democracy.
Shanthakumar Bannirchelvam
Global Impact Partners
Shanthakumar has advised impact-focused companies in the Infrastructure, property, technology and medical sectors on strategy and capital raising in Australia, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. He has also previously worked in corporate law in Sydney and London with Herbert Smith Freehills, the United Nations Economic and Social Council in New York and served as an Infantry Officer in the Singapore Armed Forces. Shanthakumar holds a B. Econ/LLB from the University of Sydney and is admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of NSW.
Shanthi R Lakshmanan
ExempServ Professional Services P Ltd
Shanthi is an accomplished business professional having worked with HCL Group, eFunds, Global Vantedge, Hewitt and finally Mercer where she led and enabled the optimising of delivery operations across the low-cost locations in India, Warsaw, China across Accounting, IT services, HR Administration, Compensation and retirement benefits plans. She also held the position of CSR leader for Mercer India from 2011-2015 and as global steering member representing Asian region.
Sharad Agarwal
Indian School of Development Management
Sharad Agarwal has done his engineering from IIT Kanpur and Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management from IIM Ahmedabad. Sharad has spent his initial 20 years in the world of business. In the last 10 years, Sharad has been working in Education and had established and managed K-12 schools around the country. From 2014, Sharad has founded ISDM which aims to facilitate the creation of a cadre of professional leaders and managers in the development sector.
Soha Moitra
CRY
Soha Moitra, a graduate in Psychology from Delhi University and a post graduate in Social Work from the MS University, Vadodara, has experience of working in sectors ranging from – gender rights to child rights. Soha started her professional career with Nirantar, an NGO working for gender issues. There she worked extensively on women’s empowerment through literacy and educational programs in Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh. While working with Nirantar, Soha focused on training and monitoring and evaluation of the Sanjha Shiksha Kendra. Working with Nirantar triggered the realization that gendered socialization norms which start right from childhood need to be broken to bring about lasting change. This led to her interest in working in the realm of child rights. In I996 she joined CRY- Child Rights & You. Since then, in a span of over 20 years at CRY, Soha has spearheaded the initiative of child rights centered programming with NGO partners at grassroots level in states like Gujarat, West Bengal & Orissa. Within CRY, Soha also expanded the outreach by engaging with children in privileged schools. The objective of this programme was to sensitize them about child rights issues and enable them to take action for ensuring child rights. She has also been the prime mover in building the volunteer program at CRY- this involved strategizing volunteerism and the role of citizens in context of child rights for the organization.
She has also been a jury member for the ‘The Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards 2014 & 2018, worldwide acclaimed youth recognition program. Additionally, is currently serving as an external resource person in The POSH committee of Expedia India.
Currently, Soha heads the Northern region as Director headquartered in Delhi and is part of the leadership team of CRY. This mandates her to be accountable for development & execution of CRY’s Mission, Vision & Strategy.
V. Narayanan Iyer
Piramal Foundation
A postgraduate in commerce, qualified cost accountant and company secretary with work experience of more than two decades in diverse organizations - Financial institution/NBFC, Foreign Bank and Stock Exchange. As a Financial Controller/ Director Finance , I have more than a decade of Leadership and Management experience in creating sound financial systems and robust internal controls, enabling new business initiatives, creating change and productivity/ efficiency improvements in growing organizations across Fixed Income and Treasury Business, Capital markets, Corporate Lending, Retail & Transaction Banking, Asset management, BPOs & KPOs. Since January 2017, I have been working with Piramal Foundation (PF). PF is an implementing NGO with more than 4500 employees across Education, Health and Water. I am responsible for budgeting, automation, stakeholder management, Coordinating Audits & ensuring adequacy of Financial and internal controls, Compliance, Financial reporting, ensuring proper cash flow management and help build a good governance framework across the group entities.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 7
Ananda B R Datla
TATA TRUSTS
Anand Datla leads learning and impact for the Tata Trusts. In his role, Anand is responsible for creating and sustaining a framework to understand and improve the delivery of the over 750 programs operated by the Trusts. Anand has over 20 years of experience advising Indian and MNC clients on process improvement, enterprise solutions and information security. He has worked with Ernst & Young and Deloitte before joining the Trusts.
Aneesha Wadhwa
Udayan Care
Aneesha Wadhwa is an active trustee on the Board of Udayan Care, a child rights and education focused non profit based in Delhi, with projects in 18 cities in India and chapters in USA, Germany and Australia. She focuses on strategic expansion, resource mobilization and communication management, but her passion lies in the development of mentor based models of care for vulnerable children, especially young adults leaving child care institutions.
A media marketing professional, Aneesha was previously with the India Today Group and Discovery Communications. She has an MBA in Communications Management from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune and studied English Literature at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.
Arun Nathan
IDFC Foundation
My work in the social development sector over the past 16 years has been driven by the belief that the dignity of life is non-negotiable. I have been working to create impact at scale particularly on issues of poverty alleviation, youth empowerment and leadership development. I have held leadership positions and engaged extensively with a number of government organisations, international agencies, corporates and community-based institutions across Africa, Asia and Europe. I have also taught at IRMA, XIM-Bhubaneshwar, Shiv Nadar University and TERI University. I hold a Masters in rural management from IRMA and a Masters in Social Policy from The London School of Economics.
Ashif Shaikh
Jan Sahas Social Development Society
Ashif Shaikh is co-founder Jan Sahas. Jan Sahas is working from year 2000 to end cast and gender based violence through eradication of inhuman slavery of manual scavenging, caste based sex work and forced labour, Jan Sahas is also supporting to survivors of rape and sexual abuse for access to justice in 50 districts of 5 states of India. Jan Sahas liberated 28,000 Dalit women from practice of manual scavenging and provided socio-medico and legal support to 8000 survivors of rape and sexual abuse. Ashif is member of the various committees of government of India and received various national and international awards.
Avilash Dwivedi
Tata Power Corporate Ltd
Community Development and Social Sustainability Professional with grassroot, grant making and corporate experience across the country and international exposure. Interest in institution building as key platform for facilitating stakeholders engagement and partnership in policies and deployment of sustainable programs
Dr. Vikas Goswamy
Godrej Industries
Vikas Goswami has been working in the space of corporate sustainability and CSR for over two decades. At present, Vikas is Head of Consulting at Boundless Environment Resource Solutions Pvt. Ltd and consults on issues of stakeholder mapping, engagement, and strategy.
Jacob Ninan
Axis Bank Foundation
Jacob is a career banker with Axis Bank . After having handled business assignments in India and abroad I have taken responsibility to Head the CSR functions of the Bank. I am currently the CEO designate of the Foundation. I have graduated from Bangalore University and besides various certifications in Banking & Finance I have completed a Management Course through Dukes University
Kanta Singh
UN Women
Kanta Singh has over 25 years of experience in the management of pro-women development programmes. She has worked with national and international organizations to promote women in formal economy, sports and politics. Her last assignment was with UNDP where she spent 9 years. Currently, Kanta is the Deputy Country Representative, UNWomen India. She is a former national level Volleyball Player. Kanta is an Aspire Fellow and Chevening Gurukul Fellow from University of Oxford.
Latika Nayar Ahuja
PNB Housing Finance
Latika is a professional with masters in social work and International Human Rights. With over 6 years experience of working with NGOs and corporates, worked with organizations like CRY, Don Bosco and United Nations Commission for Refugees, TERI and been involved in research assignment on issues like child marriage, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, land acquisition, poverty alleviation and promoting education and health for the underprivileged children. Currently working with leading NBFCs and ensuring implementation of CSR initiatives pan India. Executing projects that ensure holistic development of the construction workers and their immediate families. Received the prestigious green globe award in year 2011 and in 2015 & selected amongst the select 20 women who exemplify leadership and show a vision to become the leaders of tomorrow by The Women in the World Summit.
Mahesh Revabhai Pandya
Paryavaran Mitra
I am an environmental and human right activist, an academician, political analyst, and civil society leader and have been working in variety of capacities since past two decades. I am engaged in environment advocacy and awareness, policy intervention, strengthening democracy and governance for nearly 20 years. I have been working at grass root to support local communities to realize access and control over their own environment, to manage their resources in a sustainable way, and to participate in decision making processes that affect them.
Manju Dhasmana
Microsoft India
Manju Dhasmana is Director of Philanthropies & CSR at Microsoft India, where she drives Microsoft Philanthropies mandate of digital inclusion, from digital skills training to help youth get jobs and start businesses, to educating the next generation of innovators through greater access to computer science education for all youth. She also leads the portfolio of partnerships with nonprofits/NGOs to deliver the benefit of technology to the underserved communities.
Meera Chaudhary
New Stream Media
Meera is a learner and an independent filmmaker and currently heading New Stream Media. New stream Media is a decade old organization making films for change and independent documentaries on hard-hitting socio political issues in India. Till today NSM has made well known 5 feature-length independent documentaries in India.I have an academic background in Management and environmental Science and carries a decade of experience in Corporate and Social sector. My latest documentary was En Dino Muzaffarnagar™ in 2014, The film is critically acclaimed for its content, camera and representation. At present, the film is banned and a case is going on in the court of law.
Mukesh Tiwary
Traidcraft Exchange
Mukesh works as a Lead operations in Traidcraft Exchange (UK based) for its project in India. I am a social sector development professional with 15 plus years of experience. In the past, I have worked with TechnoServe, Sir Ratan Tata Trust and Foundation for Ecological Sector. I am a graduate from XISS, further studied non-profit management from Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore and have done an executive course on Global Growth Entrepreneurship from ISB, Hyderabad. I am passionate about bringing change in the lives of vulnerable and marginalised producers. I am a trained facilitator and believes in reaching at innovative solutions to solve problems through participatory dialogues & positive action.
Noorjehan Safia Niaz
Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan/Ashana Trust
Noorjehan Safia Niaz is a Ph.D in Sociology from the Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University and an MASW from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, graduated in 1992. She is the co-founder of Bharatiya Muslim MahilaAndolan [BMMA], a secular, autonomous mass based national movement of Muslim women. She is also the Founder member and Managing Trustee of Ashana Trust which works towards supporting initiatives of women from marginalized communities for justice, peace and development.
Parul Falgun Sheth
Shaishav
Parul Sheth is Co-Founder of Shaishav, based in Gujarat, India. Shaishav works with underprivileged children. We believe that children are “Change Makers”. With intensive work with young people, independent children’s collective “Balsena” and Youth collective, “Tarunsena” came into existence. For details please visit www.shaishavchildrights.org . Parul Sheth is Executive Director of Shaishav and is responsible for mission definition, development, public relations, for supervision of on-going work.
Pavithra Kumar R
TATA TRUSTS
Mr. Pavithra Kumar R, heads the Tata Trusts operations in South India. A versatile resource, he has been instrumental in putting together the team in AP and operationalising the MoU signed with the State Government in 2015. A Project Management Unit (PMU) was set up to facilitate development of 265 villages in-line with the Smart Village Smart Ward scheme of the state government along with state wide thematic areas such as WASH, Nutrition, Rural Internet, Fisheries, Digital initiatives, Education, Livelihood opportunities, Health.He comes with 21 years of experience in the field of Finance and Social sector. Prior to joining the Tata Trusts he was with Tata Communications Limited. He was also part of the core team that involved in Global fund raising and Mergers and Acquisitions across the globe. Apart from his role at the Trusts, he is a Director at the Vijayavahini Charitable Foundation (VCF) and Alamelu Charitable Foundation (ACF).
Radha Rameshchandra Sule
Tata Capital
Radha Sule is Head of Corporate Sustainability Tata Capital.. She has been responsible for setting up the CS function and all related policies and practices of the Company since its inception. As part of the Corporate Sustainability programme, Radha also oversees the Affirmative Action initiative, which seeks to create livelihoods for personnel from historically disadvantaged communities and in employing and engaging them as business partners. She is a member of the CII CSR & Affirmative Action Subcommittee, 2016-17.
Rajesh Singhi
IBTADA
Rajesh Singhi is the founder Executive Director of Ibtada and a passionate grassroots action leader. Ibtada was set up in 1997 with is mission to empower women and educate girls in Meo Muslim dominated Mewat region of Alwar, Rajasthan. Rajesh has two and half decades of experience in social development sector. Ibtada is known for its work of women’s empowerment through SHG based federations, girls education through innovative model of Taleemshalas. Rajesh anchored innovations of pashu sakhi and krishi sakhi which are now widely replicated in the livelihoods sector. He has been instrumental in setting up The Goat Trust and served on the Board of Sa-dhan and Centre for microfinance, Jaipur
Raman Kalyanakrishnan
TATA TRUSTS
Raman joined Tata Trusts in 2016 with over 22 years of experience in Strategic Planning, Operations, Sales & Marketing. He is currently the Head of Strategy & helping set the longer-term direction & in driving strategic initiatives for achieving sustained, scaled impact amongst the communities. Prior to this he was responsible Internet Saathi, improving internet literacy in the villages of India.
Seema Tiwary
Godrej & Boyce Mfg Co. Ltd
Seema Tiwari joined Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd in 2011 as Head – Corporate Social Responsibility to drive Godrej Good & Green vision and support 14 diverse businesses to implement various social and environment high impact programs. Prior to Godrej, she started Embarq India, the sustainable transport India program, at World Resources Institute, a USA based think tank working on climate change. Seema has also worked for Ministry of Urban Development on capacity building for sustainable transport. She holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Science and Policy from Clark University and Bachelors degree in Geography from Loreto College, Kolkata.
Shivani Manaktala
Brick Eagle Foundation
Shivani has 2 decades of experience leading design, development and implementation of social sector projects in Asia and parts of Latin America. She specializes in market systems approaches in development and commercial sustainability of social sector organizations. Her sectors of experience include agriculture, skills and livelihoods and affordable housing. She has worked closely with non-profit organizations, donor organizations, Central and State governments, and the private sector. She also has 6 years of private sector and entrepreneurial experience of setting up and running a business.
Dr. Shuchin Bajaj
Ujala Cygnus
Dr Shuchin Bajaj is the founder of Ujala Cygnus Healthcare and co-founder of Project StepOne, providing high quality low cost healthcare services to underaccessed and underserved communities of India. He has been the champion of Ayushman Bharat and also sits on the board of FITT, IIT Delhi. Shuchin's mission in life is to dissociate Healthcare access from financial ability.
Srinivas HSD
Tata Trusts Mumbai
Healthcare Management professional with over 25 years of experience, Srinivas started his career with Sri Sathya Sai Hospital in Puttaparthi in 1991 and was part of EMRI Hyderabad (2005-2011). Subsequently he joined L.V. Prasad Eye Institute Hyderabad and his most recent stint was with Reliance Foundation Mumbai. Srinivas has substantial exposure to Performance Management, Culture Transformation, Internal and external Communication, People development and Stake Holder Management with leadership experience in Hospital and Pre Hospital set ups and extensive engagement with govts in a PPP mode. At Tata Trusts Srinivas is exploring ways of consolidating the vast and varied work in Health vertical into a few focused thematic areas to build replicable and scalable models of healthcare delivery that can leverage existing and emerging technologies for large scale societal impact in the Primary and Preventive care space.
Sumitra Mishra
Mobile Creches
Twenty years of work experience ranging from grassroots direct practice, rural, urban poor and urban contexts, programme delivery and partnerships, grant management, fund raising and communications, research & advocacy, and organisation development has helped her in evolving as a person and developing a portfolio of holistic professional abilities. Programme development for the most excluded and disenfranchised persons with disabilities, victims of trafficking, survivors of violence, especially women and girls is the cornerstone of my work. My work experience follows a trajectory of joining bold socio-entrepreneurial initiatives and growing it to scale where we were able to demonstrate an impact model. Social justice is the fundamental agenda of the work I do.
Vatsala Mamgain
CRY Child Rights and You
Vatsala has spent 20 plus years in the corporate sector and been an entrepreneur, a writer and consultant. She believes that every human being has limitless potential and hopes that some of the work she does will help India’s children to unlock theirs.
Vijay Bhalaki
Athena Infonomics
Vijay Bhalaki is a Co-founder & Director at Athena Infomomics. He leads strategic initiatives and overall operations of the firm. Vijay works closely with development agencies, private sector clients and Governments on strategic advisory assignments. His research interests include public private partnerships (PPPs), public finance, and social infrastructure development. Vijay earned his degree in Chartered Accountancy from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and also holds a Masters in Economics from the National University of Singapore and University of Madras. Vijay is a GSG mellenial social entrepreneur 2017.
Vinod Kaushik
END POVERTY
Vinod is a Management Graduate with over 24 years experiences in conceptualizing, and executing agriculture, dairy and Rural development projects for poverty reduction in India. I have worked with a wise spectrum of organizations like Head, Dairy Value Chain, NDDB Dairy Services, CEO, Jaipur Rugs, India Representative, GEN Initiative UK etc. I have served on many committees like CSR Committee of CII, Agriculture & Water Committee of FICCI, NABARD Committee on Rural Credit Intensification for Punjab & Haryana, PMRY Committee for Mewat dist, Dist Level Coordination Committee for Gurgaon. etc. I got GSBI Awards from Santa Clara University, USA in 2010.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 6
Anubhav Kapoor
Tata Technologies Limited
Anubhav has handled multifarious areas such as structuring strategic business contracts, IPR, global compliance audits, legal due diligence, M&A, arbitration & litigation management. Also being a corporate secretary he has also dealt with high visibility boards and handled complex matters including those related to corporate governance, sustainability, insider trading, private & public offerings. He is passionate about innovation and IPR and also heads the Corporate Sustainability and CSR practices globally where he has led various CSR initiatives. His program “Ready Engineer” has recently won the National Education Excellence Awards 2017.
Chitra. A.
Fortis Healthcare Ltd.
Over 12 years of experience in various fields including Social Work, Finance, Auditing, Administration, Budgeting and control, Management Information System. By qualification I hold professional degree of ICWAI and MSW. As I am passionate about social work, shifted my career from Finance to Social work. Social Work expertise from Grass root level to Management level implementation and monitoring. Areas of interest are Education, Health, Disability, Rural & Community development. I welcome new challenges. My experience in various fields has given me the confidence and ability to deliver supreme performance. I also volunteer as an academic counselor at IGNOU Study Centre.
Debasish Mitter
MSDF
Debasish leads the foundation’s strategy and operations in India for education, employability skills and health. In his role, Debasish helps to manage and develop the India-based portfolio to improve learning levels in schools serving underprivileged children; to catalyze sustainable and large-scale models that help youth gain meaningful employment; to support early-stage, market-based enterprises providing financial services to urban poor families; and to strengthen government’s school-based health programs that improve outcomes in the lives of urban poor children..
Deepa Menon
PVR Limited
Deepa Menon is the founder head of PVR Nest, a CSR initiative of PVR Ltd., India’s largest film exhibition company. Currently, she manages the Corporate Social Responsibility program of PVR to obtain the socio – economic sustainability in the society through the cinema exhibition platform. Core areas of PVR Nest are to promote education, healthcare, nutrition and rehabilitation of children at risks in the urban areas especially around PVR Cinemas and foster the largest film-based education program (Cine-Art), where they partner with local communities, corporate, government bodies, NGOs and INGOs to build programs to mitigate the issues and challenges our communities face.
Gayatri Mishra Oleti
Larsen & Toubro
Gayatri Mishra Oleti at present heading operation for Larsen Toubro Public Charitable Trust. A social development professional , graduate in Economics. Alumni London School of Economic and XIMB Bhubanesware. Had 23 years of experience working in social sector and corporate. A programme management expert. Core expertise are a ) designing programmes to reach out to the last mile and align development programmes with business needs b) building collaborations c) Establishing processes for impact /evidence based programmes .
Hemanth Madegowda
Lifestyle International Private Limited
My journey started as a social scientist with people movements and has expanded to be part of Government supported programs and corporate initiatives. Have been in the sector for more than a decade focusing much on conceptualizing, planning and implementing social programs within Education and Preventive Healthcare themes. Studying at institutions like TISS and LSE provided an opportunity to interact with diverse individuals with varied perspectives which assisted me in broadening my thoughts. Being at Landmark Group in India, have re-designed the CSR programs for making them more targeted and holistic. These programs have impacted more than three lakh individuals.
Inir Pinheiro
Grassroutes
Inir Pinheiro, founder and Managing Director of Grassroutes, is a social entrepreneur involved in experiential tourism and rural livelihoods, having over 15 years of experience in the social sector ranging from resource mobilization, to building triple bottom line (financial, social & environmentally) sustainable ventures and training. He has an MBA from XIMB where he specialized in sustainable development, social enterprises & livelihoods. He has been recognized as amongst 50 social entrepreneurs changing India by Outlook Business, has been awarded the Karamveer Purashkar for Social Justice and Citizen Action in 2008 by ICONGO & Khemka Foundation.
Manoj Kumar Aggarwal
Cairn India Limited
A management professional and a former member of Indian Civil Services with extensive experience in both line and staff positions in Government as well as commercial organizations. Strong cross-functional experience in multi dimensional operations in the corporate sector as well as policy formulation and infrastructure development sectors in the Government. Tasks handled comprise of administrative and regulatory affairs, change management, PPP/BOT projects, modernization and operations management, public policy advocacay, stakeholder management, and CSR.
Monica Banerjee
National Foundation for India
Lead thematic areas of Education, Community Health, Peace and Justice at a grant making and fund raising trust(www.nfi.org.in) since last 18 years. Love bringing people together to engage with and draw from their collective energies for common good. Keep exploring with various instruments – seeding voluntary organizations, art, films, events around conversations and round tables- with the purpose of strengthening civil society and voluntarism.
Naghma Parvez Mulla
EdelGive Foundation
A professional in the philanthropic sector for the last five years, I am a Chartered Accountant and a Masters in Commerce by education. Philanthropy happened to me by accident but it took me just about a month to fall in love with it. My job in EdelGive Foundation has given me a great opportunity to interact with multiple stakeholders, understand their requirements and structure solutions that are mutually beneficial to all. I am the COO and lead the work in funding great philanthropic opportunities, help in their organisational development and connecting them to more donors. I am also Board member, Railway Children India and mentor at NSRCEL-IIM Bangalore’s Incubation Programme for Non-Profits.
Nainish Tikoo
UNDP
Nainish Tikoo is a Programme Officer at UNDP based out of New Delhi. A development management professional his current work now focuses on creating employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for women. Before coming to UNDP, Nainish has worked at IL&FS Education , leading execution of flagship programmes in skill development , education and vocational training in remote and rural geographies of the country including conflict zones.
Naveen Kumar Patidar
Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)
Professional experience of managing large and complex projects in the areas of Livelihoods, Financial Inclusion, Drinking Water and Sanitation, Enterprise Development, Education, Solar Energy and Women Empowerment. Social and economic inclusion particularly of tribal population, schedule castes and minorities has been the prime focus of the career so far. Explored rural development works from multiple angles including facilitating direct implementation at grass roots, government liaison, fund raising, donor engagement including CSRs, research and documenting ground situation.
Parag Namdeo
Sense International India
A commerce graduate from Delhi University with post graduation in HR, after five years of HR consulting experience in Delhi, in 2003 I started my Journey with Sense International (India) www.senseintindia.org, Ahmadabad based development organization working for people with deafblindness, reaching out to 77,000+ deafblind people through 57 partner NGOs in 23 states. Based at Delhi I am currently heading its Networks development and Advocacy initiatives with primary responsibility of representing and sensitizing stakeholders on deafblind issues at all forums.
Preeti Sinha
Yes Institute
Preeti Sinha is the Senior President of YES BANK and Glocal Convenor of YES Institute, a practicing global think tank domiciled in YES BANK – one of India’s leading and most innovative private sector bank. Prior to this appointment, she was the Chief Performance Management Partner in the Delivery and Performance Office at the African Development Bank AfDB). (She was engaged in increasing the delivery of the business pipeline at the AfDB and achievement of its institutional commitments and initiatives. She has worked extensively on financing for development under Resource Mobilization and Strategy Development in over 4 continents –Asia, North America, Europe and Africa. With over 25 years of global experience, she leads the YES Institute in New Delhi.
Ravi Sreedharan
Indian School of Development Management
I am an Engineer from IIT-BHU (1985) and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad (1988). Having lived in the states of Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Karnataka, UP and spent time in nearly 200 districts across the country, I am an Indian at heart. While working in the social sector across numerous villages in the country, I saw an acute shortage of good, relevant leadership in the sector. To address this critical issue, I left Azim Premji Foundation with an idea to build a pioneering, world class, iconic, not-for-profit institute in the country dedicated to Development Management. In a short period of less than a year, our team at Indian School of Development Management (ISDM) are well on our way to establishing a unique institution and building an eco-system for development management in the country and possibly the world.
Renuka
Pardada Pardada Educational Society
With an experience of almost 30 years in development sector, Renuka has worked on several critical issues like gender, rural development, child rights, education, and fair trade. Having been a part of many international charities, she is presently the CEO of Pardada Pardadi Educational Society, an organisation working for rural development through education, employment, and empowerment of girls and women. Due her consistent efforts, this organisation has won recognition and accolades in the last 15 years. She has a Masters degree in Social Work and her work in the social sector have been recognised many times.
Rubina Nafees Fatima
SAFA
A passionate and focussed social worker with a huge vision and mission . I have B com degree form Osmania University ,Hyderabad . Coming from the minority community my goal remains to see women being empowered socioeconomically “whilst respecting the ethos of the community”. I am a Sadguru Gnanananda Fellowship awardee and also received “Digital Women award” .
Sagarika Bose
Godrej Industries Limited
Social development professional with 15+ years experience in several leading organizations on a range of areas spanning CSR & Sustainability, Vocational Skills, Information & Communication Technologies for Development, and Special Needs Education. Sagarika currently leads CSR initiatives at the Godrej Industries group. She has a double Masters from the London School of Economics and is a trained Special Needs Educator.
Saneesh Singh
Dia Vikas Capital Pvt Ltd
Saneesh Singh has spent 30 years in development banking, financial inclusion, SMEs and impact investments. He was part of the core team that initiated SIDBI’s MF programme and currently leads Dia Vikas Capital-Opportunity International’s largest impact investment operation globally.
Simrat Bishnoi
Groupe Renault
Simrat is a communications professional with more than 16 years of work experience across industries. She has been instrumental in conceptualising and implementing new initiatives, developing new platforms and diversifying communications portfolio to support business priorities. She has contributed immensely towards creating influencer outreach programmes, integrating digital media with communications, PR and environmental initiatives. She believes hard work, persistence and positive outlook are key ingredients to achieve your goal. She is highly passionate, enjoys creativity and endeavors to meaningfully contribute to the society through social work.
Tasqeen Macchiwalla
Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives
Tasqeen Macchiwalla is currently the General Manager at the Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives. She has worked in the development sector for 25 years including with the International Labour Organization (ILO), ActionAid India and Seva Mandir, Rajasthan. Her experience spans gender mainstreaming and women empowerment, child labour and education, health, HIV/AIDS, natural resource management, livelihoods, migration and labour in the informal economy. She has worked closely with grassroots organizations and networks to build capacities, vision and strategy, as well as engaged in policy research and advocacy. She has an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Pittsburgh.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 5
Ambrish Kumar (IAS)
Government of Rajasthan
Ambrish is an IAS officer (2004 batch) and currently Director- Department of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of Rajasthan. He has worked as SDM, Municipal Commissioner, Collector, Deputy Secretary Finance, Settlement Commissioner, and, PD in Urban Development. He is B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay. Ambrish has additionally worked in Silicon Valley for 3.5 years; has travelled to more than 15 countries and almost all Indian states; has been an active birdwatcher, trekker and wildlife-watcher; and has been practicing yoga and meditation for last 13 years. Moreover, Ambrish has travelled to forests and rural areas of India and has also visited many NGOs all over the country.
Anshul Pathak
Teacher Sity
Mr. Anshul Pathak is a social entrepreneur: Vice Chairman & Treasurer of the Delhi Public School Ghaziabad Society (DPSGS); Co-founder of TeacherSITY, an institution for improving the Quality of Teacher Education & Teacher Training in India, which has worked with over 2,000 schools in India; on the Board of Trustees of The Gurukul Trust, which operates the SelaQui International School in Dehradun; and, Co-founder and Managing Director of Town Schools Education Initiatives (TSEI), focussed on in-school Services & Skills Development having placed over 25,000 rural youth. Prior moving back to India in 2007, Anshul worked with Citigroup, mostly in New York & Singapore for more than 11 years. He has Bachelors in Engineering from Manipal University and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC).
Biswanath Sinha
Tata Trusts
Biswanath Sinha has worked at grassroots implementation; intermediary support role; capacity building and grant making at national level in the best of Indian organizations, in a career spanning about twenty years, across the development sector. He has worked in Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN), Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development (SPWD), Sa-Dhan and Tata Trusts. He has a B. Tech. degree and is currently pursuing his PhD on Technology and Development. As Associate Director in the Tata Trusts he is overseeing its Livelihoods, Skills and Entrepreneurship Development, Thematic Innovations and Institutional Linkages portfolios.
Deepak Arora
Essar Foundation
Deepak Arora leads Essar Foundation, the CSR arm of the USD 39 BN conglomerate, Essar. He has previously headed the CSR portfolio at Cairn India, a leading oil and gas player in India. While at Cairn India, he pioneered use of the IFC valuation tool. It is a tool that helps in calculating the IRR of social investments. He has nearly a decade of experience of working in prominent positions with United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group. He has spearheaded rural development programmes across 12 countries in Asia and Africa. He has recently been awarded with “Responsible Business Leader Award, 2013”. Deepak holds a Master’s Degree in Business Management and serves on several national and international committees
Dhruvi Shah
RBS Foundation
Dhruvi Shah is currently the Programme Director of RBS Foundation India and manages its mission program that address the core issues of poverty, governance and the intricate interface with natural resource / ecosystems. Besides her responsibilities with RBS Foundation India, Dhruvi guides NGO’s and funding agencies design strategic CSR programs. She been part of working groups and committees on and has represented RBS at various forums on community development, sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility.
Dr. Anjlee Prakash
Learning Links Foundation
Dr. Anjlee Prakash is Founder and Chairperson of Learning Links Foundation. Her vision has been to see every child get good quality education and fulfill their dreams. She has over 27 years of experience as an educationist and techno-pedagogue. She also focuses on the girl child and women’s empowerment across projects she leads. Her other positions include: Board of Governors of NIT- Delhi; Academic Council of the Central University of Jammu; and, Committee on ICT in Education at FICCI.
Dr. Bhavna Mehta
MS University
Dr. Bhavna Mehta is a Professor of Social Work at the Faculty of Social Work and Director of Office of Corporate Affairs at The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Professor Mehta has worked extensively in the field on women and children’s issues especially in the area of Violence, Health, Human Rights, Gender, Development, Empowerment, and Corporate Social Responsibilities. She coordinates PG Diploma Program on Corporate Social Responsibilities and is the Deputy Director of the Centre of Excellence in CSR at the Faculty of Social Work. Professor Mehta was the recipient of the Micro Finance Research Alliance Program Fellowship from Centre of Micro Finance, Chennai.
Harish C. Dash
Tata Capital Financial Services Ltd.
Harish Dash of Tata Capital is an award winning, professional with more than 15+ years of experience, including at a Fortune Top 10 organization. Harish has successfully led multiple large-scale assignments in the areas of Business excellence, CRM strategy, strategic pricing analytics, Sustainability, and CSR strategy. Harish currently leads development of world’s first cloud and mobile-based financial literacy product, which is aimed to instill financial literacy concepts among school children and general population in India. The course is intended to make financial inclusion a reality in India
Heenaben Dave
SEWA
Heenaben joined SEWA in the year 1994 as a field worker in Surendranagar district, looking after the Child Care Centre and organising the women’s Savings Group. Following the earthquake in 2001, she looked after the Naya Ghar programme, which looked after rehabilitation. Over the years, she has worked on watershed development; provided alternative employment trainings to the poor for starting their own microenterprise; managed a water campaign and construction of rain water harvesting tanks, well recharges; and, worked as the overall district coordinator. Since 2009, she also works as the Director of RUDI. Since 2011, Heenaben represents SEWA on the IUF committee of International Agriculture Labour. She is also responsible for organising the women workers in the district of Rajkot and in the state of Assam.
Kireet Khurana
Climb Media
Kireet is a Film-Maker and Director at Climb Media. A High-Honours graduate from Sheridan College, Canada, Kireet has won six President’s National awards for his works besides others. He has made 20+ short films for UNICEF International, National Film Board of Canada, Childline, Save the Children India, USAid, John Hopkins, NACO, etc. on various public service causes like child marriage, AIDS, corporal punishment, child labour, child rights, cruelty against animals and others. His film- KOMAL on child sexual abuse won the National award (2015) and made compulsory viewing in schools across India by the HRD Ministry.
Kirtida Oza
Sjogren's India
Kirtida co-founded Sjogren’s India in 2006- the first Patient Support Group for this lesser known illness. Having struggled with the many challenges of this illness herself, she decided to divert her professional skills as an experienced Trainer, Educator-Communicator and Documenter and utilize her dwindling energies to support other patients. She provides educational and informal counseling support to patients and their families and networks with medical professionals nationally and internationally. Kirtida holds a PG degree in Life Sciences and has a special interest in Environment and Gender/Women’s issues. She earlier worked at the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) in India and taught at a College of Liberal Arts in USA.
Tarique Mohd.
Koshish (Tata Institute of Social Sciences)
Mohd. Tarique leads Koshish, Field Action Project of Tata Institute of Social Sciences. He is a student of Political Science, stands for Human Dignity and Justice and therefore started Koshish in 2006, after graduating in Social Work from TISS. He practices system approach and believes in it as a medium to achieve long lasting and inclusive change. He loves engaging with the youth as their optimism, freshness and raw energy excites as well as challenges him. He says: “I must ‘enjoy’ if I am to be part of something. Cooking and traveling is what I do to rejuvenate.”
Mridula Sankhyayan
Goldman Sachs Services Pvt. Ltd.
Mridula Sankhyayan is head of talent development functions for Goldman Sachs in India. She runs the employee relations function in India, along with the diversity initiative, and oversees the firm’s internal leadership training, coaching and advisory programs. She is a co-chair of the firm’s committee for people development in Bangalore and member of Bangalore Risk Committee. She joined the firm in 2010 as a vice president. Prior to Goldman Sachs, she worked at Nomura, Lehman Brothers, Genpact and Daksh, where she was responsible for talent development and performance management functions. Mridula earned a master’s degree in Management Studies from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, in 1990 and is a certified Life and Executive Coach.
Osama Manzar
Digital Empowerment Foundation
Osama Manzar is the Co-founder of the Digital Empowerment Foundation. In 25+ years, he has worked in the areas of internet, access, digital inclusion, misinformation; was instrumental in making the National Digital Literacy Mission for DEF, designing a video-call based mentorship program for tribal girls.
Partha Pratim Rudra
Reach India
Partha is the CEO of Reach India working for improving health, livelihoods and social empowerment of poor women, adolescent girls and youth. Prior to this he spearheaded the programme wing of NFIas Senior Director. He has masters in Rural Management (PGDRD from Xavier Institute, Ranchi) and has been a fellow at the Public Health Institute, Ca and CUNY, USA. Partha possesses rich leadership experience of the civil society organizations with more than 27 years of experience and specializes in health and livelihoods, especially micro enterprise promotion and skills training for making youth employable.
Poonam Kathuria
SWATI
Poonam is the Founder and Director of SWATI (Society for Women’s Action and Training Initiatives) and has over 17 years of experience in a leadership role working for gender equality, women’s empowerment & leadership. She bridges the divide between practitioners and academia. She has been involved in policy formulation; has written for newspapers and magazines and published papers and research. Her latest work is a study on shelter homes in Gujarat and she has co-edited the forthcoming ‘From A Feminist Lens – Women’s Voices, Mode Of Campaigning And Non-Violent Ways Of Resistance’ being published by Zubaan. Poonam was awarded the Dame Nita Barrow Distinguished Visitorship for 2014 at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
Prasoon Kumar
Vidya Bhawan Society
Prasoon is Director at Vidya Bhawan Society, Rajasthan and responsible for their Education Resource Centre. He was born and brought up in Jamshedpur, a city in Jharkhand state. He completed post-graduation from Patna University, Bihar, sociology and political science. He has spent 17 years of his career working in elementary education with schools, government and private institutions across many states in the country. He has relevant experience of working in research and evaluation projects and programs and has made important contributions in curriculum and textbook writing, teacher training programs across many states in the country.
Preeti Sahai
Rajiv Gandhi Foundation
Preeti Sahai manages the office of Ms. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Trustee, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. In this capacity, she provides support to various social and philanthropic initiatives ranging across education, women’s empowerment and livelihood promotion. In addition, she has managed back-office work and supported development and organisational projects for the parliamentary constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli. She has organised trainings for political workers and participated in election campaigns. In the past, Preeti has worked with the Basix Social Enterprise Group, initially as a Manager of a USD 2 million innovation fund and subsequently implementing some innovations at the base of the pyramid – among the low-income households in East Delhi’s slums.
Rahul Nainwal
Ivolunteer
Rahul is co-founder of iVolunteer. He started iVolunteer in 2001, right after passing out from IRMA. For the last 14 years, his work has been primarily focused on working with young people and helps them identify their passion and purpose. More recently he co-founded India Fellow- a 13 month long social leadership programs and Unltd Delhi, a social enterprise incubator. He is also part of the team that created Mukteshwar Marathon- an annual charity fundraising marathon that has raised more than 10 lacs for local schools in Uttarakhand. His passions are running with eyes on Boston Marathon and spreading financial literacy.
Sandeep Desai
Charutar Arogya Mandal
Sandeep leads Charutar Arogya Mandal, a trust which manages a 600-bed hospital and a medical college in Gujarat. A Chartered Accountant and an MBA from IRMA, he has worked in the development sector throughout his life: at GCMMF, Amul’s marketing arm; twelve years in NDDB, initially as a finance professional and later as EA to CMD; introduction of a micro-insurance product for covering health risk called “Krupa”; and, creating an integrated model of healthcare delivery from primary to tertiary care.
Satyajeet Mazumdar
Centre for Social Justice- Nyayika
Satyajeet is a development sector professional and was part of the team, which conceptualized and operationalized Nyayika, a non-profit social enterprise offering affordable legal services. He is presently working with Nyayika as its CEO and is responsible for the functioning and growth of its 7 franchise law centres. A graduate in law from Gujarat National Law University, he is experienced in program management, legal research, and legal training. He was the Program Anchor of the Lawyers for Change program of Centre for Social Justice before moving to Nyayika.
Suryamani Roul
TechnoServe
Suryamani has over thirty years development management and leadership experience. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President for ACCESS Development Services and has led projects across India funded by international donors and apex Indian organisations. He holds a MA in A&A Economics from Utkal University and an MBA from University of Calcutta. He has attended programs at Asian Institute of Technology, Coady International Institute, University of East Anglia and Yale school of Management. He has authored and presented many thematic papers and was one of the co-authors of four annual State of India’s Livelihoods (SOIL) Reports (2011-2014).
Vaibhav Chauhan
Sahapedia
Vaibhav Chauhan is a founder member of Sahapedia, an open online encyclopedia on India’s cultures and heritage. A heritage management and CSR professional, he has been involved in the conservation of both tangible and intangible heritage, and worked with international and national organizations like UNESCO New Delhi, the British Library, National Mission for Manuscripts and Sangeet Natak Akademi. He has received training in sustainable tourism, digital marketing, IPR, CSR and management from IIT-Bombay, WWF-India, IICA and Harvard Business School. His passion is to leverage culture as a driver of development, and he has launched India’s first mobile app on museums.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 4
Amita V Joseph
Business & Community Foundation ( BCF )
Amita V. Joseph has a educational background in Management (PGDM), a degree in Law (LLB) from Delhi University, a PG in Human Rights Law from the Law Institute and completing her PhD (Deakin University), Australia. Her work experience spans the Corporate, development & legal sectors. She is on the board of MESH (Maximising Employment to serve the Handicapped), FOD (Family of the Disabled) , SRUTI, CEQUIN, CRB (Centre for Responsible Business) , Business & Community Foundation (BCF), all nonprofit organizations & supports their work. Amita has been involved as a volunteer with the cause of Homeless citizens since 1999.
Anjali Khosla
Fortis Healthcare
Anjali Khosla has recently joined Fortis Foundation as Manager Projects, CSR. With her social communications background her aim is to create awareness about CSR initiatives in the healthcare sector that will benefit poor, marginalized people at the bottom of the pyramid. As a founding member of ‘Moving Images’ she has 20 years experience in making documentaries on issues related to environment and development. Her award-winning works include a series of films on the political economy of water, wildlife-human conflicts, conservation and livelihoods. She has been closely associated with Samaj Pragati Sahayog and their tribal women’s garment unit, ‘Kumbaya’. She has worked with Hindustan Times Television as an editor and CENDIT (Centre for Development of Instructional Technology) She is an Economics graduate from Delhi University.
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Annie George
BEDROC
Annie George
BEDROC
Ashwin Venugopal Naidu
Tata Capital Financial Services Limited
Ashwin joined the Tata Group on 26th April 1995 with Tata Finance Limited in the Corporate Finance Division handling the back office operations of various financial products like Leasing, Bills Discounting, re-discounting, Corporate Loans etc. After a stint of 18 years with the operations department, he opted for a transfer to the CSR function in May 2013. With the CSR department he is handling various projects under Education, Employability, Environment, Entrepreneurship, Health etc. His interest lies in the job that he is currently involved with and finds it challenging as well as very fulfilling. Ashwin has recently completed 20 years with the Tata Group.
Bindiya Sawhney
Concern India Foundation
Bindiya Sawhney is Head- Resource Mobilisation (Delhi) at Concern India Foundation. She has rich experience of 18 years in various industries giving her the ability to work both with the private sector and public stakeholders. She is with Concern India Foundation for last 6 years. Her current role gives her the opportunity to initiate and develop relations with the key decision makers both in the private and public sectors. She leads a team of resourceful people responsible for mobilizing resources for the organization through special events, corporate partnership and individual support. She has varied experience of working in the healthcare, educational and infrastructure sectors in previous organizations. She is an Arts graduate from Delhi University and has done her Masters in Business Management from IILM, Delhi.
Farhad Merchant
Common Purpose India
Farhad Merchant is the CEO of Common Purpose India. Farhad has over two decades of experience in the corporate and social sectors, having held a number of leadership roles, including that of CEO of Aga Khan Education Service, India. He has acquired international exposure and versatility, working with clients from various countries and industries / verticals. He is a member on the Whiteboard (an initiative of iVolunteer, one of India’s largest formal volunteering organisations), that aims to bring skills and expertise to the social development sector through expertise offered by volunteers. Farhad graduated in Electronics Engineering from Bombay University, with First Class Honours. He enjoys spending time with his family and going for treks. He dabbles in creative writing whenever he gets the chance, and his articles have been published in various magazines.
K Anil Kumar
Axis bank Foundation
Anil Kumar is Executive Trustee and CEO of Axis Bank Foundation. He is a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. He has been in the banking industry for over 35 years. After joining as a Probationary Officer in 1979 and spending 35 years in commercial banking in State Bank of Travancore and Axis Bank, he assumed the responsibility as the Executive Trustee and CEO of Axis Bank Foundation in February 2015. The last assignment with the bank was as the global head of its FI and trade finance businesses .He is also Chairman and Managing Trustee of Akshara Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation operating in Palakkad, Kerala.
Kanan Dhru
Research Foundation for Governance in India, Lawtoons, LawForMe
Kanan Dhru is a social entrepreneur working towards legal innovations through her start-up Research Foundation for Governance in India as well as through social business projects such as Lawtoons and LawForMe. Kanan has a Masters in Public Administration and has a law degree from the London School of Economics. Kanan has previously worked with the National Knowledge Commission – a Prime Minister’s Advisory Body in India and the World Health Organisation in Switzerland. Kanan is a member of the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum and a Global Shaper at the Ahmedabad Hub. She is one of the 37 ‘Indians of Tomorrow’ featured by India Today in 2012 and is also a blogger with The Huffington Post. Kanan is an avid mountaineer and a tennis-enthusiast having great interest in different cultures and identities.
Kanika Kumar
Intellecap
Kanika Kumar is a development professional with 5+ years of experience in business development, strategy and marketing across emerging markets of Asia and Africa. At Intellecap, she is part of the core team managing Sankalp Forum, a global multi-stakholder platform for inclusive development practitioners. She is the regional lead, managing the initiative’s global expansion to Africa .She manages relations with over 50 investors, donors, multilaterals and development stakeholders globally. Prior to Intellecap, Kanika worked as an Account Planner at the international advertising agency TBWA. She has a Bachelors degree in Marketing and Communications from Osmania University in Hyderabad and a Diploma in Corporate Law from London School of Economics.
Manisha Singh
Nokia Networks
Manisha is responsible for CSR and Communications at Nokia Networks, India. In her 16 years of professional journey, she has worked with various multi-nationals organizations – Philips, HCL Technologies etc. – building and enhancing corporate reputation. She joined Nokia Networks in 2008. Having driven various corporate communications initiatives, she is now driving the CSR mandate given her organization’s renewed focus and her keen interest in this space to build something enduring and impactful. She did her graduation in English literature from Delhi University and MBA in Marketing from Rani Durgavati University, Jabalpur. Her interests are reading and travelling.
Pankaj Wadhwa
Himjoli Products Pvt ltd
Pankaj Wadhwa is the Founder and CEO of Himjoli. An MBA in Finance from Boston University, Pankaj Wadhwa founded Kidstuff in 1988, which went on to become one of the largest toy manufacturing companies in India, exporting toys and games to the United States and Europe. He then set up Kidstuff promos &events. Today,Kidstuff is part of the Ddb group and India’s largest promotional marketing agency. In 2005, Pankaj was recognized as the ‘International Marketer of the Year’ by MAAW – the umbrella organization for marketing services agencies internationally.In 2006, he was selected to be a prestigious Jury Member of the inaugural Sales Promo Lions at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. Pankaj has founded and runs Himjoli,a social enterprise in Uttarakhand and also works in the development sector in the Himalayas in the areas of education and healthcare.
Pooja Gianchandani
GIZ/UNESCO
Pooja is on a mission to improve investments and to promote 'vocational skills as the new superpower'. As the Founder Curator of #TVETChat she curate’s conversations and peer-learning on Future of skills, jobs, new work and #TVETTrends.
Based in Germany, she currently works with GIZ as Advisor on TVET and is on secondment to UNESCO - UNEVOC as a Programme Expert. Previously she has worked in various leadership positions at FICCI, IL&FS, People First UK (formerly A4e), Yes Bank, CII and NTPC Ltd. She has been involved in research projects with the ILO, BIBB (German Federal Institute for VET) and SFIVET (Swiss Federal Institute for VET).
Pooja is also a Humboldtian and German Chancellors Fellow and represents India at various internal platforms.
www.linkedin.com/in/poojagianchandani/
Priyanka Mazumdar
The Taplow Group
Priyanka Mazumdar is an Associate Partner, Taplow Group – India, and leads the Non-profit, Education & CSR practices for the firm. With over a decade of experience in executive search, Priyanka is a highly specialized consultant in the country today. She has been recognized for successfully executing high level searches for CEOs, leaders & non-executive board positions. Priyanka is a Masters in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences and holds a Bachelor’s degree from Lady Shri Ram College. She is very passionate about her work in building leadership critical mass for the social sector, which according to her is a key ‘enabler’ for socio-economic development.
Priyanka Singh
Seva Mandir
Priyanka Singh is the Chief Executive of Seva Mandir from 1st April 2011. She has worked in Seva Mandir for 17 years and before becoming the Chief Executive, headed its Education and Health Programs In both the program areas, she was closely involved with several pioneering research studies conducted in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition to her responsibilities within Seva Mandir, Priyanka has undertaken evaluations of other organizations and participated in external studies and reviews. She is also a member of several boards, including that of Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) and VANI (Voluntary Action Network of India).
Ruchira Gujral
United Nations Children’s Fund
Ruchira Gujral is responsible for handling the Corporate Engagement and CSR portfolio for UNICEF India since 2011. Her sphere of work includes working on impact of corporates on communities, advocating for responsible business practices, influencing CSR policies and programmes and engaging with the private sector to achieve results through innovative CSR solutions. Ruchira has 15 years of experience of working on CSR and started her career at FICC. She has worked as a CSR Advisor with British Gas, Senior Specialist on Public Private Partnerships for the USAID funded ITAP project & the Aga Khan Foundation as their Head – Partnership Development. Before joining UNICEF, Ruchira was working with Population Services International as their National Manager for Corporate Partnerships. Ruchira has a Masters Degree in Community Resource Management and Extension from the University of Delhi and has done a special program at the Michigan State University in Human Ecology with a dissertation on ‘NGO –Corporate Partnerships for Social Development’.
Sachin Oza
Development Support Center
Sachin Oza is the Executive Director of Development Support Centre, an NGO that has been actively involved in promoting participatory natural resource management (PNRM) since 1994. Sachin has been done his Masters in Social Work from the M.S.University, Baroda and is associated with the NRM sector since 1990. . He is actively involved in capacity building of functionaries on institution development at the village, state and national level and has presented several papers on community Involvement in management of natural resources. He is a member of state and national level forums related to policy influencing in PNRM
Saumya Lashkari
Godrej Industries
Saumya Lashkari headed Good & Green (CSR & Environmental Sustainability) for Godrej Industries from late 2012 to March 2015. She was responsible for operationalizing the strategic sustainability vision for 2020, and led the company’s efforts to achieve its Good & Green goals of creating a more employable Indian workforce, a greener India, and innovating for good and green products. Prior to joining Godrej, Saumya spent a decade with General Electric in the USA in various technology related roles, followed by 3 years in India establishing Genpact’s Global CSR program, and then 2 years consulting with local non-profit organizations. Saumya began her career in 1997 with General Electric USA, through the Information Management Leadership Program (IMLP) – a fast track, rotational program designed to develop high potential candidates for GE’s leading management positions.
Shashaank Awasthi
V-shesh
Shashaank Awasthi is co-founder of v-shesh and India Advisor at Gray Ghost Ventures. His work in disability inclusion, mental health and wellbeing, financial inclusion, investing and teaching has been in pursuit of inclusive and accessible environments.
Shilpa Vasavada
Working Group for Women & Land Ownership
Shilpa is Convener, Working Group for Women and Land Ownership, a network of NGOs, CBOs and professionals in Gujarat. Active since 2003, the network works towards enhancing ownership of agriculture land in the name of women. Graduated from Tata Institute of Social sciences in 1992, Shilpa worked with Aga Khan Rural Support (India) for about 10 years, looking at Institutional and gender aspects in participatory natural resource development programmes. Subsequently, she has worked with different NGOs, government agencies and funding agencies in different capacities for gender mainstreaming in livelihood issue. She has been actively involved in capacity building and policy advocacy on gender and institutional issues at state and national level.
Shrey Desai
SEWA Rural
After receiving medical degree from M.S. University, Vadodara, Shrey completed Internal Medicine residency from the Saint Barnabas Medical Center, New Jersey. He practiced general medicine for two years before completing Master of Public Health (MPH) from the Johns Hopkins University. Later, he was Expanded Program on Immunization Manager for WHO office, Guyana. He returned to his hometown, Jhagadia, in later part of 2009 and joined SEWA Rural as research-coordinator and clinician. Over last five years, his team is leading a project to reduce deaths and malnutrition among pregnant women and children using mobile-phone technology and doing randomized trial. He has been involved in strengthening research division at SEWA Rural by blending his training and experience of research methodologies with invaluable service-delivery experience of the team.
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Sourav Roy
Tata Uttarakhand Program
Sourav Roy
Tata Uttarakhand Program
V Suresh
Tata Motors Limited
Suresh currently Heads – Corporate Employee Relations, Skill Development and CSR of Tata Motors, and is responsible for 7 Plants pan India. Suresh is a highly accomplished HR professional possessing strong leadership, problem solving, change management and influencing skills. Suresh is a creative, results-oriented leader with 30+ years’ experience in HR management. He has diverse exposure in manufacturing and engineering services business in Indian, as well as Multinational organizations in the automotive, pharmaceutical and plastics sector. He holds a Master in Personnel Management from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune University and Bachelor in Commerce (B Com), 1979, Pune University.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 3
Abhishek Agrawal
Accion International
Abhishek Agrawal is Chief Regional Officer for Accion - Asia. He worked with FINCA International as CFO and as advisor to Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAI). Abhishek is Aspire Fellow; Ph.D. in Municipal financial reforms, a Chartered Accountant from ICAI & MBA in finance.
Anshu Taneja
Vision Spring
Anshu Taneja is Country Director, VisionSpring. He is an MBA from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford (United Kingdom), and a science graduate from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi (India). Anshu has several years of experience working across different countries and sectors in a variety of roles. He is passionate about leveraging business principles to change the world. His hobbies include tennis, running, movies, and travelling.
Archana Joshi
Deepak Foundation
Archana Joshi is the Director of Deepak Foundation, a fastest growing CSO having pan-India presence. Having over a decade long experience in research & evaluation associated with a multinational, she has expertise in undertaking large scale intervention research projects in the development sector. With the emerging CSR mandate, the Foundation under her leadership has been partnering with various corporations in implementing evidence based CSR activities. She is on board of various academic institutions and organizations.
Bikkrama Daulet Singh
Central Square Foundation
He joined CSF with training in economics, business and education. Prior to joining CSF, Bikkrama, a Teach For India (2011) Fellow, worked for two years as an elementary school teacher in a municipal school in Delhi. He has also worked as a management consultant with Accenture in India on a variety of projects related to change management, performance improvement, cost reduction and supply chain.Bikkrama is an MBA from INSEAD and holds an undergraduate degree in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Dhiren Modi
Sewa Rural
Dhiren Modi joined SEWA Rural in 2007 while pursuing post graduation degree MD in Community medicine. Over the past Seven years, he has served in various capacities in the organization. As a part of Community Health Programme, he managed a “Family Centered Safe Motherhood and New Born Care Project”. He has represented SEWA Rural at various districts, state and national level health committees & consultations and also frequently invited to share SEWA Rural’s experiences at the national and international forums. He is a state trainer of many trainings like IMNCI, F- IMNCI, Injection Safety etc. He has lead a variety of community based fild operational research studies and publication of many articles in scientific and peer reviewed journals.
Jayapadma RV
LOGIN
Jaya is Learning Facilitator at LOGIN, a South and East Asia centric multi-stakeholder network, promoting knowledge exchange on practices and processes towards strengthening local governance. Jaya worked for a decade with community based organisations in Orissa and Jharkhand, and thereafter has been teaching in the area of sustainable development practice at academic institutions and NGOs, for the past decade. She is founder member of TREE Society which imparts business training to rural entrepreneurs, and serves on the Board of the NGOs – Timbaktu Collective and PRAN. Jaya is an alumnus of IRMA, Anand and St.Xavier’s College, Kolkata. She is conversant in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Bangla, Oriya and enjoys reading, travel and singing.
Kiran Shah
Goldmansachs
Kiran is co-head of the Operations Division within Goldman Sachs in Bangalore and is also responsible for the operations division in the fim’s Mumbai offie. He serves on several fim committees, including the Bangalore executive committee and the operations division operating committee. He moved to Bangalore in 2007, having previously worked in Hong Kong and Mumbai to build the India domestic equities and listed derivatives businesses for the fim. Kiran joined Goldman Sachs in 2006 and was named managing director in 2008. Prior to joining the fim, Kiran held senior positions at J.P. Morgan and Bank of America in Mumbai. Kiran is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India, and the UK Institute of Risk Management. He graduated from the University of Bombay in 1989.
Manjula Sriram
Manjula Sriram is DGM-Sustainability Strategy & Communications at Tata Sons. She is a Sustainability professional addressing top-of-the-mind concerns of CXOs with expertise in integrating sustainability into business strategy and experience across ESG strategy formulation, Board engagement on sustainability, Corporate volunteering and Sustainability communications.
Manmohan Singh
Kaivalya Education Foundation
Manmohan Singh is Co-Founder of Kaivalya Education Foundation & head of Aspirational Districts Collaborative (ADC), Piramal Foundation.
Aspirational District Collaborative is an initiative of Piramal Foundation in partnership with NITI Aayog. ADC aim is to build hyper collaboration with local NGOs, Volunteers, SHG, Panchayats, Media, Faith Leaders to improve the lives of 180 million people living in 112 aspirational districts across 26 states in India. Manmohan believes in bringing together Sarkar, Samaj and Bazar at panchayat, block, and district level to leverage each other's strength for collective impact.
Manmohan is Co-Founder of kaivalya Education Foundation. He has 20 years of experience in transforming public schools and public health in India. He has led design and implementation of various education transformation programs of the Foundation in last 14 years. His interest and expertise in building long term partnerships with state and central government is widely acknowledged. He has previously worked with WHO, Unicef, Pratham & MSF.
Manmohan holds a postgraduate diploma in Conflict Analysis and Peace-Building from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. He is an Acumen India Fellow, and an Aspire Circle Fellow.
Namita Dalmia
Central Square Foundation
Namita leads Central Square Foundation’s work in the area of technology for school education. She also co-manages venture strategy and development for the organization. Her background includes technology, business and education. Previously, she worked with a California based education technology company Education Elements, where she helped design the flgship product for Blended Learning schools. In India, she worked on various education policy projects for two years as part of the National Knowledge Commission, an advisory body under the Prime Minister’s Offie. Her other experiences include working on a breakthrough technology at Intel Technologies and co-founding a pan-India non-profi organisation Pankhudi Foundation. Namita has an MBA degree from Stanford University and a B.Tech and M.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay.
Nitin Gachhayat
Drishtee
Nitin Gachhayat is a social entrepreneur and co-founder of Drishtee. Drishtee started in 2000 delivering e-Governance services to the villagers. Drishtee now works on improving rural livelihood and delivering essential products and services in 5000 villages of India. Drishtee has won numerous awards. Nitin leads the teams for developing relevant services for rural India and technology intervention for its effiient delivery. He has written articles and paper including a coauthored paper on “Rural Business through ICT” which has been published by Institute of Rural Management Anand. He completed his basic education from Orissa and MBA from New Delhi.
PR Ganapathy
Villgro Innovations Foundation
As President of Villgro, one of India’s oldest and most respected social enterprise incubators, PR Ganapathy inspires, funds and mentors social entrepreneurs. He also works on building the social enterprise ecosystem, through organizations like ANDE. He is a pro bono Senior Advisor to Teach for India.He earlier co-founded a venture-funded startup and held leadership positions at small and large corporations (Infosys, Tata Group) in India and the US.
Pranshu Singhal
Karo Sambhav
Pranshu Singhal founded ‘Karo Sambhav’ which designs & implements circular solutions for multiple waste streams. He won ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 India’ award by Schwab Foundation, sister organization WEF. He was Director-Digital Learning, Microsoft & Head-Sustainability, Nokia. He is an Aspen-, Ashoka-, Chevening- & Aspire Circle-Fellow.
Raj Ivaturi
Literacy India
Raj Ivaturi is the COO of Literacy India. As Literacy India’s chief operating offier, Raj is charged to build the operating organization, defie and execute organization and people strategy, assist LI’s board of trustees in annual business planning, budgeting, fund raising and monitoring/ tracking process.Prior to LI Raj worked with Deloitte US fims in India for over 11 years, where he grew Deloitte’s CSR program from ground up and drove mission in the community through strategic partnerships, and signature programs, through a sustainable engagement model. An architect by education, Raj has over fiteen years of experience spanning various filds including corporate responsibility and sustainability, community investments, employee engagement, communications, design, event management and project management.
Rakesh Supkar
TechnoServe India
Rakesh is a development professional with 16 years of experience across India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. He focuses on helping smallholders capture increased value from the agri-value chain and fostering entrepreneurship. Prior to TechnoServe, Rakesh worked with Catalyst Management Services Bangalore, where he helped establish the Livelihood Resource Centre ‘Vrutti’; and with CARE Odisha where he focused on livelihood restoration, health and nutrition projects. Rakesh is an Engineering graduate from NIT Surat. He has a Masters in Development Studies (majoring in Rural livelihoods, and minor in Environment) from the ISS in The Hague, and MBA in Rural Management from IRMA
Rohit Bhatia
CIO, Aspire Circle
Rohit Bhatia is a Chartered Accountant with 14 years in consumer industries & 10 years in social and education companies working at Yum! Brands–PepsiCo, Audits with SBB-E&Y; at Macmillan Education to restructure and deliver on profitability. Rohit spent 6 years with 2 start-ups- GIRC and Aspire.
Sachin Golwalkar
United Way of Delhi
Sachin Golwalkar is a social impact professional with 24 years of experience, including 14 years in senior positions at United Way, Plan Int'l and ChildFund Int'l (at their India Offices). His core expertise include Not-for-Profit Governance Excellence, Risk Management, building & sustaining strategic partnerships & alliances, program impact and strengthening organisational capacity.
Suzzane Singh
Pratham Books
Suzanne Singh has been the Chairperson of Pratham Books since January 2014 and prior to that was its Managing Trustee for several years. She has been actively engaged with building the organization since it was founded in 2004 to create a new paradigm in children’s publishing that creates high quality and affordable multilingual books to democratize the joy of reading. She spent several years in the corporate sector before moving full time into the social sector and also serves on the Boards of Akshara Foundation and United Way Bengaluru. She passionately believes that equity and access to educational resources will provide a level playing fild for all children.
Vivek Prakash
Jubilant Life Sciences Limited
Vivek Prakash is the VP & Head - CSR at Jubilant Ingrevia Ltd, working with the group since 2006. He is a post-grad in Labour & Social Welfare with knowledge in CSR and over 25+ years of experience in the manufacturing sector. He is also responsible for handling the non-profit wing of the Jubilant- Jubilant Bhartia Foundation.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 2
Amirullah Khan
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Amir Ullah Khan is a Development Economist, Research Director at Aequitas and policy consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Amir graduated from IRMA and has a PhD from the Jamia Milia Central University. He teaches a course on Indian Economic Policy at the Indian School of Business. He is on the Governing boards at the Welhams Girls School, the Digital Empowerment Foundation, Pahle India Foundation, EandH Foundation, ACCESS ASSIST and the India China Economic Council. He has been Director at the India Development Foundation, Deputy Director General at the PHD Chamber of Commerce, Adjunct Professor of Law and Economics at the Edith Cowan University in Perth and Executive Editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Anuja Master Bose
Anuja Master Bose has led and held senior roles at large philanthropies and social enterprises in India and the US. She has spent the last nine years in India, working with the philanthropies of Dr. Desh Bandhu Gupta, Ramalingu Raju, SKS, and the Templeton Foundation. Prior, Anuja was Managing Director of the Fisher Fund, one of the largest education foundations in the US. Anuja began her career as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch and gained valuable start-up experience at MovieFone, a media and entertainment company that went public. Anuja has a BA from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Apoorva Oza
Aga Khan Rural Support Programme
Apoorva Oza is currently the Global Lead for Agriculture &Food Security at the Aga Khan Foundation, and was the CEO of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme(India) for over 20 years. A keen advocate of the civil society sector, he has promoted many CSO networks. Climate Resilience is his current area of interest.
Ashok Kamath
Akshara Foundation
Ashok Kamath has been the Managing Trustee since 2003 and Chairman of Akshara Foundation since July 1, 2008. He has been actively involved in the strategic planning, analysis and expansion of programmes at Akshara Foundation since 2003. An alumnus of IIT-Bombay, he was formerly the Managing Director of the Indian operations of Analog Devices. He opted to leave behind a successful career in the corporate sector and involve himself in the development sector. His alma mater, IIT-Bombay, presented him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2013 for his various initiatives and contributions to the field of child education. Ashok is also a founder trustee of Pratham Books which aims to have A Book in Every Child’s Hand.
Barsha Poricha
National Foundation for India
Barsha Poricha is Programme Director at The National Foundation for India, where she is involved in working towards NFIs mission of creating a just society by helping people improve their own lives. Her work in the last decade and a half has been towards facilitating, strengthening and institutionalizing community and development processes to enable participatory and inclusive governance. Her core areas of interest and work are governance, youth and gender with a focus on urban and peri urban settlements. She is an Urban and Regional planner from CEPT, Ahmedabad with a Masters Degree from Delhi School of Economics, currently pursuing a PhD from Ambedkar University, Delhi on urban water systems.
Deepa Kapoor
Punj Lloyd
Deepa Kapoor heads Corporate Social Responsibility at Punj Lloyd with focus on Skills Development. Prior to Punj Lloyd, she was Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility at Genpact where she worked for 8 years. Under her leadership, Genpact won the Sustainable and Socially Responsible Sourcing Award for the best Employee Engagement Program. Her roles at Genpact included Finance Planning, Global Operating Leader and Business Development. Deepa also worked at Lucent Technologies and BroadView Associates prior to Genpact. She has a BA from Smith College and an MBA from Wharton School.
Gauri Arora
Microsoft
Gauri leads Corporate Citizenship at Microsoft in India, and as part of this mandate, owns and drives the Sustainability and Accessibility charters for the India subsidiary, while also managing the overall citizenship communications responsibility. She has been in this role for the past five and a half years. Gauri is a communications professional with over 22 years experience, and has a diverse background across all aspects of communications, both at an agency and at the corporate end, and has even run her own entrepreneurial venture for several years. Gauri has a B.Com degree from Sydenham College, Bombay and a Masters in Communication Studies from Emerson College, Boston, U.S.A.
Jitendra Routray
Renew Power Ventures P Ltd
Jitendra Routray is the Head CSR at ReNew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd. Jitendra’s previous professional association have been with Civil society organisations like Development Alternatives, Help Age India ,MAMTA – Health Institute for Mother and Child, CARE India and ANaRDe Foundation. Jitendra’s last assignment before joining ReNew Power was with TATA Teleservices Limited as Lead CSR and Affirmative Action (AA). Jitendra completed his graduation and post-graduation from Utkal University in Orissa after which he completed his PG diploma course in Rural Development from IGNOU, New Delhi. He also completed a certified course in social leadership from George Washington University, USA.
Madhu Singh Sirohi
Vodafone Foundation
Madhu Singh Sirohi is Country Head- Vodafone Foundation. Previously, she was Country Head for Corporate Responsibility & Environment at Uninor where she lead the GSMA mWomen agenda in India and conceptualized the award-winning program, Uninor Hand in Hand Citizen Centre initiative. Madhu has also led TERI’s (The Energy and Resources Institute) communication vertical before Uninor, where she grew their publishing arm into a formidable business. She graduated in liberal arts from Delhi University and went on to specialize in Education. Madhu is a published academic author with over 75 books in core subjects published under her name.
Madhulika Gupta
REPUTE Public Affairs & CSR Solutions
Madhulika Gupta is Founder, CEO of REPUTE Public Affairs & CSR Solutions, a firm that serves Indian and MNC organisations. Prior to REPUTE, she was Head of Corporate Affairs, Citigroup South Asia. She was a member of Citi India’s Policy and Management Committee and Operating Committee. She has spoken on CSR and Corporate Communications at IIM Calcutta, MICA and S.P. Jain Institute of Management Studies and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS, Singapore. She serves on the International Advisory Board for ICCO, Netherlands; is a Member of CSR Committee of the Indian Merchants Chamber; Former Chair of the CSR Committee of Bombay Chamber of Commerce (BCCI); Member of the Executive Council of Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) and their CSR Knowledge Partner. She is a trainer for Media Spokesperson Skills and Crisis Communications.
Pavithra YS
Vindhya e-Infomedia Private Limited (Vindhya)
Pavithra YS, Founder & MD of Vindhya e-Infomedia - an Impact Sourcing BPO since 2006, sets the strategic direction for the company & its portfolio of services to its customers, while nurturing a strong leadership team to drive her vision of employing & empowering Persons with Disabilities (PWD), Women & People from the BPL families, rural & disadvantaged sections of the society.
Pratyush Panda
ACC
Pratyush Panda is a sustainability professional with 25 years of experience with MNCs and International Agencies. Presently working with L&T Infotech as Head Sustainability & CSR. He has done master’s in Sociology and MBA from XIMB, Bhubaneswar. In 2019 Pratyush has received "Scroll of Honour" award from his alumni XIM-Bhubaneswar. He has committed 50% of his wealth towards society through #LivingMyPromise.
Rajeshwari Narendran
Academy of HRD, Ahmedabad
Rajeshwari Narendran is Professor in HR/OB in MLSU and visiting faculty to IIMs and 17 Universities across the globe, National President of Indian Society for Training and Development 2013-14, Board Member IFTDO and Developing Countries Concern Committee and currently is Director AHRD. Her Tripartite Model for tribal development was adopted by Governor of Rajasthan and got implemented in 2013-14. Individually she is the initiator and motivator of 1500+ MAD (Make a Difference) youth social workers in and around udaipur.
She is recipient of many awards including Vivekananda National award for Excellence in HRD and Training, International Case Writing fellowship and Andrew Towl Fellowship at Harvard Business School.
Sakina Baker
Philips India
Sakina Baker is a CSR professional with 20 years of experience in corporate and non-profit sector. She heads CSR at Philips India and prior to joining Philips, she also led CSR at Bharti Infratel, Fortis Healthcare and has also worked with of several voluntary organizations including Voluntary Action Network India (VANI), Katha, National Center for Promotion of Disabled People (NCPEDP) and Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. Over years she has worked on several social development concerns including healthcare, especially inclusion of digital and technological innovation and solutions, skill development, disability, education and policy advocacy. Sakina is also a Commonwealth Professional Fellow.
Saloni Malhotra
Safecity ProCraft
Saloni Malhotra is co-dounder of Safecity, a citizen’s initiative and platform to share information on sexual abuse in India. She is also the CEO of ProCraft, a new start-up that promotes artisans from 22 states in India to support over 100 different crafts. Prior to Safecity, she founded and ran DesiCrew, a for-profit organization focused on creating knowledgebased livelihood opportunities in small towns and rural areas. She stepped down as a the CEO in March 2012, but continues to participate on the board. An engineer from Pune University, she began her career with WebChutney, the number one interactive media agency in India. She is also pursuing a Masters in Social Innovation in the Digital Context.
Veena Padmanabhan
Totus HR School Volunteer @ Joy of Giving
Veena Padmanabhan has 19 years experience in the IT & Energy Industry across Corporate and Business HR roles. Multi functional expertise – M&A, Communication & Employer Branding, People Practices, IS and Sustainability Initiatives. Since 2013, she is a volunteer with Joy of Giving Week. www.joyofgivingweek.org and Executive Director with Totus HR School. Veena is an alumni of XLRI Jamshedpur.
Vijay Chaddha
Bharti Foundation
Vijay Chadda joined Bharti Foundation as its Chief Executive Officer in October 2008. Under his leadership, the Satya Bharti School Program has grown to provide free quality education to over 40,000 children, with special focus on the girl child and marginalized communities, through its 254 schools across six states in India. Previously, Vijay spent over 15 years with corporations (CEO-TUI LePassage, CEO-Carlson Wagonlit Travel and AFL) and 20 years in the armed forces. He is a graduate from the National Defence Academy (Khadakvasla, India); The Canadian Forces Command and Staff College (Toronto, Canada) and M. Sc. (Defense Studies) from Madras University (India).
Y. Suresh Reddy
SRF Foundation
Y. Suresh Reddy, is Director of SRF Foundation. He took his Ph. D. in Public Administration from SV University, Tirupati. He has nearly 20 years of programming experience associated with Academic, Govt., NGO and Corporate Foundations, he has so far worked for Byrraju Foundation, Hyderabad; Dr. Reddy’s Foundation, Hyderabad; CARE India, New Delhi; State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) and District Institute of Education and Training (DIET), New Delhi. He has many research papers and a couple of books to his credit. His areas of interest include Corporate Social Responsibility, School Education, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for development, Building Public Private Community Partnerships for Education, Child Labor, Vocational Skills and Rural Development.
Enrolled Fellows Cohort 1
Ajay Singh Mehta
Seva Mandir
Ajay joined Seva Mandir in 1985 and was its Chief Executive from 1990-1999. He then served as the Executive Director of the National Foundation for India for 10 years. He currently sits on a number of boards including the Rajasthan State Planning Board, where he heads a sub-committee dedicated to the voluntary sector. He was educated at Yale University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. Seva Mandir operates in the southern part of Rajasthan. Its work area encompasses 626 villages and 56 Urban Settlements. The main areas of work include Natural Resource Development, Education, Health, Women’s social and economic empowerment, Youth Development, Village Institution Building and promoting Democratic Governance.
Amit Bhatia
CEO, Aspire Circle
Amit Bhatia ( www.amitb.in ), an award-winning social entrepreneur, is The Founder of Aspire Impact since 2007, a social enterprise in impact leadership and ecosystem development and Founder of Aspire Circle since 2013, India’s pre-eminent fellowship for social leadership. Formerly, as inaugural CEO of The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment or GSG from 2017-2020, Amit built the 32-country multilateral, catalysing impact investment and entrepreneurship, for social, climate and economic justice. Prior to GSG, Amit was Founding CEO of India’s Impact Investors Council (2014-2017) where he built “Brand India” and grew inbound annual impact investments from USD400mn to USD1.1bn.
Amit was also Founding CEO of WNS Knowledge Services (2003-2007) and Country Manager of FreeMarkets (1999-2003). Most prominently, he was Founder of McKinsey Knowledge Centre (1996-1999). An alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce (1989) and Delhi School of Economics (1991), Amit quit a successful corporate career in 2007 to serve the social sector.
Anshu Gupta
Goonj
Anshu Gupta is Popularly known as the Clothing Man, has done his Mass communications twice and masters in Economics. Starting as a freelance journalist, Anshu left a corporate job in 1998 and founded GOONJ with a mission to make clothing a matter of concern and to bring it among the list of subjects for the development sector. A powerful and inspiring speaker, Anshu addresses many national and international forums to bring clothing on the development agenda and to motivate the youth to take action. An Ashoka & Schwab Fellow, he is a regular speaker in many parts of the world on innovation, leadership, village development, power of youths and social entrepreneurship
Aradhana Lal
Lemon Tree hotels
Aradhana Lal is Vice President – Sustainability Initiatives and National Sales Coach & Mentor. An MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, Aradhana has 21 years of experience in Sales & Marketing, Corporate Communications and Sustainability. She was earlier Vice President – Sales & Marketing at Lemon Tree Hotels. Aradhana was previously Sales & Operations Manager at Hindustan Lever Network (known as Aviance), the multi-level marketing business of Hindustan Unilever. Prior to that Aradhana was with the Taj Group of Hotels. Aradhana is a passionate movie buff, a theatre enthusiast and an amateur writer.
C Babu Joseph
Axis Bank Foundation
C. Babu Joseph is the Executive Trustee and CEO of Axis Bank Foundation. He is also a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. He started his career as an Assistant Professor in the Kerala Agricultural University and in 1979 joined State Bank of Travancore, as a Probationary Officer. In June 1995, he moved to UTI Bank (subsequently renamed as Axis Bank) and worked at their Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Basaweshwaranagar and Hyderabad branches. On his promotion as Senior Vice President, he was in charge of Small and Medium Enterprises and Agri Business at the corporate office. He was later made President of the Advances Department that handled Small and Medium Enterprises and Agri Business, Microfinance and the Rural Initiative of the Bank.
Bobby John
Aequitas Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
Dr. Bobby John stepped out of a career with the Indian Army to work among the rural poor in Maharashtra. He has subsequently worked as the Administrator for the NM Wadia Hospital in Pune. He founded and was Executive Director of Global Health Advocates India. Bobby has also worked as the Advocacy and Public Affairs lead for the India office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and as the HIV AIDS Coordinator for World Vision India. He is now the Managing Director of Aequitas Consulting Pvt. Ltd. He has served as a member on the developing country NGO board delegation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS , TB and Malaria, and also as the Chair of its Ethics Committee.
Dr. Girish K. Agrawal
IRMA Center for Rural Infrastructure & CSR
Dr. Girish K. Agrawal is associated with IRMA as faculty and Chair, Center for Rural Infrastructure and CSR. He earned his Ph.D from IIT Bombay and M.B.A and B.E. from DAVV Indore. He was earlier associated with IIM Indore and IIFM Bhopal in a teaching role. He has worked on several consulting assignments for various bodies of Government of India, Government of Gujrat and Rajasthan, Cooperative Dairy Federation, Edelgive Foundation, Access Development services etc. He recently organized a CSR roundtable in IRMA, to identify challenges in implementation of CSR amendments in Companies Act. He also held discussions and seminar with faculty in Michigan State University, USA in June 2014 on CSR issues.
Geeta Goel
Michael & Susan Dell Foundation India
Geeta Goel is the Country Director of Dell Foundation India. She manages the strategy and implementation in two key areas - Education and Family Economic Stability. She’s on the Boards of Ujjivan, Janalakshmi, Swadhaar, Arohan, and Micro Housing Finance Corporation.
Gita Dang
Talent Advisory Services.com
Gita Dang is the Founder Director of TALENT ADVISORY SERVICES, a boutique executive search firm that focuses on working with leading MNC and Indian companies in a variety of ways to help them execute world-class talent management strategies. Her sector focus is Social Impact, Technology and Consumer.She is also the Founder of Bridge2Inclusion and works with corporates to build accessible solutions for Special Needs. She has co-authored “Special Steps for a Special Child” as well as SPARK Readers & Workbooks with Mrs Meena Cariappa. Ms. Dang holds a MA degree in Economics from JNU. She serves on the Board of TiE Delhi.
Jitendra Kalra
Dr Reddy's Foundation
Jitendra Kalra is CEO of Dr. Reddy’s Foundation (DRF), one of India’s largest social organizations pioneering the urban employment generation program. Prior to joining Dr. Reddy’s Foundation in June 2008, Jitendra served in United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) for seven years. During this period he pioneen red the ‘cluster development’ approach in India. An accomplished international trainer on cluster development, he has also worked with the Commissioner of Industries (Govt. of AP), Department of Science & Technology and Development Commissioner (MSME), Govt. of India, as well as various financial/support institutions, NGOs and Chambers of Commerce. Jitendra has also served as a civil services officer for 10 years in the Indian Railway Accounts Service.
Meenakshi Batra
Charities Aid Foundation
Meenakshi Batra - a seasoned leader in not-for-profit management with 30+ years of global experience, is currently Chair of Resource Alliance India & serving on board of several NPOs. She most recently served as CEO of Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) India, growing philanthropy & CSR in India. Meenakshi has served in various leadership roles in South and Southeast Asia.
Pankaj Ballabh
BP India Services Private Limited
Pankaj Ballabh is Head- Sustainable Development, BP Exploration (Alpha). Pankaj has spent more than two decades working on social/development issues- – while the first decade was with NGOs working in Rajasthan, the second decade has been with large energy companies. In between these two stints he spent nearly two years working as a full time mom, which he believes was his most challenging assignment till date. He is a passionate believer in making the core of the business “responsible” and in the value of ‘positive impacts’.
Pankti Jog
Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel
Pankti Jog, is the Executive Secretary for Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP) group. In 2006, MAGP launched the first legal RTI helpline in India, as a support system for citizens to raise awareness and provide help in filing RTI applications. Pankti was also a member of National Task force on RTI and has played key role in drafting guidelines on RTI for pro-active disclosure, now adopted by Dept of Personnel and Training, GOI. Pankti was also awarded “Saathiship” by AID. She has done master in Physics and post master research in Physical Oceanography in National Institute of Oceanography, Goa. She opted to work in Social field after the earthquake of 2001.
Puja Marwaha
CRY
Puja Marwaha believes that children are the very foundation of every nation’s growth and development aspirations. A post-graduate in Human Resources from XISS Ranchi who was awarded the Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize in 2018 for social innovation, Puja has built a solid organizational framework for CRY which reflects the values of justice and equity for all children.
Dr. Shikha Nehru Sharma
Nutriwel Health
Dr. Shikha Nehru Sharma is a medical doctor by training and the founder of Unitus Health Academy and 8 Well Software . As a guest on various television channels , she has been a lifelong advocate of Nutrition and in particular Vedic Nutrition as the first port of call for treating lifestyle disorders.
Sridhar Iyer
E&Y
Sridhar Iyer is the National Director – CSR for Ernst & Young India focussing on the 3 E’s i.e. Education, Environment and Entrepreneurship. A Chartered Accountant by profession, Sridhar was worked in various capacities with the last as the Chief Financial Officer of Ernst & Young India. Sridhar focusses on working back closely with partner organizations in applying business principles of cost optimization, scalability and replicability to the social sector and helping create low cost, scalable and sustainable models.
Ved Arya
SRIJAN
Ved Arya is the CEO of SRIJAN. He has a degree in Engineering from IIT Kanpur and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from IIM Ahmedabad . He began his career in the private sector as a management consultant (TCS). He was one of the few who built Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) along with others. In 1997, Ved left PRADAN and set up Self-Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action (SRIJAN), which is known as one of the leading rural livelihoods promotion organizations in the country today. Ved has been on several policy-making bodies including the Steering Committee on Rural Development of Planning Commission that developed the draft 12th Five Year Plan.
Venkatesh Malur
Sampark Foundation
Venkatesh Malur is the President at Sampark Foundation. At Sampark Foundation the focus is on leveraging expertise in “frugal innovation” to invest in large-scale transformation in the field of education, livelihoods and water and thus help create a million smiles. Prior to that heworked with UNICEF for nine years as an Education Specialist till early 2013.Venkatesh Malur has been closely associated with the policy formulation at the national level for the implementation of the Right to Free & Compulsory Education Act. He has been a member of several committees and taskforces constituted by the Government and Joint Review Missions for the Education for All Program. In addition to this Venkatesh has been instrumental in creating a RTE Forum- a platform of around 10000 NGOs from 12 states across the country. Venkatesh holds a Masters degree in International Politics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and in Economics from University of Mysore.
