Ashish Dhawan

Philanthropist & Founder, Central Square Foundation

Ashish Dhawan is Founder and Chairman of Central Square Foundation (CSF) and a Founding Member of Ashoka University. Prior to this, he worked for twenty years in the investment management business and ran one of India’s leading private equity funds, ChrysCapital. In June 2012, he left his full-time role at Chrys Capital to start CSF to pursue evidence driven and innovation led system reform in school education. Ashoka University is a not for profit university that aims to offer an Ivy League-quality undergraduate programme in India, based on the US liberal education system. Ashish is also the founder of two new organisations to address the talent gap in the social sector –
ISDM: A development management institute and ILSS: A program to transition experienced corporate talent into the development sector. More recently, Ashish has also created the Foundation for Economic Development (FED) to focus on policy reform in the agriculture sector. He also serves on the board of several non-profits including 3.2.1 Education Foundation, Teach For India, Centre for Civil Society, Bharti Foundation and India School Leadership Institute, Network for Quality Education, Khan Academy India, and Social Finance India. He is an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and a dual bachelor’s (BS/BA) holder with Magna Cum Laude honours from Yale University. He is on the Chair of India Advisory Board of Harvard Business School and a member of Yale’s Development Council.

Amit Chandra

Philanthropist & MD, Bain Capital

Amit Chandra joined Bain Capital as a Managing Director in early 2008, and is a part of the firm’s leadership team in Asia. He received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from VJTI, Bombay University, post which he worked at India’s leading engineering & construction firm, Larsen & Toubro. He then received his MBA from Boston College and was awarded the school’s Distinguished Alumni in 2007. Prior to joining Bain Capital, Amit spent most of his professional career at DSP Merrill Lynch, a leading investment bank in India. He retired from DSP Merrill Lynch in 2007 as its Board Member & Managing Director, to move to Private Equity. Mr. Chandra was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2007 and was named in Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy list by Forbes in 2016, along with his wife Archana. He is currently or in the past has served as a Member of the Board of Directors of a number of leading companies, like Tata Sons, Genpact, L&T Finance, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Piramal Enterprises, and Tata Investment Corporation. He is also active in India’s not for profit space, and is or has been associated as a Trustee of the Tata Trusts, as a Founder/Board Member of Ashoka University, a Board Member of Give India and The Akanksha Foundation. He also a Member of the Advisory Boards of Bridgespan in India, the Centre for Social Impact & Philanthropy, and Swades Foundation.

Aditya Natraj

Founder & Director, Kaivalya Education Foundation

Aditya Natraj is the founder and director of Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF), a Piramal Initiative. KEF is change management organization that supports leadership development of State leaders, District leaders and School leaders to improve student learning outcomes. KEF works with 1300 school leaders, 450 district leaders and 1200 state leaders across 12 states to effect systemic change. It also runs the Gandhi Fellowship programme – a 2 year full-time programme to train young people in leading social change. Previously, Aditya was the Director of Pratham in Gujarat for 5 years, Vice-President of Business Development at ProXchange for 2 years and a Consultant at KPMG for 5 years. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant, a Masters in Economics and has an MBA from INSEAD. Aditya has been awarded various fellowship and awards, namely the Ashoka Fellowship, Echoing Green Fellowship, Aspen India Fellowship and the Times Now Amazing Indian award in the Education category.

Amitav Virmani

Founder CEO, The Education Alliance

Amitav Virmani, Founder CEO, The Education Alliance. The Education Alliance aims to help governments in India provide a quality education to every child, by facilitating effective partnerships between state and non-state actors. The vision of TEA is to empower government schools to create the next generation of leaders. They work to catalyze quality transformation in India’s education system by nurturing the Government-Partnership School model. Prior to this Amitav was Country Director, ARK India, a UK based NGO. As their CD, Amitav was responsible for launching several programmes around school leadership, english literacy, school vouchers and school quality assessments. Amitav worked as a General Manager in the office of the CEO & MD at Ranbaxy Laboratories prior to his switch to the development sector. Amitav began his post MBA career in the USA working for Bristol Myers Squibb & Co. based in Princeton. Amitav is an alumnus of St. Stephens College, Delhi University. He got his MBA from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked in the US for 4 years before returning home. Amitav is an Aspen India Leadership Initiative 3 Fellow and an Ashoka Fellow 2016.

Debasish Mitter

Director, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation India LLP

Debasish Mitter serves as Director, India, at the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and leads the foundation’s strategy and operations in India to improve quality of education, employability skills, family economic stability, and health. In his role, Debasish helps to manage and develop the India-based portfolio to drive large-scale systemic transformations in public education and to incubate start-ups to bring innovative products and services to the market. Prior to joining the foundation, he spent 13 years with American Express in various leadership positions in their Delhi, Miami and New York offices. During his career with American Express, he led a variety of operational, transaction-related, finance and strategic responsibilities. Prior to that, Debasish spent a number of years with Dowell Schlumberger, an oilfield services leader, in senior finance roles in the Middle East and the Far East. Debasish is a chartered accountant.

Gaurav Shah

Founder, ISDM

Gaurav has over 13 years of experience working both in private sector as well as in the development space (microfinance, health, impact investment, education) largely as a management consultant (P&G, American Express, Azim Premji Foundation, Lok Capital etc.). His areas of experience include program management and implementation, strategic and business planning, organization restructuring and design and sales & distribution management.

Luis Miranda

Chairman, Centre for Civil Society & CORO

Luis is Chairman of CORO and Centre for Civil Society. He is also actively involved with other non-profits including SNEHA, CARE India, Educate Girls, and Take Charge. He spends his time these days connecting the dots for amazing social entrepreneurs, using his network to help the organisations he is connected with. Luis is also Senior Advisor to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure and Advisor to the Nadathur Group. Prior to this, he was involved with setting up two highly successful companies – HDFC Bank and IDFC Private Equity. He is on Chicago Booth’s Global Advisory Board and Social Enterprise Initiative’s Advisory Board and writes a blog for Forbes India. Luis received an MBA from the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Moomal Mehta

Founder, Crossover Catalyst

Moomal has 16 years of experience with Citibank in leadership roles across Delhi, Chicago and Bombay. After Citi, she was the Deputy Director at Asia Society India Centre for 5 years, responsible for programming, fundraising and key stakeholder relationships. Moomal has a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta. Crossover Catalyst is a search firm for the social sector. It is rooted in the belief that non-profits and social enterprises play a critical role in solving some of India’s most pressing problems, and attracting high quality, leadership-level talent from the outside the sector could be an important enabler in creating scale and enhancing impact for many of these organizations. They currently serve over 75 impact sector organizations for their senior people needs and have transitioned 23 individuals into leadership roles in the sector. Crossover Catalyst is founded by Moomal Mehta.

Pritha Venkatachalam

Partner, The Bridgespan Group

Pritha is a Partner in Bridgespan’s Mumbai office. Pritha has been a Research Scholar at the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics. Prior to joining Bridgespan, Pritha established and led the New Delhi office of Dalberg Global Development Advisors, where she co-led the Global Health and Nutrition practice area. Previously, Pritha was a Director at Cambridge Economic Policy Associates (CEPA) UK, where she worked for almost a decade. She set up CEPA’s first international office in New Delhi and directed development mandates in Asia and Africa across public health, agriculture and infrastructure sectors. Pritha’s earlier responsibilities include being a financial specialist at the World Bank on urban infrastructure projects, and a Senior Consultant at Accenture in London and New Delhi. Pritha holds a Masters in Development Management from the London School of Economics and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore including an exchange program at Melbourne Business School. She is a recipient of the Citibank Leadership Award.

Ravi Sreedharan

Founder – ISDM

Ravi Sreedharan has worked for 24 years in the Corporate Sector most of which was at HSBC. At HSBC, Ravi has worked as the Regional Marketing Head for the Middle East and Africa, Head of Consumer Products for Asia Pacific, Consumer Banking Head of Indonesia, CEO and President Director of Bank Ekonomi (a local bank in Indonesia that was acquired by HSBC). He quit his corporate career and switched to the social sector in 2011 and joined Azim Premji Foundation where he was the Head of Education Leadership & Management. He is an alumnus of IIM- Ahmedabad and IIT-BHU. He co-founded the Indian School of Development Management, Noida in 2016 to develop and impart the discipline of development management.

Safeena Husain

Founder & Executive Director, Educate Girls

Safeena Husain is the Founder and Executive Director of Educate Girls – a non-profit organisation that aims at tackling issues at the root cause of gender inequality in India’s education system. After graduating from the London School of Economics, Safeena spent over a decade working with grassroots projects in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Educate Girls presently works in 21,000 government-run primary schools spread across 15 districts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. There are over 4.9 million total beneficiaries of its programmatic interventions. Under Safeena’s leadership, Educate Girls has initiated the world’s first Development Impact Bond (DIB) in education. She has been conferred with 2017 NITI Aayog’s Women Transforming India Award and has in the past received the British Asian Trust’s Special Recognition Award from HRH Prince Charles for outstanding contribution in education.

Sanjay Gupta

Global CEO, English Helper

Sanjay Gupta commenced his professional journey in Finance in the early 1980s working across a range of reputed companies in India including the Tata Group, Eicher – Mitsubishi, Pepsi and Motorola. Sanjay joined American Express in 1996 and held a number of business leadership roles based in New Delhi, New York and Singapore. In 2010, decided to pursue a new career to build a social enterprise for giving back in a sustainable way. Sanjay assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer at English Helper Inc. The company is committed to providing innovative and affordable technology enabled English learning to people across all age groups and income segments. Most recently, the company has initiated ‘RightToRead’ with a view to enable English literacy in public schools across the world and has launched ‘EnglishBolo’ in India designed to help youth from low income backgrounds to improve English speaking skill. In addition, Sanjay is engaged with the cause of children and youth as an active Board Member at Udayan Care, and School of Inspired Leadership. He is guest faculty at Duke University’s Executive Education Program and delivers programs on doing business across cultures, customer and brand, leadership during change. Sanjay also coaches senior executives/ business leaders with special focus on developing personal excellence. Sanjay is on the Boards of BOI AXA Asset Management Company and Skills Training Assessment Management Partners. He is Advisor, Acumen India.

Shankar Maruwada

Co-Founder & CEO, EkStep Foundation

Shankar Maruwada is the CEO and Co-founder of EkStep. Shankar is passionate about addressing social problems at scale through technology based tools. He is an entrepreneur and marketing professional with a wide range of experience working on large scale projects such as the AADHAAR, India’s national identification program, where he was the Head of Demand Generation and Marketing. Shankar pioneered data analytics in India through, Marketics, a company he co-founded. He is an investor in startups and a mentor to entrepreneurs. He is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur.

Srikanth Viswanathan

CEO, Janaagraha

Srikanth is Chief Executive Officer of Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy. Janaagraha is a Bengaluru based non- profit working with the mission of transforming quality of life in India’s cities and towns. Janaagraha works with citizens to catalyse active citizenship in city neighbourhoods and with governments to institute reforms to city governance. Srikanth’s focus area in the urban sector has been “city-systems” reforms spanning Janaagraha’s flagship report the Annual Survey of India’s City- Systems (ASICS) and municipal finance reforms. Srikanth has been an Associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India for fifteen years and prior to joining Janaagraha worked in banking and audit.

Sudheesh Venkatesh

Chief People Officer, Azim Premji Foundation

Sudheesh Venkatesh is the Chief People Officer at the Azim Premji Foundation and a member of the Board of Management of Azim Premji University. After a degree in Engineering and a post-graduate degree in Management from Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, Sudheesh worked for close to a decade each with Asian Paints and Tesco, two large, global organisations. He has been with the Azim Premji Foundation since 2010 and his role is to attract, develop and retain good people who can help the Foundation realise its vision. He was President of the National HRD Network, Bangalore (2013-15), served on the National Board of the HRD Network (2013-17) and has co-edited the most recent issue of the HRD Journal on ‘Education, Employability and Employment landscape in India’. He is often invited to speak and write on matters relating to people & organisations.

Surabhi Bikhchandani

Partner - Executive Search, Quadrangle

Surabhi is a multifaceted professional with an experience of over 20 years, across Advertising, FMCG and Recruitment Consulting industries. She is leading the Executive Search practice at Quadrangle, focusing on CXO positions with organisations across consumer internet and service industries; with more recent experience in the non-profit sector as well. She is well networked and has successfully closed many leadership positions for her clients that include several start-ups. She believes in detailed assessments of candidates to get the right organisation culture fit! Surabhi began her career in media planning with Ulka Advertising Pvt. Ltd. in 1986 and then moved on to Nestle India Ltd. where she handled diverse responsibilities in marketing, brand management, sales, distribution, merchandising, advertising & market research. She has, in the past, trained management students in Communication Skills and has conducted courses on Written Analysis & Communication, Oral Communication Skills, Group Discussions & Interviews as a visiting Faculty at IMT, Ghaziabad and IMS, Mumbai. She has also co-authored a book for MBA and job aspirants called ‘Tackling Group Discussions’. Surabhi is an alumnus of IIM, Ahmedabad (1987-89) and an Economics graduate from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi (1986).

Venkatesam Eshwara

Vice-President, Development, Ashoka University

Venkat is currently Vice President, Development at Ashoka University. His responsibilities include fundraising, providing leadership, developing and implementing strategy for the institution. Venkat held central roles in top management tier in organisations of diverse profiles. His core strengths lie in building, growing and managing geographically diverse operations. With an entrepreneurial and start-up experience of 20 years, Venkat has built three companies from inception to significant growth and profitability. Venkat is an alumnus of St. Xaviers College, Mumbai and has worked as Chief Operating Officer, Prop Equity| P.E. Analytics Pvt. Ltd. before joining Ashoka University.

A K Shivakumar

Development Economist, Professor and Senior Policy Advisor, UNICEF

A K Shiva Kumar (Shiv), a New Delhi based development economist, is Co-Chair of Know Violence in Childhood – a global learning initiative – and senior policy adviser to UNICEF India. He teaches economics and public policy as a visiting faculty member in the YIF at Ashoka University, Indian School of Business, and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Shiv was, until 2014, a member of the National Advisory Council, advising Government of India on social policy and legislation. He has undertaken several evaluation assignments for the UN and other agencies. He has served on the Boards of many NGOs and research organizations including Centre for Science and Environment, Institute for Human Development, Institute for Rural Development, International Center for Research on Women, and Public Health Foundation of India. He is the co-editor of the “Handbook of Human Development”, the “Handbook of Population and Development” and “India’s Children: Essays in Social Policy”. Shiv is an alumnus of Bangalore University and IIM -Ahmedabad as well as Harvard University from where he did his Masters in Public Administration and Ph.D in Political Economy and Government.

Ashok Sircar

Director, School of Development, Azim Premji University

Prof. Ashok Kumar Sircar, is currently the Director of the School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. He has over 34 years of experience spanning corporate sector, development sector, and teaching and training. For more than one and half decade, he has been involved in the development sector in programme planning and execution, monitoring and evaluation, research and policy advocacy in domains of local governance, land rights, and livelihoods. At the University, apart from heading the School, Ashok is involved in delivering popular courses on Gender in Livelihoods, Political Economy of Land, Understanding Development and Change, Imagining Development: From vision to action, for post-graduate students, as well as in-service professionals.

Mekhala Krishnamurthy

Social Anthropologist & Associate Professor, Ashoka' University

Mekhala Krishnamurthy is a social anthropologist and Associate Professor in Ashoka University. Over the last fifteen years, her research, policy and professional engagements have involved work across a range of field sites and subjects, including women’s courts and dispute resolution, community health workers and public health systems, agriculture with a focus on agricultural markets, and water, livelihood security and land acquisition. In the process, her work places her at the intersections of and in partnerships between academia, public policy, government, the private sector, and grassroots civil society organisations. Mekhala graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard University, received an M.Phil. in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from University College London. She is a Non-Resident Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania.

Suparna Diwakar

Founder – ISDM

Suparna has worked extensively in the development sector for over 25 years. She started her career with MYRADA and moved on to lead and manage multiple projects – from being Founding Trustee of Adamya Chetana; Vice-President and Project lead at Centre for Leadership and Management in Public Services; Consultant for multiple projects with Department of Public Instruction, District Institute for Education and Training in Karnataka State; Consultant for rural development project for the Indian Institute of Science etc. Besides curriculum development and teaching, she also has extensive experience of design, development and implementation of projects and pieces of training with corporates and organizations like Tata Institute for Social Sciences, The Teacher Foundation, Azim Premji Foundation, UNICEF etc. In her vast experience in the development sector, she has also published and presented several papers on academic leadership, management and governance. Suparna’s strength lies in her ability to straddle the theory-practice space, to make a meaningful contribution to change on the ground.

Urvashi Butalia

Founder, Zubaan Books

Urvashi Butalia is an independent publisher and writer. Co-founder of India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, she now heads Zubaan, an imprint of Kali. She has had a long involvement in the women’s movement in India, and writes for newspapers, journals and books at home and abroad on a range of issues to do with women and gender. Among her best-known publications is the award-winning oral history of Partition: The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (winner of the Oral History Book Association award 2001 and the Nikkei Asia Award for Culture 2003). She is also visiting faculty at Ashoka University Sonepat. Butalia has received many awards for her work, among them the Padma Shri, which she was awarded in 2011.

Anuradha Prasad

Founder - Director

Anu Prasad is the Founder-Director of India Leaders for Social Sector, and was the Senior Advisor at Central Square Foundation. She is one of the founding members of the Young India Fellowship (YIF) at Ashoka University and was its Deputy Dean. Previously, she was a member of the initial team at American Express in India where she led the implementation of Amex’s global financial re-engineering, helping to create the Financial Resource Centre in New Delhi. Post Amex, she worked as the Regional Head of Finance for TNT, North India. An entrepreneur at heart, she also co-founded and managed a travel company in India. She also worked as a consultant with the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.

Shaveta Sharma Kukreja

Director, ILSS and Managing Director, Central Square Foundation

Shaveta leads Central Square Foundation’s efforts to improve capacity building and development of educators- teachers, principals and administrators. She also oversees CSF’s organisational development. She brings to the team more than a decade of professional experience in management and education. Her corporate background includes work at The Boston Consulting Group, Global Vantedge (a business process outsourcing start-up) and Citibank. She has also been a visiting faculty member in the Human Resources and Organisational Behavior disciplines at various business schools in Delhi NCR. Her primary areas of interest are teaching and research of organisational behaviour and leadership styles. 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. She is also certified in the psychometric tools MBTI, FIRO-B and FIRO-Business.

Sangeeta Menon

Senior Advisor, India Leaders for Social Sector

Sangeeta is a Senior Advisor at ILSS. She has over 20 years of experience in various media and communication roles with leading organisations such as The Economic Times, Business India, Netscribes India Pvt Ltd, Etihad Airways (Abu Dhabi) and the Tata group. Prior to joining ILSS, Sangeeta was Co-Founder and Director at India Development Review. Sangeeta holds an M.Phil in English, in addition to a degree in communication and journalism and a diploma in airline marketing. An avid reader and traveller, she sees herself as a forever student on a journey of learning and discovery.

Pratyush Rawal

Program Manager

Pratyush received his Post Graduate Diploma in Liberal Studies at Ashoka University’s Young India Fellowship (YIF) Programme in 2017. At YIF, he worked with Trivedi Centre for Political Data and conducted political research in UP and Punjab. Before YIF, he was associated with the Chairman’s Office in Quality Council of India (QCI). Pratyush graduated with a Masters of Science in Finance from BITS, Pilani and had appeared twice for the Civil Services Examination. His key interest areas are the Social Sector, Domestic & International Politics and Peace & Conflict Management.

Vineet Mittal

Finance and Operations Manager

Vineet comes with over 8 years of experience in Accounting and Finance across sectors. At ILSS he takes care of the organization’s admin and operations apart from the leading the Accounts department. Prior to ILSS, he has held several leadership roles in companies like Koncept Group and Deutsche Motoren. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce from Delhi University.

Isha Sharma

Program Manager, Marketing & Communications

Isha has been working in the development sector for 5 years now, in both rural and urban context. In 2014, she earned a Master’s degree in Social Work with specialization in Women-Centered Practice from Tata Institute of Social Sciences and an undergraduate degree in Political Science and Philosophy from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. She has worked at Central Square Foundation where she identified and supported social entrepreneurs in the school education space. Isha has also supervised an entrepreneurial skills program for 400+ government schools in rural India while working at Going To School, a grassroots organization. Prior to ILSS, Isha was with Genpact Centre for Women’s Leadership at Ashoka University where she worked in initiatives to increase participation of women in the workforce in India across sectors.

Nikita Gupta

Associate Director

Nikita is a social sector professional with experience primarily in the areas of leadership development, education, and gender and sexuality. Prior to ILSS, she was a founding core team member at the School of Life Foundation where she led programs on prevention of sexual violence against women and children. She has also worked with Kaivalya Education Foundation on large-scale public education reform in rural Rajasthan and municipal schools of Mumbai. Nikita holds a Master’s in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, with a focus on adult development and leadership. She is also an alumna of Delhi University and the Gandhi Fellowship.

Aparajita Kujur

Senior Manager

Aparajita comes with 11 of experience as a communications professional, starting her career in the corporate sector before transitioning to the social sector. Prior to joining ILSS, Aparajita was associated with Water for People – India, where she managed communications and documentation for the India country program. She holds a post-graduate diploma in Business Management from the Institute of Productivity and Management, Ghaziabad, and a degree in Business Administration from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra. Her key interest areas are child rights, education and women empowerment, and she believes in creating more inclusive communities.

Aditya Natraj

Founder & Director, Kaivalya Education Foundation

Aditya Natraj is the founder and director of Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF), a Piramal Initiative. KEF is change management organization that supports leadership development of State leaders, District leaders and School leaders to improve student learning outcomes. KEF works with 1300 school leaders, 450 district leaders and 1200 state leaders across 12 states to effect systemic change. It also runs the Gandhi Fellowship programme – a 2 year full-time programme to train young people in leading social change. Previously, Aditya was the Director of Pratham in Gujarat for 5 years, Vice-President of Business Development at ProXchange for 2 years and a Consultant at KPMG for 5 years. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant, a Masters in Economics and has an MBA from INSEAD. Aditya has been awarded various fellowship and awards, namely the Ashoka Fellowship, Echoing Green Fellowship, Aspen India Fellowship and the Times Now Amazing Indian award in the Education category.

A K Shivakumar

Development Economist, Professor and Senior Policy Advisor, UNICEF

A K Shiva Kumar (Shiv), a New Delhi based development economist, is Co-Chair of Know Violence in Childhood – a global learning initiative – and senior policy adviser to UNICEF India. He teaches economics and public policy as a visiting faculty member in the YIF at Ashoka University, Indian School of Business, and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Shiv was, until 2014, a member of the National Advisory Council, advising Government of India on social policy and legislation. He has undertaken several evaluation assignments for the UN and other agencies. He has served on the Boards of many NGOs and research organizations including Centre for Science and Environment, Institute for Human Development, Institute for Rural Development, International Center for Research on Women, and Public Health Foundation of India. He is the co-editor of the “Handbook of Human Development”, the “Handbook of Population and Development” and “India’s Children: Essays in Social Policy”. Shiv is an alumnus of Bangalore University and IIM -Ahmedabad as well as Harvard University from where he did his Masters in Public Administration and Ph.D in Political Economy and Government.

Aman Kaleem

Founder and CEO, Kahaani Wale

Aman Kaleem is the Founder and CEO of Kahaani Wale. She is a Hubert Humphrey Fulbright Fellowship’s India nominee, a Young India Fellow and has been recognised by the Government of India and United Nations as ‘Make a Difference Leader’, for her work in the South Asian region. She is a faculty at the Vedica Scholars programme, Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia University. Her latest documentary for Ministry of Information and Broadcasting called “Shaadi, Sex aur Parivaar” premiered at ‘Imagine India International Film Festival Madrid’ and is currently being screened in festivals across the world. “We, The People” is her debut film as a producer.

Amit Chandra

Philanthropist & MD, Bain Capital

Amit Chandra joined Bain Capital as a Managing Director in early 2008, and is a part of the firm’s leadership team in Asia. He received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from VJTI, Bombay University, post which he worked at India’s leading engineering & construction firm, Larsen & Toubro. He then received his MBA from Boston College and was awarded the school’s Distinguished Alumni in 2007. Prior to joining Bain Capital, Amit spent most of his professional career at DSP Merrill Lynch, a leading investment bank in India. He retired from DSP Merrill Lynch in 2007 as its Board Member & Managing Director, to move to Private Equity. Mr. Chandra was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2007 and was named in Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy list by Forbes in 2016, along with his wife Archana. He is currently or in the past has served as a Member of the Board of Directors of a number of leading companies, like Tata Sons, Genpact, L&T Finance, Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Piramal Enterprises, and Tata Investment Corporation. He is also active in India’s not for profit space, and is or has been associated as a Trustee of the Tata Trusts, as a Founder/Board Member of Ashoka University, a Board Member of Give India and The Akanksha Foundation. He also a Member of the Advisory Boards of Bridgespan in India, the Centre for Social Impact & Philanthropy, and Swades Foundation.

Amita Baviskar

Professor, Institute of Economic Growth

Amita Baviskar is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. Her research focuses on the cultural politics of environment and development in rural and urban India. Her book In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley and other writings explore the themes of resource rights, popular resistance and discourses of environmentalism. She is currently studying food and agrarian environments in western India. Most of her work has been conducted in association with rights-based campaigns and organizations. Amita Baviskar’s recent publications include the edited books Contested Grounds: Essays on Nature, Culture and Power; Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes (with Raka Ray); and First Garden of the Republic: Nature on the President’s Estate. She has taught at the University of Delhi and has been a visiting scholar at Stanford, Cornell, Yale, SciencesPo and the University of California at Berkeley. She was awarded the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences in 2010.

Anil Swarup

CEO, Jharkhand State Development Council & Former Secretary, Government of India

Anil Swarup is currently appointed as the CEO, State Development Council of Jharkhand after his retirement from the Government of India. He was last posted as Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Government of India. Before this assignment, in his capacity as Secretary, Ministry of Coal, he was instrumental in carrying out the auction of coal blocks. The initiatives taken by him resulted in record production of coal in India, which helped in tiding over the crisis created by coal shortages.He started his career in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in, 1981. His past assignments in various Ministries of the Government reflect his in-depth knowledge and experience in visualizing, conceptualizing, articulating and implementing various schemes. He holds a Masters degree in Political Science from Allahabad University, where he was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold medal for the best all-round student. He was nominated as one of the “policy change agents” by The Economics Times during the years 2010, 2012, 2015 & 2016. He was selected as one of the 35 “Action Heroes” in India Today’s 35th Annual Edition.

Anshu Gupta

Founder, Goonj

Anshu Gupta, popularly known as the Clothing Man is the Founder of an Indian based nonprofit – Goonj. Asia’s Noble, the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award 2015, conferred to him credited him for ‘his creative vision in transforming the culture of giving in India, his enterprising leadership in treating cloth as a sustainable development resource for the poor, and in reminding the world that true giving always respects and preserves human dignity’. Anshu has done his Mass communications twice and his masters in Economics. Starting as a freelance journalist, he 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. Over the years as Goonj garnered major awards, including World Bank’s Development Marketplace and NASA, Anshu also won recognition as an Ashoka and Schwab Fellow while he was also listed as one of India’s top social entrepreneurs by Forbes Magazine and Fast Company. He is also a member of Humanitarian Crisis Council of the World Economic Forum.

Aruna Pandey

Senior Research Fellow, ISDM

Aruna comes with deep engagement in domains of Natural Resource Governance, Institutions and Sustainable Livelihoods. In her 11 years of experiencing social change with communities, Aruna has worked with institutions like BRLF, TISS (Mumbai), SOAS – University of London, IIM – Ahmedabad, ISAP (New Delhi), and many others on various research, education/ training and IB assignments. She has received the Young Analyst Award by EU and DPG (Delhi), the prestigious M. K. Tata Prize and the NTPC gold medal for her dissertation at TISS (Mumbai) and the Felix Scholarship Trust award for her PhD at SOAS, amongst others. Now, she is working with ISDM as Sr. Research Fellow & Faculty.

Ashish Dhawan

Philanthropist & Founder, Central Square Foundation

Ashish Dhawan is Founder and Chairman of Central Square Foundation (CSF) and a Founding Member of Ashoka University. Prior to this, he worked for twenty years in the investment management business and ran one of India’s leading private equity funds, ChrysCapital. In June 2012, he left his full-time role at Chrys Capital to start CSF to pursue evidence driven and innovation led system reform in school education. Ashoka University is a not for profit university that aims to offer an Ivy League-quality undergraduate programme in India, based on the US liberal education system. Ashish is also the founder of two new organisations to address the talent gap in the social sector –
ISDM: A development management institute and ILSS: A program to transition experienced corporate talent into the development sector. More recently, Ashish has also created the Foundation for Economic Development (FED) to focus on policy reform in the agriculture sector. He also serves on the board of several non-profits including 3.2.1 Education Foundation, Teach For India, Centre for Civil Society, Bharti Foundation and India School Leadership Institute, Network for Quality Education, Khan Academy India, and Social Finance India. He is an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and a dual bachelor’s (BS/BA) holder with Magna Cum Laude honours from Yale University. He is on the Chair of India Advisory Board of Harvard Business School and a member of Yale’s Development Council.

Ashok Alexander

Founder, Antara Foundation (AF)

Ashok is the founder of Antara Foundation (AF) an NGO focusing on public health delivery at scale. Before starting AF in 2013, Ashok led the creation and expansion of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s (BMGF) India operations from 2003 till 2012. Earlier, Ashok was a Director with McKinsey, and spent 17 years in the firm’s New York and India offices. Ashok brought his grounding in business to the social sector. The common thread in his experience at BMGF and AF has been ‘scale’. At BMGF, he led the creation of Avahan, the Foundation’s India HIV prevention initiative. Ashok has been Menschel Senior Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, a founding board member of the Public Health Foundation of India, and on the boards of CARE India and the America-India Foundation. He has degrees in Economics from St Stephen’s and the Delhi School of Economics, and MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. He paints, working mainly on portraits, and is internationally rated in chess.

Ashok Sircar

Director, School of Development, Azim Premji University

Prof. Ashok Kumar Sircar, is currently the Director of the School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. He has over 34 years of experience spanning corporate sector, development sector, and teaching and training. For more than one and half decade, he has been involved in the development sector in programme planning and execution, monitoring and evaluation, research and policy advocacy in domains of local governance, land rights, and livelihoods. At the University, apart from heading the School, Ashok is involved in delivering popular courses on Gender in Livelihoods, Political Economy of Land, Understanding Development and Change, Imagining Development: From vision to action, for post-graduate students, as well as in-service professionals.

Atishi Marlena

Politician and Ex-Advisor to the Deputy CM, Delhi

Atishi Marlena is a leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, and is a member of the party’s top decision-making forum, the Political Affairs Committee (PAC). She is presently the Advisor to the Deputy CM of Delhi, primarily on Education. She has been spearheading the Delhi Government’s interventions in the field of education and works on a policy level on improving the effectiveness of various stakeholders involved in Government schools. Recipient of the prestigious Rhodes scholarship, she has done a Masters in Educational Research from the University of Oxford. She also worked as a History and English teacher at the Rishi Valley School for a brief period early on in her life. She was one of the key people who were involved in setting up of the Masters in Education program at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Her academic work has primarily been in the field of alternative curriculum. A History Major from St Stephen’s College, Atishi spent over five years in a village close to Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, where she and her associates adopted a rural lifestyle and practiced organic farming for self-sufficient sustenance.

Chakshu Roy

Leads legislative and civic engagement, PRS Legislative Research

Chakshu leads legislative and civic engagement at PRS Legislative Research. The mission of PRS is to make the legislative process in the country better informed, more transparent and participatory. Chakshu and his colleagues, provide research on legislation and policy to MPs and MLAs to further in-depth debate on issues in our legislatures. They track the working of Parliament, State Legislatures and their legislators, make the work easily available and understandable. Chakshu and his team also anchor the prestigious Legislative Assistant for Members of Parliament Fellowship. He is an expert on parliamentary procedures and writes and speaks extensively on issues relating to the institution.

Chandrika Bahadur

President, SDSN Association

Chandrika Bahadur is the President of the SDSN Association. Previously, she was Director of Education Initiatives at the UN SDSN. From 2008-2011, she was the advisor to the Chairman and Managing Director at Reliance Industries, where she helped set up Reliance Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic foundation focusing on areas of education, health, rural development, and urban renewal. From 2001-2008, Chandrika worked with the United Nations in different roles. In her last assignment, she was a Policy Advisor at UNDP’s Bureau for Development Policy in New York, working in Africa to help Ministries of Finance and Planning align their strategies to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), across 20 countries. From 2003-2006, she was part of the leadership team of the UN Millennium Project, an advisory group convened by the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to recommend strategies for the MDGs. From 2001-2002 she worked on trade and HIV and AIDS programs at the United Nations. She has prior teaching experience at Harvard and Columbia universities. Chandrika holds a Masters degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a BA (Honours) in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

Debasish Mitter

Director, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation India LLP

Debasish Mitter serves as Director, India, at the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and leads the foundation’s strategy and operations in India to improve quality of education, employability skills, family economic stability, and health. In his role, Debasish helps to manage and develop the India-based portfolio to drive large-scale systemic transformations in public education and to incubate start-ups to bring innovative products and services to the market. Prior to joining the foundation, he spent 13 years with American Express in various leadership positions in their Delhi, Miami and New York offices. During his career with American Express, he led a variety of operational, transaction-related, finance and strategic responsibilities. Prior to that, Debasish spent a number of years with Dowell Schlumberger, an oilfield services leader, in senior finance roles in the Middle East and the Far East. Debasish is a chartered accountant.

Feisal Alkazi

Theatre Director

Educationist, social activist, author, master trainer and theatre director Feisal Alkazi lives and works in New Delhi. He has, over the past 42 years, directed over 200 plays and carved out a niche for himself in the Indian theatre scene chiefly with the group Ruchika. Feisal has also worked extensively in the area of children’s theatre, regularly directing for schools across India and the Little Actors Club of Ruchika. He has directed over 100 children’s plays in Delhi, Jaipur, Chennai, Moradabad, Chandigarh and Gwalior. His book for children on theatre, Rang Biranga Rangmanch, published by National Book Trust, has sold over 30,000 copies. For television, Feisal has directed two serials and 32 documentaries and short-films. Among other awards, he was given the Sanskriti Award for outstanding contribution to the theatre in 1987. In his capacity as a professional social worker, Feisal founded and headed Ankur, Society for Alternative in Education for ten years. As a master trainer ,Feisal has worked with various organizations and some of his trainings have included theatre based activities as well.

Fiona Miranda

Director, Seeds of Awareness and 17000 ft Foundation

Dr. Fiona Dias Miranda has a Doctorate in Microbiology from the USA, where she was a Professor and later, at St. Xaviers College, Mumbai. Her teaching years at University led her to observe that addressing aspects of sexual education in young adolescents was equally important along with formal education. Thus she started her series of – Reproductive and Sexual Health Awareness since 2008 for adolescents, parents and teachers. She serves as director, faculty and facilitator with the NGO Seeds of Awareness and Research Foundation – an organisation that does Comprehensive Sexuality Education. She also serves as faculty in Anatomy and Reproductive Health, Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Currently, Fiona is also a director with the NGO 17000 Ft Foundation which works towards transforming lives in rural villages of Ladakh primarily via education. She has also been associated with a number of NGOs in education and health in multiple capacities including fundraising; Muktangan, Akanksha, SNEHA, in Mumbai and the Sunbird Trust in the NorthEast States of India to name a few. She plays the role of a mentor in Take Charge- A Mumbai based mentorship program.Fiona is passionate about Music and Travelling which, she believes, keep her energised and excited about life.

George Abraham

Founder, Score Foundation

George Abraham is the founder of Score Foundation, which seeks to change attitudes towards the blind, and Project Eyeway, a knowledge resource on living a life with blindness. He has been visually impaired since the age of 10 months, following a near fatal attack of meningitis. A visit to a school for the blind in 1988 inspired George to switch from a career in advertising: he launched cricket for the blind in India in 1990 and followed this up by setting up the World Blind Cricket Council. He organised the inaugural cricket World Cup for the blind in 1998, in New Delhi. In 2013, he produced a 13-part TV serial Nazar Ya Nazariya featuring over 39 stories about possibilities and potential. George travels extensively in India and abroad, speaking to varied audiences about his journey as a social entrepreneur and as a person with disability. An Ashoka Fellow, George was conferred the CF Andrews Distinguished Alumnus Award by St Stephen’s College in 2015. He carried the Olympic Torch at Atlanta 1996 and was conferred the Sanskriti Award in 1995.

Harsh Mander

Writer, Columnist and Human Rights Activist

Harsh Mander, human rights and peace worker, writer, columnist, researcher and teacher, works with survivors of mass violence, hunger, homeless persons and street children. He is Director, Centre for Equity Studies, and founder of the campaigns Aman Biradari, for secularism, peace and justice; Nyayagrah, for legal justice and reconciliation for the survivors of communal violence, and ‘Hausla’ for urban homeless people, for homeless shelters, recovery shelters and street medicine. He was Special Commissioner to the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food case for twelve years from 2005-17. He is Special Monitor of the statutory National Human Rights Commission for Minority Rights. He convenes and edits the annual India Exclusion Report. He worked formerly in the Indian Administrative Service in Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh for almost two decades. He writes and speaks regularly on issues of social justice. He has also taught at St. Stephens, New Delhi; LBS National Academy of Administration, Mussourie; JNU, New Delhi; NALSAR, Hyderabad; MIT Boston and Stanford University among others. He is working on a PhD with VS University in Amsterdam. He received the Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award for peace work, the M.A. Thomas National Human Rights Award 2002, the South Asian Minority Lawyers Harmony Award 2012 and the Chisthi Harmony Award 2012.

Kamla Bhasin

Social Scientist & Advisor, Sangat & JAGOR

A social scientist by training, Kamla Bhasin has been actively engaged with issues related to development, gender, education, media and others since 1970. Currently, she works with Sangat – A Feminist Network as Adviser as well as JAGORI, A Women’s Resource and Training Centre and Jagori Rural Charitable Trust as an active member. She is the South Asia Coordinator of One Billion Rising, a global campaign to end violence against women and girls; Co-Chair of the worldwide network Peace Women Across the Globe; and member of South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR). Prior to this, she worked with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations for 27 years. She has written extensively on gender, women’s empowerment, participatory and sustainable development, participatory training, media and communication.

Mekhala Krishnamurthy

Social Anthropologist and Associate Professor, Ashoka University

Mekhala Krishnamurthy is a social anthropologist and Associate Professor in Ashoka University. Over the last fifteen years, her research, policy and professional engagements have involved work across a range of field sites and subjects, including women’s courts and dispute resolution, community health workers and public health systems, agriculture with a focus on agricultural markets, and water, livelihood security and land acquisition. In the process, her work places her at the intersections of and in partnerships between academia, public policy, government, the private sector, and grassroots civil society organisations. Mekhala graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard University, received an M.Phil. in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from University College London. She is a Non-Resident Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania.

Moomal Mehta

Founder, Crossover Catalyst

Moomal has 16 years of experience with Citibank in leadership roles across Delhi, Chicago and Bombay. After Citi, she was the Deputy Director at Asia Society India Centre for 5 years, responsible for programming, fundraising and key stakeholder relationships. Moomal has a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta.

Crossover Catalyst is a search firm for the social sector. It is rooted in the belief that non-profits and social enterprises play a critical role in solving some of India’s most pressing problems, and attracting high quality, leadership-level talent from the outside the sector could be an important enabler in creating scale and enhancing impact for many of these organizations. They currently serve over 75 impact sector organizations for their senior people needs and have transitioned 23 individuals into leadership roles in the sector. Crossover Catalyst is founded by Moomal Mehta.

Nachiket Mor

Country Director (India), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

In his role as Director, India Country Office, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nachiket Mor oversees the foundation’s efforts to improve family health, sanitation, financial inclusion, and agriculture in India. Nachiket Mor is a Yale World Fellow. He has a postgraduate diploma in management from the IIM-Ahmedabad and a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, with a specialization in finance from the Wharton School. He was a member of the Planning Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Universal Health Care, the Primary Care Task Force of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and the Task Force on Global Health at the Academy of Medicine in Washington DC. He is currently a member of the Health Commission for the State of Himachal Pradesh. He worked with ICICI for almost 20 years and was also a member of its Board of Directors. He was also Board Chair of the Fixed Income Money Market & Derivatives Association and helped launch the National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX). He was also a member of the Boards of the RBI, NABARD, and MUDRA. For the RBI, he chaired the Eastern Area Local Board and was a member of its Board for Financial Supervision. He continues to be a member of the RBI Boards.

P.R. Ganapathy

Regional Director at The Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (Stanford SEED)

PR Ganpathy is the Regional Director at The Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (known as Stanford Seed) leading the India operations for Stanford Seed, working with entrepreneurs and SMEs to strengthen their businesses, gain traction, and scale their impact.He is  a well-known funder and incubator of social enterprises, and a co-founder of the Menterra Social Impact Fund. He is also the co-founder of Haqdarshak, a social enterprise. Prior to moving to the development sector in 2011, he worked at large Indian corporations and co- founded a US – headquartered venture-funded start-up. He has an MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad and Honors degree in Mathematics from Hindu College. He is also a Senior Advisor for Teach for India, Member of Advisory Board on Social Entrepreneurship, British Council, Member of CSR Committee, CII and Member of the India Chapter Steering Committee, Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs.

Poonam Muttreja

Executive Director, Population Foundation of India

Poonam Muttreja is the Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India (PFI). She has more than 35 years of experience in the socio-development sector. Before joining PFI, Poonam worked with the McArthur Foundation as India Country Director where she was responsible for the Foundation’s grants in India which had a focus on population and development issues. An innovator in the field of development, in the earlier stage of her career she has co-founded organizations in the areas of social justice (SRUTI), craft (DASTKAR) and programs on leadership (Founder Director of the Ashoka Foundation, India), and in the field of women’s health. She has been a member of the Family Planning 2020 Reference Group and has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Pramath Sinha

Founding Dean, ISB; Founder & Trustee, Ashoka University

Pramath Raj Sinha is the Founder and Managing Director of 9.9 Media, a niche media company. Before founding 9.9 Media, he was the MD & CEO of the ABP Group, one of India’s leading and most diversified media conglomerates. He spent 13 years with McKinsey and Company as a Partner, where he led McKinsey India’s telecom, IT, and media practices as well as its organisation practice, where he focused on issues of transformation and leadership. Pramath is the Founding Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB). He is also the Founder & Trustee of the acclaimed liberal arts university, Ashoka University, which launched the popular Young India Fellowship in 2011. Pramath has now launched the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women, a unique 18-month “reimagined MBA” program that attracts high-potential women from across India. Pramath received M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.Tech. from IIT-Kanpur.

Pramod Bhasin

Co-Founder, Asha Impact & Chairman, Clix Capital

Pramod Bhasin’s career spans a professional and entrepreneurial journey in financial services and business process management across the globe. He built Genpact, a global leader in Business Process Management, and was its President & CEO till 2011. Prior to Genpact, his career with GE spanned 25 years across the US, UK and Asia. He was earlier the CEO of GE Capital in India & Asia. In September 2016, Pramod along with partners acquired the businesses of GE Capital – India, now known as Clix Capital. He is the Chairman of Clix Capital, which is a broad-based NBFC, focused on providing digital platforms and financial services to commercial companies and consumers across India. Pramod is the co-founder of Asha Impact, Virtual Fund focused on Social Impact Investments and Advocacy. He has also co-founded the Skills Academy that focuses on providing vocational skills training to lower-income youth in villages across the country. Pramod serves on the Boards of DLF Ltd, SRF Ltd and NDTV. He is also on the governing Board of ICRIER, Help Age and The Shri Ram School. He has been the Chairman of Nasscom and noted “ IT Man of the Year” by Dataquest.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Chancellor and Professor of History at Ashoka University

Rudrangshu Mukherjee is the Chancellor and Professor of History at Ashoka University. He is a renowned historian and author, and was most recently the Editor of the Editorial Pages, at The Telegraph, Kolkata. Prof. Mukherjee has taught history at the University of Calcutta and held visiting appointments at Princeton University, the University of Manchester and, the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prof. Mukherjee studied at Calcutta Boys’ School, Presidency College, Kolkata, JNU, New Delhi, and St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was awarded a D.Phil in Modern History by the University of Oxford in 1981. He is internationally acclaimed as a historian of the revolt of 1857 in India. His first book Awadh in Revolt, 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance has become a standard reference on the subject. He has also authored and edited several books on other themes, including The Penguin Gandhi Reader, Trade and Politics and, the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour of Ashin Das Gupta, Remembered Childhood: Essays in Honour of Andre Beteille, New Delhi: The Making of a Capital and Great Speeches of Modern India. His latest book is Nehru & Bose: Parallel Lives.

Ravi Sreedharan

Founder, ISDM

Ravi has worked for 24 years in the Corporate Sector most of which was at HSBC. At HSBC, Ravi has worked as the Regional Marketing Head for the Middle East and Africa, Head of Consumer Products for Asia Pacific, Consumer Banking Head of Indonesia, CEO and President Director of Bank Ekonomi (a local bank in Indonesia that was acquired by HSBC). He quit his corporate career and switched to the social sector 5 years ago with Azim Premji Foundation where he was the Head of Education Leadership & Management.

Sanjay Purohit

Strategic Advisor, EkStep Foundation & e-Governments Foundation

Sanjay has over 26 years of diverse and global experience in manufacturing, telecom, information technology and management consulting. Now he is applying his learning and experience to develop Societal Platforms (open digital co-creation networks) in sustainable developmental sectors such as lifelong learning, financial inclusion, personalised healthcare, sustainable habitats and emerging livelihoods. Some of his key roles include scale advisor to EkStep Foundation and eGovernments Foundation, innovation advisor to Unleash, and strategic advisor to Fundamentum Partnerships. Prior to taking up these responsibilities, Sanjay served as Executive Vice President, Infosys Limited, Chairman and Managing Partner, Infosys Consulting and CEO and Co-Founder, EdgeVerve Systems Limited. Sanjay is an alumnus of National Institute of Technology, Srinagar where he completed his BE in Mechanical Engineering.

Safeena Husain

Founder & Executive Director, Educate Girls

Safeena Husain is the Founder and Executive Director of Educate Girls – a non-profit organisation that aims at tackling issues at the root cause of gender inequality in India’s education system. After graduating from the London School of Economics, Safeena spent over a decade working with grassroots projects in Latin America, Africa & Asia. Educate Girls presently works in 21,000 government-run primary schools spread across 15 districts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. There are over 4.9 million total beneficiaries of its programmatic interventions. Under Safeena’s leadership, Educate Girls has initiated the world’s first Development Impact Bond (DIB) in education. She has been conferred with 2017 NITI Aayog’s Women Transforming India Award and has in the past received the British Asian Trust’s Special Recognition Award from HRH Prince Charles for outstanding contribution in education.

Suparna Diwakar

Founder & Dean, Academics & Research, ISDM

Suparna has worked extensively in the development sector for over 25 years. She started her career with MYRADA and moved on to lead and manage multiple projects – from being Founding Trustee of Adamya Chetana; Vice-President and Project lead at Centre for Leadership and Management in Public Services; Consultant for multiple projects with Department of Public Instruction, District Institute for Education and Training in Karnataka State; Consultant for rural development project for the Indian Institute of Science etc. Besides curriculum development and teaching, she also has extensive experience of design, development and implementation of projects and pieces of training with corporates and organizations like Tata Institute for Social Sciences, The Teacher Foundation, Azim Premji Foundation, UNICEF etc. In her vast experience in the development sector, she has also published and presented several papers on academic leadership, management and governance. Suparna’s strength lies in her ability to straddle the theory-practice space, to make a meaningful contribution to change on the ground.

Sudarshan Rodriguez

Programmer Coordinator, Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Sudarshan Rodriguez is a professional of multi-disciplinary backgrounds in disaster management, environmental sciences, environmental economics, policy and environmental law. He started his career in 1998 with UNDP-India, New Delhi as a Programme Development Specialist on their Environment & GEF Programme. He has since then worked in several locations with a range of civil society groups on interdisciplinary aspects of natural resource management.He has also worked in the area disaster response and management and travelled widely in Tamil Nadu and Kerala and the Andamans at various stages of the tsunami disaster relief and rehabilitation. Since 2010, he has been a Senior Programme Coordinator at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in the director’s office handling innovative and trans-disciplinary projects-TISS-LAHDC Ladakh Project, the Socio and Ecological Stewardship Programme TISS Andaman Nicobar Initiative, National Water Mission -TISS Project , Mahatma Gandhi Academy for Human Development, Nagaland and the TISS Fellowship Programme, where as a practitioner coach he fosters and mentors young development professionals on leadership, project design and management for whole systems transformation and cultural shifts.

Srinivasan Iyer

Programme Officer, Ford Foundation

He is currently working as Program Officer at Ford Foundation New Delhi. Srinivasan holds a master’s of philosophy degree in economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. His grant making focuses on the region’s employment challenge through research and dialogue on job-rich growth strategies, supporting the implementation of key social protection policies, demonstrating models in key industrial sectors and strengthening rainfed-farming. His grantmaking also supports increased employment of women in non-traditional occupations and on making cities more conducive to the livelihoods of the poor. Before joining the Foundation in 2014, he served as Assistant Country Director with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in India, leading its work on energy and environment. In the early 1990s, he co-founded Samaj Pragati Sahayog, an NGO that works with poor and marginalized communities in central India on livelihood security and political empowerment.

Surabhi Bikhchandani

Partner (Executive Search), Quadrangle

Surabhi is a multifaceted professional with an experience of over 20 years, across Advertising, FMCG and Recruitment Consulting industries. She is leading the Executive Search practice at Quadrangle, focusing on CXO positions with organisations across consumer internet and service industries; with more recent experience in the non-profit sector as well. Surabhi began her career in media planning with Ulka Advertising Pvt. Ltd. in 1986 and then moved on to Nestle India Ltd. where she handled diverse responsibilities in marketing, brand management, sales, distribution, merchandising, advertising & market research. She has, in the past, trained management students in Communication Skills and has conducted courses on Written Analysis & Communication, Oral Communication Skills, Group Discussions & Interviews as a visiting Faculty at IMT, Ghaziabad and IMS, Mumbai. She has also co-authored a book for MBA and job aspirants called ‘Tackling Group Discussions’. Surabhi is an alumnus of IIM, Ahmedabad (1987-89) and an Economics graduate from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi (1986). She is also an Erickson certified Life and Career Coach (Nov 2018). Her mission is to help her clients experience a positive transformational journey.

Urvashi Butalia

Founder, Zubaan Books, and Padma Shri

Urvashi Butalia is an independent publisher and writer. Co-founder of India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, she now heads Zubaan, an imprint of Kali. She has had a long involvement in the women’s movement in India, and writes for newspapers, journals and books at home and abroad on a range of issues to do with women and gender. Among her best-known publications is the award-winning oral history of Partition: The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (winner of the Oral History Book Association award 2001 and the Nikkei Asia Award for Culture 2003). She is also visiting faculty at Ashoka University Sonepat. Butalia has received many awards for her work, among them the Padma Shri, which she was awarded in 2011.

Vinita Singh

Independent Consultant on Ethical Trade & Managing Trustee, We, The People

Vinita Singh has more than 22 years of experience in the development sector. She has worked extensively in the areas of livelihoods, citizens rights and civics education. Across all these areas, she has mainly focused on building people’s capacities to empower themselves with skills, knowledge and attitudes to take charge of their own lives. She has been involved in the set-up of a number of organisations including International Resources for Fairer Trade, Satark Nagrik Sangathan and National Homeworkers Group. Currently, apart from undertaking few select consultancies, she is fully engaged with enlarging citizenship education in India as Managing Trustee with We, The People. Her education includes a Bachelors in Economics, and two Masters – one in Management from SP Jain Institute, Mumbai and the other in Social Policy from the London School of Economics. Her core competency is in facilitation and mentoring. She is also an effective public speaker on causes she is passionate about – democracy, active citizenship and the Constitution of India.

Venkatesam Eshwara

VP Development, Ashoka University

Venkat is currently Vice President, Development at Ashoka University. His responsibilities include fundraising, providing leadership, developing and implementing strategy for the institution.

Venkat held central roles in top management tier in organisations of diverse profiles. His core strengths lie in building, growing and managing geographically diverse operations. With an entrepreneurial and start-up experience of 20 years, Venkat has built three companies from inception to significant growth and profitability.

Venkat is an alumnus of St. Xaviers College, Mumbai and has worked as Chief Operating Officer, Prop Equity| P.E. Analytics Pvt. Ltd. before joining Ashoka University.

Arun Maira

Chairman of the board of trustees of HelpAge International and Chairman of the Foundation

Arun Maira is Chairman of the board of trustees of HelpAge International and Chairman of the Foundation for MSME Clusters. A thought leader on social and economic development and transformational change and leadership, he has authored books such as Listening for Well-Being: Conversations with People Not Like Us; Redesigning the Airplane While Flying: Reforming Institutions; Transforming Capitalism: Improving the World for Everyone; and Discordant Democrats: Five Steps to Consensus. Arun was a member of the Planning Commission of India from 2009 to 2014, and a member of the National Innovation Council. He was Chairman of The Boston Consulting Group in India from 2000-2008. Earlier, he worked with the Tata group for 25 years in senior management and board positions. He has been Chairman of the Quality Council of India, Save the Children India and the Axis Bank Foundation. He has served on the boards of the UN Global Compact and several social organisations and educational institutions in India and abroad. He has also served on the National Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry.

Ingrid Srinath

Director, Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy, Ashoka University

Ingrid Srinath is the Director of the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy at Ashoka University. She has been a passionate advocate for human rights, social justice and civil society for the past 19 years. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, Ingrid transitioned from her 12-year career in advertising to the non-profit sector in 1998 with CRY (Child Rights and You), where she was CEO from 2004-08. She served as Secretary General from 2008-12 at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, an influential global network of non-profit organisations. She was Executive Director of CHILDLINE India Foundation, India’s emergency helpline for children in distress and, most recently, CEO of Hivos India, the Indian arm of the Dutch global NGO. She has served on the advisory boards of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Development Cooperation Forum (UN DCF), the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Young Lives project at Oxford University, Alliance magazine, Hasirudala, Danamojo and the Prajnya Trust and on the boards of WINGS, the INGO Accountability Charter, The Rules, Public Interest Registry and Majlis Law.

Isher Ahluwalia

Chairperson, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)

Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia, an eminent Indian economist, is Chairperson of Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), a leading think-tank based in New Delhi engaged in policy oriented research. At ICRIER, she led the Research and Capacity Building Program on the Challenges of Urbanisation in India from March 2013 to March 2015. She was Chairperson of the High Powered Expert Committee on Urban Infrastructure and Services, the Government of India, from 2008 to 2011. Dr Ahluwalia has written a number of books, the latest being “Transforming Our Cities: Postcards of Change”. She is also the co-editor together with Prof. IMD Little of “India’s Economic Reforms and Development: Essays for Manmohan Singh”, which is an updated version of the original volume published in 1998. She is on the Board of Trustees of a number of national and international research institutions. Dr. Ahluwalia received her B.A. (Hons) from Presidency College, Calcutta University, M.A. from the Delhi School of Economics, and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), all in economics. She was awarded Padma Bhushan by the President of India in the year 2009 for her services in the field of education and literature.

K. Srinath Reddy

President, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI)

Prof. K. Srinath Reddy is President, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He served as the First Bernard Lown Visiting Professor of Cardiovascular Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is presently an Adjunct Professor at Harvard and Emory & Honorary Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney. He has served on many WHO expert panels & has been the President of the World Heart Federation. He chaired the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage, for the Planning Commission of India. Prof. Reddy is a member of the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, established to assist the United Nations in developing the post-2015 goals and chairs the Thematic Group on Health in the SDSN. Prof. Reddy is a member of the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition. He has published more than 480 scientific papers. His several honours include WHO Director General’s Award and Luther Terry Medal of American Cancer Society for Outstanding contributions to global tobacco control and the Queen Elizabeth Medal for health promotion. He was conferred Padma Bhushan by the President of India in 2005.

Kartik Desai

Executive Director, Asha Impact

Kartik leads Asha Impact, an impact investing and policy advocacy organisation operating a multi-family office for Indian business leaders and philanthropists to jointly invest in social enterprises and engage with the government. He has led investments into and serves on the boards of start-ups across housing, financial services, waste, education and technology. Kartik is a board member of the Impact Investors Council, member of the PM’s ‘Champions of Change’ group of young CEOs and member of Niti Aayog’s working group on ‘Housing for All’ and ‘Swachh Bharat’. Prior to founding Asha in 2014, Kartik has a decade of experience in venture capital, entrepreneurship, investment banking and international development in India and the US. He helped set up two $60 million impact investment funds, Lok Capital II and Aavishkaar Frontier Fund, in between founding QNA, India’s first open-data polling platform for citizen engagement on national debates. Prior to joining the impact investment industry in 2007, Kartik worked for three years with DSP Merrill Lynch and also consulted for the United Nations Development Program and Rockefeller Foundation while studying in New York. Kartik has a Bachelors degree in Finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a Masters degree in International Affairs from Columbia University (SIPA).

Luis Miranda

Chairman, Centre for Civil Society and CORO

Luis is Chairman of CORO and Centre for Civil Society. He is also actively involved with other non-profits including SNEHA, CARE India, Educate Girls, and Take Charge. He spends his time these days connecting the dots for amazing social entrepreneurs, using his network to help the organisations he is connected with. Luis is also Senior Advisor to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure and Advisor to the Nadathur Group. Prior to this, he was involved with setting up two highly successful companies – HDFC Bank and IDFC Private Equity. He is on Chicago Booth’s Global Advisory Board and Social Enterprise Initiative’s Advisory Board and writes a blog for Forbes India. Luis received an MBA from the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Mahesh Rangarajan

Professor of History, Ashoka University

Mahesh Rangarajan has a BA in History from the University of Delhi. He has an MA and PhD from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has been Professor in Modern Indian History at the University of Delhi and also taught at the universities of Cornell and Jadavpur and at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru. He has also served as Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. His first book, Fencing the Forest was published in 1996. His most recent work is Nature and Nation (2015). He also authored India’s Wildlife History (2001) and co-authored, Towards Coexistence: People, Parks and Wildlife (2000). Two recent co-edited works are Nature Without Borders (2014) and Shifting Ground ( 2014).

Mihir Mathur

Founder DESTA Research LLP

Mihir is an interdisciplinary researcher working on sustainability and climate change issues to develop systemic solutions. His expertise is in the areas of Systems Thinking and System Dynamics Modeling, Group Model Building, Climate Change Adaptation and Natural Resource Management. Mihir began his career in banking and stock markets, and moved into the world of sustainability research in 2009. He worked in the Climate Change Adaptation Programme of Watershed Organisation Trust, Pune, before moving to TERI, New Delhi. At TERI he worked extensively on policy research using systems thinking and system dynamics modeling. Mihir currently works as a consultant with TERI, ATREE and FES and is visiting faculty at Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS), Hyderabad, Indian School of Development Management (ISDM), Noida and School for International Training (SIT), Jaipur. He has previously been a visiting faculty at Sadhana Center for Management and Leadership Development (SCMLD), Pune. Mihir did his BCom from MS University, Vadodara and Post Graduation in Finance from SCMLD. He has written book chapters, journal papers and presented his work in several conferences worldwide.

Munish Sehrawat

Vice President (Operations), Ashoka

As Vice President (Operations) at Ashoka, Munish leads the Finance, Human Resource, Information Technology, Administration, and Project Management functions. Munish brings with him over 18 years of broad-based leadership experience across three leading organizations – HSBC, Citibank and ANZ. He has served as COO (Human Resource) Asia Pacific and COO, Oman at HSBC leading various initiatives related to business transformation, operational and service excellence. As a global citizen, Munish has lived and worked in India, Middle East and Hong Kong. He has walked 100 Kms in the Sahara Desert as part of a charity challenge, raising funds for Water Aid. Munish is an MBA from IRMA and holds an honours degree in Journalism from University of Delhi.

Priyank Narayan

Founder, IndiaPreneurship

Priyank is a seasoned entrepreneur and an educationist who brings with him rich experience in organization building. He is the Founder of IndiaPreneurship, an organisation focused on showcasing entrepreneurial opportunities in India to the world. He also mentors a number of startups based in India and abroad. Priyank is a visiting faculty at IIT Delhi, Department of Management Studies. An alumnus of AIM, Manila and IIM Ahmedabad, Priyank is an avid golfer and a licensed scuba diver. He is also trained in Indian classical music.

Puja Marwaha

CEO, Child Rights and You (CRY)

After a liberal arts and Human Resources development education, Puja Marwaha made the transition from the corporate to the social sector early in her career. Having worked earlier with various corporate organisations, she joined CRY in 1994 to set up the organization’s Human Resources function. In 2002 she moved into more general management roles in CRY. Today, Puja is the Chief Executive Officer at CRY, India’s leading child rights organization.Puja believes that children should be at the heart of all human development work. Over the course of her work, Puja has been involved in the nurturing of a large number of organisations and people, enabling them to connect at the level of individual belief, to the vision of all rights, for all children. For the past 22 years, Puja has helped build an organizational framework for CRY that best captures the essence of justice and equity. Puja was recently announced as the 5th winner of the Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize, for being a pioneer in the area of public philanthropy in India.

Purushottam Agarwal

Writer, Academic and Former Member, UPSC

Purushottam Agarwal is an academic, writer, literary critique, theologian, secularist, columnist, and broadcaster. He was a member of the Union Public Service Commission for over 6 years and the Chairman of the Centre of Indian Languages, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, JNU. He has served as Chief Advisor of the 'Peaceful co-existence in South Asia; project of the Aman Trust, Delhi. As a consultant to Oxfam, India he organized interfaces of scholars, creative artists and social activists as part of the Violence Amelioration and Mitigation Project (VMAP). He has taught at various institutes like JNU, Cambridge University, El Colegio de Mexico, and Ashoka University. He was also the Chief Advisor, Hindi Textbooks for NCERT. He has an MA in Political Science from Jiwaji University, Gwalior and in Hindi Literature from JNU. He was awarded a PhD degree by Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1985 on the topic of The Social Meaning of Kabir’s Bhakti and is known for the conceptualization of “Deshaj Aadhunikta” or Indigenous Modernity. He has written many novels and short stories, some of them being Hindi Sarai, Nirgun Santon ke Swapna, Akhath Kahani Prem Ki: Kabir ki Kavita aur Unka Samay, Kabir: Sakhi aur Sabad, Nakohas and Paan Patte ki Goth. He is also a commentator on political, social and cultural matters on Television and Radio including BBC, NDTV, IBN, Doordarshan, Lok Sabha TV, Rajya Sabha TV among others. He was awarded with Devi Shankar Awasthy Samman for Teesra Rukh, in 1996, and Mukutdhar Pandey Samman for Sanskriti: Varchaswa aur Pratirodh, in 1997.

Rangashri Kishore

Director of Library Services, Ashoka University

Dr Rangashri Kishore is the Director of Library Services in Ashoka University. She is a Librarian by profession but a mental health worker by avocation. She has co-founded three half-way homes in India. She has co-founded the Richmond Fellowship Society of India (RFS) (India) Delhi Branch (Details of the organisation can be found at http://www.rfsindia.org) which has been successfully running for the last many years.  The RFS (India) National Board is located in Bangalore. In Ashoka University she has established the University’s Library from scratch including digital systems and services for easy and quick retrieval of books and other information sources.. She has also implemented many community development initiatives with students of Ashoka for mental health awareness as well as conducting open Library programs for the village children surrounding villages of the University

Ravi Agarwal

Founder Director, Toxic Links

Ravi Agarwal is Founder Director of Toxics Link, an environmental NGO based in New Delhi and working on areas of chemical safety, toxics and waste, for over two decades. Ravi is part of several high-level Governmental standards and regulatory committees, and actively participates in UNEP, EU, WHO forums. He has been an active advocate for Delhi’s greens and rivers and helped lead the campaign to save the Delhi Ridge Forest in 1994. He helped found the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) a 600 member international civil society network working on chemical safety. Ravi, is also an established artist and curator working with photographs-video- installation and public art and has been invited to several important international exhibitions. He co-curated the Yamuna-Elbe project, an Indo German twin city public art and ecology project (2011), Embrace our Rivers an Indo- European project in Chennai (2018), and is photography curator for the upcoming Serendipity Arts Festival 2018. Ravi writes regularly on environmental issues in the media and journals besides having co- authored books such as Chemicals, Environment, Health: A Global Management Perspective. He received the IFCS -WHO Special Recognition Award (2008), and the Ashoka fellowship (1998). He is a communications engineer and MBA by training.

Samarth Mahajan

Filmmaker and Creative Director at Kahaani Wale

Samarth Mahajan is a Filmmaker and Creative Director at Kahaani Wale, an artist collective based in New Delhi. Self-taught in the art of filmmaking, he loves to tell stories that highlight invisible narratives. His documentary projects have received critical and mass attention in media. “The Unreserved”, his debut feature documentary, premiered at Film South-Asia 2017 and has been screened in more than 50 national and international forums. He recently won the 65th National Award for Best On-Location Sound Recordist for “The Unreserved”. His latest project “We, The People”, about India’s protest street Jantar Mantar Road, was awarded at Docedge Kolkata – Asian Forum for Documentary. Samarth completed his education from IIT Kharagpur and Young India Fellowship.

Sanjay Gupta

Global CEO, English Helper

Sanjay Gupta commenced his professional journey in Finance in the early 1980s working across a range of reputed companies in India including the Tata Group, Eicher – Mitsubishi, Pepsi and Motorola. Sanjay joined American Express in 1996 and held a number of business leadership roles based in New Delhi, New York and Singapore. In 2010, decided to pursue a new career to build a social enterprise for giving back in a sustainable way. Sanjay assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer at English Helper Inc. The company is committed to providing innovative and affordable technology enabled English learning to people across all age groups and income segments. Most recently, the company has initiated ‘RightToRead’ with a view to enable English literacy in public schools across the world and has launched ‘EnglishBolo’ in India designed to help youth from low income backgrounds to improve English speaking skill. In addition, Sanjay is engaged with the cause of children and youth as an active Board Member at Udayan Care, and School of Inspired Leadership. He is guest faculty at Duke University’s Executive Education Program and delivers programs on doing business across cultures, customer and brand, leadership during change. Sanjay also coaches senior executives/ business leaders with special focus on developing personal excellence. Sanjay is on the Boards of BOI AXA Asset Management Company and Skills Training Assessment Management Partners. He is Advisor, Acumen India.

Satyam Vyas

Founder, Arthan

Satyam is the founder of Arthan, a social enterprise that provides strategic human capital consulting support to mission-driven organisations using technology, data science, and applied psychology. Arthan offers both technology products and recruitment services that help build great teams and simultaneously prepares underprivileged government school children for the future of work. Satyam has spent a decade in education, skill development and social entrepreneurship. Satyam believes that education can provide the tools necessary to change the world. He dreams to have a defined career path for all children and youth in the country. In the last one decade, Satyam has designed, implemented, scaled and impacted lives of more than two million children studying in government schools in India. In the past, he has worked with leading non-profits in India-Pratham and Going to School. Satyam is a THNK fellow, holds an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Delhi University and executive degrees in social entrepreneurship and leading successful social programs from Stanford Business Schools and Harvard Kennedy School.

Seema Bansal

Director, Social Impact and Development Practice, BCG India

Seema has 18 years of experience in strategy advisory. She began her career in the commercial consulting space focusing on telecom and financial services. However, over the last 8-10 years, she has set up BCG India’s Social Impact and Development Practice. She now leads a large body of work around large scale transformations of social systems with central and several state governments. Her work includes programs in education, food distribution, health and nutrition and rural energy access. She is currently working with leaderships of 4 state governments as well as Niti Aayog.

Shankar Maruwada

CEO and Co-founder, EkStep

Shankar Maruwada is the CEO and Co-founder of EkStep. Shankar is passionate about addressing social problems at scale through technology based tools. He is an entrepreneur and marketing professional with a wide range of experience working on large scale projects such as the AADHAAR, India’s national identification program, where he was the Head of Demand Generation and Marketing. Shankar pioneered data analytics in India through, Marketics, a company he co-founded. He is an investor in startups and a mentor to entrepreneurs. He is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur.

Shaveta Sharma – Kukreja

Managing Director at Central Square Foundation (CSF)

Shaveta, Managing Director at Central Square Foundation (CSF), leads CSF’s efforts to improve capacity building and development of educators- teachers, principals and administrators. She also oversees CSF’s organisational development.She brings to the team more than a decade of professional experience in management and education. Her corporate background includes work at The Boston Consulting Group, Global Vantedge (a business process outsourcing start-up) and Citibank. She has also been a visiting faculty member in the Human Resources and Organisational Behavior disciplines at various business schools in Delhi NCR. Her primary areas of interest are teaching and research of organisational behaviour and leadership styles. 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. She is also certified in the psychometric tools MBTI, FIRO-B and FIRO-Business.

Shridhar Venkat

CEO, Akshay Patra Foundation

Shridhar has over 23 years of work experience and has been associated with leading multinationals like Philips, ABB, Webex Communications (now CISCO), etc. Prior to joining Akshaya Patra, he was Vice President – Sales, Webex Communications. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Management. Shridhar is an Eisenhower Fellow 2014 and is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program from Wharton Business School 2014. In Akshaya Patra, Shridhar oversees all the executive functions such as Resource Mobilization, Communication, Finance, HRD, IT and Operations Excellence Initiative. He brings to the table strong people management and organization skills.

Srikanth Viswanathan

Chief Executive Officer of Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy

Srikanth is Chief Executive Officer of Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy. Janaagraha is a Bengaluru based non-profit working with the mission of transforming quality of life in India’s cities and towns. Janaagraha works with citizens to catalyse active citizenship in city neighbourhoods and with governments to institute reforms to city governance. Srikanth’s focus area in the urban sector has been “city-systems” reforms spanning Janaagraha’s flagship report the Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) and municipal finance reforms. Srikanth has been an Associate member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India for fifteen years and prior to joining Janaagraha worked in banking and audit.

Sudheesh Venkatesh

Chief People Officer - Azim Premji Foundation

Sudheesh Venkatesh is the Chief People Officer at the Azim Premji Foundation and a member of the Board of Management of Azim Premji University. After a degree in Engineering and a post-graduate degree in Management from Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, Sudheesh worked for close to a decade each with Asian Paints and Tesco, two large, global organisations. He has been with the Azim Premji Foundation since 2010 and his role is to attract, develop and retain good people who can help the Foundation realise its vision. He was President of the National HRD Network, Bangalore (2013-15), served on the National Board of the HRD Network (2013-17) and has co-edited the most recent issue of the HRD Journal on ‘Education, Employability and Employment landscape in India’. He is often invited to speak and write on matters relating to people & organisations.

Thomas Chandy

Founder CEO - Save the Children

Thomas Chandy is the founder CEO of Save the Children, India. Under his leadership Save the Children India has rapidly grown the scale and scope of its programme, advocacy and fundraising operations to become a stronger member of Save the Children International, with a presence in 20 states across the country. Thomas has worked towards carving a niche for Save the Children in the Indian Child Rights space by building relationships & networks with the civil society and Government. He sits on the Global CEO’s Steering Group of Save the Children International. He has represented the civil society at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) panel on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Thomas has served as a member of the National Advisory Group of Rashtriya Bal Swasthaya Karyakram, Government of India’s flagship programme aiming at improving health of children. He is a member of the Advisory Board for Young Lives in India, which is an international longitudinal study of childhood poverty designed by University of Oxford. Prior to taking a plunge in 2006 in the development sector, Thomas had worked on various senior roles with the Coca- Cola Company.

Vijay Mahajan

Founder, Pradan and BASIX

Vijay Mahajan began working in rural livelihood promotion in 1981 with a Gandhian NGO in Bihar. In 1983, he founded PRADAN, an NGO which motivated young professionals to work at the grassroots to promote livelihoods of the poor. In 1991, he carried out two field-research studies, one on India’s rural non-farm sector and the other on financial services for the rural poor and women in India, both published internationally. Based on these, Vijay founded Basix which has since 1996, supported three million poor households through microfinance and livelihood promotion services. Vijay is a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT, Delhi and IIM, Ahmedabad and Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, USA. He was named among “60 outstanding social entrepreneurs of the world” at the World Economic Forum, Davos in 2003 and has been to Davos several times after that. He served on policy forums including the Rajasthan Mission on Livelihoods, 2005-07, the Rangarajan Committee on Financial Inclusion 2007-08, the Raghuram Rajan Committee on Financial Sector Reforms 2008-09, and as Chair of the World Bank hosted Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), 2012-13. Vijay retired from Basix in Oct 2016 and began the new phase by reflecting and writing on “Building an Economy of Nurturance”.

Kenwyn K. Smith

Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Dr Kenwyn Smith is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and the Director of Penn’s Master’s Programme in Nonprofit/NGO Leadership. Dr Smith teaches leadership, group and intergroup dynamics, organizational politics, change management in three of Penn’s schools: the School of Social Policy & Practice, the Wharton School and the Fels Institute of Government (Arts and Sciences). Dr Smith is an international scholar in the fields of group and intergroup dynamics, organizational change and leadership. His research experience ranges from prisons to schools, from businesses to health care institutions, from state enterprises to social entrepreneurial activities, from oppressed black townships in South Africa to agencies creating sustainable livelihoods in rural India, from pharmaceuticals in Belgium to financial services in urban America, from the World Bank to a community in Philadelphia wrestling with the anguish of people living with HIV/AIDS.

Rajen Makhijani

Leadership and Strategy Consultant

Rajen Makhijani brings an inter-disciplinary approach to pressing issues for leaders in the business, politics and development. He is a facilitator, coach, award nominated screenwriter, and has held leadership positions in top tier global strategy consulting firms, and line organisations. He was nominated as one of the 100 Influencers in India’s Impact Sector in 2018 by Action For India. He is a two-time TEDx speaker – ‘Why Stories’ at National University of Singapore and ‘Uneducated not Stupid – How the Poor See Life’ at Nanyang Technological University Singapore (~125,000 views). He is a Sir Dorab Tata Merit Scholar, Citibank Leadership Awardee, and winner of Wings of Excellence from University of St.Gallen, Switzerland, a volunteer in urban slums. He has 18 years post-IIM experience with top tier firms like McKinsey, Dalberg, ECS and Heidrick and his last role was as the Country Director of University of Chicago’s Tata Centre for Development, International Innovation Corps, India. He has been focussing completely on the Impact Sector in the last 5 years across Education, Environment, WASH, Humanitarian, and Health, with a particular focus on two horizontals – Financing for Development, and Leadership Capacity Building.

Osama Manzar

Founder-Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation

Osama Manzar is a global leader on the mission of eradicating information poverty from India and global south using digital tools through Digital Empowerment Foundation, an organisation he founded in 2002. A British Chevening Scholar and an International Visitors Leadership Program Fellow of the US State Department, Osama is a social entrepreneur, author, columnist, impact speaker, angel investor, mentor, and sits on several government and policy committees in India and on international organisations working in the areas of Internet, access, and digital inclusion. Osama has instituted 10 awards for recognising digital innovations for development in South Asia. He is a Member of Advisory Board for Alliance for Affordable Internet; Member of Licensing Committee for Community Radio in India at the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting; Member of Working Group –  IT for Masses at Ministry of IT in India. He is Member of the Board at Association of Progressive Communication; World Summit Award; Ibtada; and Society for Labour & Development.

Mohammad Irfan Dar

Co-founder & CEO Red Stone Films

Mohammad Irfan Dar is a media entrepreneur, visual storyteller & filmmaker, heading Red Stone Films since 2012. RSF was originally created as a creative media agency & film production company to help organizations create their brand identities. The organization, further evolved as a strategic partner for bi-lateral organizations, international cooperation agencies, international & national development sector organizations to use communication mediums for addressing developmental issues & creating strong visual messages. Irfan is a passionate proponent of children’s issues. In his independent capacity, since the last ten years, he has been working as a facilitating educator with children and young adults in difficult circumstances of conflict, lack of opportunities, abuse and livelihood issues. His creative methodology of using films & comprehensive art spaces has given these children access to opportunity for expression, freedom of thought and non-formal rehabilitative restoration. He studied filmmaking at AJK MCRC Jamia Millia Islamia & liberal arts & leadership from Ashoka University’s Young India Fellowship and was awarded the Commonwealth Professional Fellowship in 2014 for Films/cinema, conflict transformation & peacebuilding in the UK.

Poulomi Pal

Technical Specialist, ICRW

Poulomi Pal is a technical specialist in New Delhi, India. In this role, she provides technical expertise and managerial support to research projects in the thematic portfolio of Violence Rights and Inclusion, with a specific focus on intimate partner violence. Poulomi possesses close to eight years’ experience in the development sector, and has worked on gender rights, gender-based violence and law enforcement issues with research institutions, non-governmental organizations, central and state governments in India as well as the South Asian region: disbursing funds, mentoring and implementing projects, monitoring and evaluating legislatures/projects, conceptualizing and developing proposals/policy briefs, etc. Prior to joining ICRW, she was affiliated with Amherst College SWAGS (Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies) Department, as a Fulbright-Nehru Post-Doctoral Research Fellow. Her work inquired into existing models of one-stop crisis centers for survivors of gender-based violence in the U.S and India.

SHAHEEN MISTRI

CEO, TEACH FOR INDIA

Shaheen grew up in 5 countries around the world, and returned to India when she was 18 to start The Akanksha Foundation. For 17 years, she worked with teachers and students, building Akanksha to provide 4000 children from low- income communities the kind of education that would maximize their greatest potential. Today, Akanksha serves 6500 children through their School Project and after-school centres in Mumbai and Pune. In 2008, Shaheen founded Teach For India, with an audacious vision of providing an excellent education to all children across India through building a pipeline of leaders committed to ending educational inequity in India. Today, Teach For India directly impacts approximately 38,000 children across seven regions in India. Shaheen serves on the boards of Akanksha Foundation, Design for Change, and Simple Education Foundation. Shaheen has been an Ashoka Fellow and is the author of the book, Re-drawing India. She has a Bachelor’s Degree from St. Xavier, College, Mumbai and a Master’s Degree from the University of Manchester.

Ireena Vittal

Advisory Board Member, DMICDC (the Delhi Mumbai industrial corridor) and Janaagraha

Ireena Vittal, a former partner with McKinsey & Co, is a recognized thought partner to companies looking to scale profitable businesses in emerging markets. She serves on the boards of select companies such as Wipro, Godrej, Titan, Taj and Compass, and on the boards of several non-profits such as PATH, Soros Economic Fund, Educate Girls, Hindustan Unilever Foundation, VIdhi Legal Services, Water Aid, among others. Ireena also serves governments and public institutions to design and implement solutions core to Indias’ development. Ireena co-led the Economic Development Interest Group in McKinsey and has served the government, public institutions and the private sector in urban and agri-related issues. She is co-author of the McKinsey Global Institute report on Indian urbanization (India’s Urban Awakening: Building Inclusive Cities, Sustaining Economic Growth), the first integrated report on Indian agriculture (FAIDA) and on building rural infrastructure & services (Bharat Nirman), working closely with the relevant ministry in New Delhi. Currently, she is on the advisory board of DMICDC (the Delhi Mumbai industrial corridor), supports the World Bank on their urban and NRLM efforts and is on the advisory board of Janaagraha. Prior to joining McKinsey, Ireena worked with Nestle and with MaxTouch (now Vodafone). Ireena graduated in electronics and has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Natasha Zarine

Co-Founder, The Civic Response Team (CRT), CARPE and Ecosattva Environmental Solutions Pvt LTD

Natasha is the Co-Founder of three organizations, The Civic Response Team (CRT) – a think-tank and consultancy firm focused on civic challenges, The Center for Applied Research and People & Engagement (CARPE) – a Sec 8 Not for profit company with a vision to achieve sustainable and inclusive cities, town and villages, and Ecosattva Environmental Solutions Pvt LTD – a company that provides eco-sensible solutions to environmental challenges through waste water treatment and green cover management.  Her organizations have scaled tremendously over the past 3 years, with operations spread across 7 cities across India, Argentina and Indonesia. Ecosattva has been awarded as one of India & top start-ups by the Maharahatra State Start-up Society. Natasha is also a Young India Fellow, 2013.

Archana Chandra

Board Member and CEO, Jai Vakeel Foundation and Research Centre

Archana Chandra presently serves as Board Member & CEO of Jai Vakeel Foundation & Research Centre, one of the largest NGOs serving those impacted by mental challenges. She is a Trustee of SRCC, which is building the largest hospital dedicated to children in the country. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of Annamrita (part of the ISKCON Food Relief Foundation), one of the largest NGOs in the country serving mid-day meals to less privileged children. She also serves on the Advisory Board of Antarang Foundation Prior to her current positions, Archana has worked in various marketing, PR, and HR roles at The Akanksha Foundation, Informix (a division of IBM), and Bennett & Coleman.  She has a B.Com from Mumbai University and a Diploma in Business Management.

Romana Shaikh

Former Director, Training & Impact at Teach For India

Romana Shaikh, started her journey as a Teach For India Fellow with 60 2nd grade students in a low fee Private School in Mumbai in 2009. Since then, the purpose and process of education have become the key drivers of her work. Through her tenure as Director of Training & Impact at Teach For India, Romana developed the design of the 2-year Fellowship program bridging instructional leadership with personal leadership through structures and processes, coaching and developing program leads and creating tools for evaluation and monitoring. Developing the framework for holistic student outcomes and designing for program strategy with regional leaders, she developed an understanding of what it means to design for implementation at scale and how to manage change and decentralization. Today, Romana works with various organizations in education to build individual and team capabilities for fostering a shared vision for children and the future, designing for implementation with robust evaluation processes and practices for continuous learning about self, others and the system. All this rests on a belief that people – children and adults – continuously evolve their attitudes and beliefs when provided with experiences that provoke and prompt reflection in a safe and loving environment.

Amitav Virmani

Founder CEO, The Education Alliance

Amitav Virmani, Founder CEO, The Education Alliance. The Education Alliance aims to help governments in India provide a quality education to every child, by facilitating effective partnerships between state and non-state actors. The vision of TEA is to empower government schools to create the next generation of leaders. They work to catalyze quality transformation in India’s education system by nurturing the Government-Partnership School model. Prior to this Amitav was Country Director, ARK India, a UK based NGO. As their CD, Amitav was responsible for launching several programmes around school leadership, english literacy, school vouchers and school quality assessments. Amitav worked as a General Manager in the office of the CEO & MD at Ranbaxy Laboratories prior to his switch to the development sector. Amitav began his post MBA career in the USA working for Bristol Myers Squibb & Co. based in Princeton. Amitav is an alumnus of St. Stephens College, Delhi University. He got his MBA from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked in the US for 4 years before returning home. Amitav is an Aspen India Leadership Initiative 3 Fellow and an Ashoka Fellow 2016.

Prabhat Kumar

Founder, Sumarth

Prabhat is a serial Entrepreneur. He hails from a farmer family of a small village of Gaya, Bihar. He has done his schooling from Bihar, graduation in Electrical Engineering from Bengal and executive course from Harvard Business School.  A Young India Fellow, IFC Fellow, ICICI Fellow and Silicon Valley Fellow, he started his entrepreneurial journey as healthcare professional during Young India Fellowship in Delhi. He co-founded Sumarth (A for-purpose initiative) to promote profitable and sustainable farming in Bihar. Sumarth is India’s one of the fastest growing not-for- profit organisation. Within 3 years they have grown from 1 village (his native village) to 500 villages and currently working with more 10,000 farmers in Bihar.  Prabhat is a globetrotter, he has visited 25+ countries. He is winner of various global Business plan competitions and awards like Tata Social Enterprise Challenge at IIM C, DBS-NUS Social Venture challenge in Singapore, Silicon Valley Challenge-San Francisco, Indiafrica Business Venture in Accra, Ghana etc. He has been invited to Skoll World Forum, Oxford University and visited Davos during World Economic Forum. He has been judge of DBS-NUS Social Venture Challenge-Singapore, Jagriti Yatra etc.

Sujata Khandekar

Founding Director and Secretary, Board of Trustees – CORO India

Sujata, a grassroots feminist, is the Co-Founder of CORO India. She was formerly an Assistant Engineer in Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB), Mumbai when she was deputed for adult literacy related work initiated by Government of Maharashtra and CORO. She received MA in Gender, Education and international development from University of London and was a fellow in Leadership Development Program of MacArthur Foundation, India. Empowerment of grassroots women and gender equality has been Sujata’s focus of personal and professional interventions over last 28 years. She firmly believes that the leadership of social change has to emerge from ‘within’. CORO’s grassroots leadership development program being implemented in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Delhi is Sujata’s dream project.  Sujata has authored a book in Marathi “Aashevin Aasha’ (Hope without Hope) based on her community related work. She has represented CORO in national and international forums and has contributed to many publications. Grassroots movements, grassroots mobilization, construction of masculinities and femininities have been focus of Sujata’s activism and writing. Sujata is currently pursuing her PhD on ‘meanings of women empowerment’ with focus on collective knowledge building from grassroots.

Deirdre White

President & CEO PYXERA GLOBAL

Deirdre White is a globally recognized leader in building tri-sector partnerships to address the world’s most pressing challenges. As CEO of PYXERA Global, she has led the transformation of the organization to one that maximizes impact through strong and strategic partnerships. Prior to PYXERA Global, Deirdre was a Senior Manager in the Public Sector Practice at Arthur D. Little, Inc. Deirdre is a member of the MIT Ideas Global Challenge Advisory Board and the Bretton Woods Committee, and is an alumna of the Aspen Institute’s Socrates Program. She continues to be recognized for her impact in the field and CR Magazine lauded her as a CR Superstar in 2014. Deirdre drives the discussion of new strategies for global engagement and has been a featured speaker at the Shared Value Leadership Summit, Wharton Africa Business Forum, Wall Street Journal’s CFO Network, and US Department of Commerce’s Discover Global Markets. She has served for multiple years as regional judge for the HULT Prize. Previously, Deirdre was co-facilitator  of the Clinton Global Initiative’s Employee Engagement Action Network. She also participated in Rockefeller Foundation’s renowned Bellagio Initiative and the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread’s Leadership Forum for Global Citizen Diplomacy.

Matt Clark

Key Client Manager, Global Pro Bono, Director, Center for Citizen Diplomacy

Matt Clark leads global engagement programs and directs the Center for Citizen Diplomacy at PYXERA Global. He designs and implements projects to promote and celebrate person-to-person interactions across cultures that result in mutual exchange and create shared understanding. He is also a training facilitator of tri-sector partnership workshops, where leaders from the public, private, and social sectors are enabled with tools to effectively design and implement collaborative projects that deliver on shared goals. In the Global Pro Bono practice of PYXERA Global, Matt designs corporate social responsibility strategies for JPMorgan Chase, IBM, PepsiCo, and GSK, working with teams around the world that deliver solutions for issues ranging from food security and transportation infrastructure to women’s economic empowerment and workforce development. Prior to joining PYXERA Global, Matt worked in Japan with local school districts to develop English language curriculum and international education initiatives that more purposefully connect Japanese students to the world.

Pradip Nair

Regional Director (India, Nepal and Sri Lanka), Ford Foundation

Pradip Nair is Regional Director with Ford Foundation, based out of India, and is responsible for their work in the region. With more than 65 years of history in the region, as one of the oldest US foundations in the country and with hundreds of grants over the decades, Ford Foundation continues to play an important role in social sector growth in the region. Pradeep has more than 20 years of private and non-profit experience, working primarily in the US and India, with a brief stint in Europe. He has an engineering and management degree, and started his career in the strategy and technology space, working in Silicon Valley, initially with Deloitte Consulting as a management consultant, and later with technology and data start-ups. His previous experience includes working with President Clinton’s Climate Initiative, with a focus on India and the region. Working with Michael Bloomberg (NYC Mayor) and his team, he was also instrumental in expanding the C40 network (a network of global mayors) in India and the region.

Svati Chakravarty Bhatkal

Director, Rubaru Roshni and Head, Social Media, Paani Foundation

Svati Chakravarty Bhatkal developed a keen interest in social questions as an undergraduate student. At 21, she began on her professional life as a reporter, writing on civic issues, gender, politics and culture — telling stories that mattered. She later spearheaded the creation of award-winning children’s books, social science publications and interactive learning materials, co-authored scripts for Bombay Lawyers, a television serial and Zokkomon, a children’s film produced by The Walt Disney Company. From 2012 to 2015, Svati co-directed and headed field research for Satyamev Jayate, among the most credible and widely-watched shows in the history of television. She researched and directed a documentary on female foeticide that went on to become a defining foundation for the show. In the year 2016, she embarked on the filming of a feature-length documentary researched and directed by her and produced by Aamir Khan Productions. The film, Rubaru Roshni (Where the Light Comes In) has been dubbed in six Indian languages and was released early 2019. Svati has served as visiting faculty at Xavier Institute of Communication and as vice-chairperson, Children’s Film Society of India. She currently works freelance on meaningful communication and film projects and heads social media for non-profit, Paani Foundation.

Gaurav Goel

Founder and CEO, Samagra

Gaurav holds a dual degree (B.Tech.+M.Tech.) in Computer Science & Engineering from IIT Delhi and an MBA from IIM Calcutta. Immediately after completing his studies, Gaurav joined McKinsey & Company as a management consultant where he worked across sectors and geographies, solving diverse corporate problem statements. Gaurav’s desire to create impact at scale by engaging with the governance process led him to embark on an entrepreneurial journey. Gaurav founded Samagra in 2012 and has been leading it since inception. He has extensive experience of working with senior political and bureaucratic leaders, conceptualizing and delivering large scale systemic transformation across governance domains. He has shaped Samagra’s values and Gaurav Goel approach to impact and continues to drive it into the future.

Gautam John

Director of Strategy, Nilekani Philanthropies

Gautam John is the Director of Strategy at Nilekani Philanthropies. Prior to this, he spent several years in the development sector and was a TED India Fellow in 2009. Before his time in the non-profit sector, he was an entrepreneur in the food industry for six years and graduated from the National Law School in 2002.

Dr. R. Balasubramanium

Founder, Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement and GRAAM

Having lived and worked for several years among remote forest-based tribal communities in the southern Indian district of Mysuru, Dr. R. Balasubramaniam (Balu) has uniquely been able to combine a vast development sector experience with studying and teaching at the world’s leading schools of policy and development including Harvard and Cornell Universities. He was a special investigator for Lokayukta Karnataka (Anti-Corruption Commission) and held membership and consulting positions in government bodies and commissions, academic boards and development agencies including the World Bank. He is currently serving as the Leadership Coach & Advisor to the Ministry of Petroleum, Govt of Egypt. He is a visiting professor at Cornell University, USA and IIT-Delhi, India. He has also served as the Professor and head of the Vivekananda Chair of the University of Mysore twice. Dr Balasubramaniam is the Founder of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement and Grassroots Research And Advocacy Movement. His books, ‘i, the citizen’ and ‘Voices from the Grassroots’ present an alternate approach to human development

Benedicte Faivre-Tavignot

Executive Director of the SnO Center

Benedicte is affiliate professor of strategy at HEC Paris. She is Executive Director of the SnO Center (Society & Organizations Center), aiming at developing at HEC a new way of thinking about the role of business in society, be it through teaching or research. She is also co-founder of the HEC Chair of “Social Business / Enterprise and Poverty”, and of the HEC Paris Master of Science in Sustainable Development. Her research focus is on reverse innovation; she’s studying the processes through which social businesses and Base of the Pyramid business models can be a lever for innovation and strategic renewal. She received her PhD in Management Sciences in 2012 (University Lyon). She is an alumna of HEC (1988).

Dr Apoorvanand

Professor, University of Delhi.

Apoorvanand is a professor of Hindi at the University of Delhi. He earned his Masters and PhD from Patna University and has worked on the development of Marxist Aesthetics in Hindi Literature.   Apoorvanand joined the Hindi Department at the University of Delhi where he was instrumental in redesigning the department’s academic program. Dr Apoorvanand was part of the core group that designed the National Curriculum Framework for School Education in 2005 and was a member of the National Focus Group on Teaching of Indian Languages formed by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT). He has worked with the Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education in India under the Chairmanship of Professor Yash Pal. Created by the Government of India in 2008, the committee worked to craft a new vision plan for the sector of higher education in India. Additionally, Dr Apoorvanand has published two books of essays in literary criticism: Sundar ka Swapna and Sahitya ka Ekant. His critical essays have appeared in all major Hindi journals. Apart from his academic and literary writings, he also contributes columns in Indian newspapers and magazines on the issues of education, culture, communalism, violence and human rights.

Priya Naik

Founder and CEO of Samhita

Priya Naik is the Founder and CEO of Samhita, a leading CSR consulting firm that designs innovative solutions and scales evidence-based approaches to maximize social impact. Samhita has worked with some of India’s foremost companies, foundations and social organizations to create impact across cause areas. It is a pioneer in driving collaboration in the CSR ecosystem, creating value propositions for stakeholders to collectively address critical areas such as sanitation and women’s empowerment. Priya’s journey in the social sector began as a Researcher at the Poverty Action Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, where she was part of two award-winning student startups. Her career is a fusion of on-ground grassroots solutions through enterprise and strategic consulting experience with established companies. She has a Master’s in Economics from Yale University, USA; a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA; and a Master’s in Commerce from Mumbai University.

Reshma Anand

CEO, Hindustan Unilever Foundation

Reshma is a business school graduate with over 20 years of leadership experience in mission-driven non-profits and social ventures. She started out with a conventional corporate career at Unilever in India in roles including market intelligence, product innovation and brand management. As work took her to rural outposts across India, Reshma decided to shift gears to work on development challenges through market-based solutions. She is the founder of two social ventures including a specialist advisory firm on sustainable social responsibility and an accelerator for agricultural and artisanal micro entrepreneurs. She has worked extensively with non-profit organizations and donors on strategy design, impact assessment and leadership development. Reshma has anchored efforts to drive informed philanthropy in India through thought leadership, collective funding platforms and collaborations with the government. She is an Economics graduate from the University of Delhi, an MBA from IIM-Bangalore, an Aspen Fellow and a TED India Fellow. In her current role, Reshma heads Hindustan Unilever Foundation; a corporate foundation focused on water conservation and community governance.

Farah Naqvi

Feminist, Writer and Activist

Farah Naqvi, an alumna of Columbia University, is a feminist, writer and activist. For over 25 years, she has worked on gender, caste, and minority issues, towards justice, equality, democratic rights and freedom from violence. Her work spans a range of media and locations – from remote villages to public policy spaces – serving as Member, National Advisory Council or NAC, (2010-2014); Member, Post-Sachar Evaluation Committee (Kundu Committee), Ministry of Minority Affairs (2013-2014); Member, Planning Commission Steering Committee on Empowerment of Minorities, for India’s 12th five-year plan (2011-2012); Member, Planning Commission Steering Committee for Women and Child Development, for the 11th five-year plan (2007-2008). She has also worked on law reform including the 2013 Criminal Law Amendment Act on sexual violence laws; draft law on communal and targeted violence; amendments to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act; amendments to include domestic workers in sexual harassment law – all entailing advocacy with governments and and Parliamentary Standing Committees. She has co-authored fact-finding reports on situations of civil and communal strife including in Chhattisgarh (War in the Heart of India), Muzaffarnagar (30 Days and Counting and A Human Tragedy Unfolds), Gujarat (Survivors Speak & Threatened Existence).

Sudha Srinivasan

CEO, N/Core

Sudha heads N/Core, an initiative of The/Nudge Foundation on a mission to nudge India’s talented problem solvers to work on its most meaningful challenges. Since starting in 2016, N/Core’s incubation program has jumpstarted 35 nonprofit startups on a growth path. Its accelerator fund Series/N will provide growth capital to 30 nonprofits over the next 5 years. N/CORE aims to provide a nurturing support system for entrepreneurs solving problems faced by the bottom of the pyramid, at scale, through the nonprofit model. Prior to heading N/Core, Sudha worked in the hi-tech industry for 17 years in various leadership roles at Intel, Verizon and Infosys. She has an MBA from IIM Lucknow.

Ashok Kamath

Chairman, Akshara Foundation

Ashok Kamath has been the Managing Trustee of Akshara Foundation since 2003 and Chairman of the same 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.

Adil Zainulbhai

Chairman, Quality Council of India (QCI)

Adil Zainulbhai is Chairman of the Quality Council of India (QCI). He retired as the Chairman of McKinsey & Company, India, after serving the company for 34 years – the last 10 of which were spent in India. Prior to returning to India, he led the Washington office of McKinsey, and founded its Minneapolis office.

As Chairman, QCI, he has been involved in strengthening quality standards across various sectors of Indian industry and infrastructure. Adil is on the board of many Indian companies, including Reliance Industries, Larsen & Toubro and Cipla. He is also the Chairman of Network 18 and TV18. He serves on the boards of numerous non-profit organisations, including the Piramal Foundation, American India Foundation, the CII National Council, Saifee Hospital, and Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust.

Adil graduated in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He also has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Anshu Bhartia

CEO, UnLtd India

Anshu Bhartia is the CEO of UnLtd India, a launchpad for social entrepreneurs and individuals passionate about entrepreneurship for creating social change. UnLtd India’s incubation program has facilitated the creation of more than 540,000 livelihood opportunities through more than 200 social enterprises, thus impacting the lives of around 5 million people.

With over 25 years of experience, Anshu has led organisations like Revitalising Rainfed Agriculture Network (RRAN) and Friends of Women’s World Banking (FWWB), a leading financial service organisation where she was instrumental in launching an innovative credit product for farmer producer organisations (FPOs) and for facilitating access to solar products and water and sanitation facilities.

Anshu is passionate about mentoring and scaling up of social enterprises.

Dr Rani Bang

Co-Founder, SEARCH

Dr. Rani Bang is a social activist and researcher working in the field of community health. She co-founded Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health (SEARCH), a non-profit organisation, along with her husband, Dr Abhay Bang, in the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, India.

SEARCH established a partnership with communities in Gadchiroli for health and development, and helped create “tribal-friendly” clinics and a hospital in the district. Through their work in the communities, they have revolutionised healthcare for some of the most marginalised people in India and have overseen a program that has substantially reduced infant mortality rates in the region.

Dr. Rani Bang is the recipient of many awards and recognitions, including the Padma Shri in 2018. She has been recognised for her untiring efforts and leadership in community-based health care that is now helping to save the lives of millions of the most vulnerable newborns and children.

Dr. Rani Bang completed her graduation and post graduation in medical studies from Nagpur University and Master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. She is also the author of numerous scientific publications and journals.

Anu Aga

Corporate leader and philanthropist

Anu Aga began her industry career in Thermax, an energy and environment engineering organisation in 1985. In 1991, she took charge of the company’s human resources function and was appointed as the Executive Chairperson of the Thermax Group after the death of her husband Rohinton Aga in 1996. Two years later she continued as the Non-Executive Chairperson. She retired as the Chairperson in October 2004.

As Chairperson, Mrs. Aga anchored the turnaround of Thermax through four major initiatives: reconstitution of the board, shedding of non-core activities, rightsizing of operations and increased focus on the customer. She was instrumental in driving a high-performance culture.

She recently retired as the Director on the Board of Thermax and also from chairing the Thermax Foundation.

Mrs. Aga now spends more time on social causes and traveling. Her area of interest is improving the quality of school education for the economically underprivileged. She is keenly involved with Akanksha and  Teach for India and is a member of the board. She was honoured with the Padma Shri in 2010.

Harish Hande

Founder & Chief Executive, SELCO Foundation

Harish Hande is a social entrepreneur with over 25 years of grassroots experience in meeting the energy needs of underserved populations. He is also the founder and chief executive of SELCO India, a pioneering last mile rural energy enterprise based in India since the early nineties.

SELCO sees the pressing need to develop a fertile environment to enhance sustainable energy access solutions for the poor. This energy access increases incomes, improves quality of life, and alleviates poverty, turning energy consumers into asset owners. Last mile energy solutions have clear commercial viability, and SELCO works to combine technical and non-technical aspects focused on alleviating poverty in a sustainable manner. SELCO through its various initiative has been able to impact over 2 million people.

Harish is a graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and holds a master’s and Ph.D from University of Massachusetts, USA. He is also the recipient of many national and international awards, including the reputed Zayed Future Energy Prize in 2018 and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship 2018. In 2011, Harish was conferred the Ramon Magsaysay Award in recognition of his vision to catalyse development outcomes via sustainable energy.

M Hari Menon

Director, India Country Office Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

M Hari Menon leads the India Office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He also oversees the foundation’s work in South and South-East Asia. In his role as director of the India Office, Hari is in charge of managing the foundation’s work areas in India, with an objective to improve conditions of family health, sanitation, digital financial inclusion, agriculture, and gender equality. He leads these efforts to advance the country’s health and development goals by working closely with India’s central and state governments, local and global non-profits, community groups, researchers, and the private sector.

Hari has been associated with the foundation since 2006, with a brief role outside the foundation between 2011 and 2013. Prior to the India Country Director role, he was leading the teams that focus on policy and advocacy and program communications. Since 2017, he has also been overseeing the foundation’s policy and government relations for South and South-East Asia.

From 2011 to 2013, Hari served as strategic philanthropy adviser to Rohini Nilekani. He also has experience in the consumer goods and information technology sectors with companies like Colgate Palmolive and Infosys Technologies. Hari holds a graduate degree in business management from XLRI School of Management, Jamshedpur and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the College of Engineering & Technology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Neha Barjatya

Chief Internet Saahti, Foundation for Rural Entrepreneurship Development (FREND)

Neha Barjatya is the Chief Internet Saathi at Foundation for Rural Entrepreneurship Development (FREND), a non-profit entity promoted by Tata Trusts and supported by Google to help build a sustainable model of livelihood for women across rural India through a unique digital literacy program called Internet Saathi. She is currently working under a secondment by Google to help set up and lead the vision for FREND.

Prior to this, Neha led business and brand marketing initiatives at Google in India, where she launched several projects and campaigns focused on driving the growth of Internet in the country, including the launch of the Internet Saathi program.

She is passionate about technology and strongly believes that it can play a transformative role in improving the lives of women across India. Her decision to lead the efforts of FREND underlines her commitment towards gender equity and creating opportunities for women to succeed.

Prior to Google, Neha has worked across companies like Zee Turner, Viacom18 and Lowe Lintas. She is a graduate in Economics from Lady Shriram College in New Delhi, following which she joined the Mudra Institute of Communication Ahmedabad.

Venkat Krishnan N.

Social Activist & Principal Trustee, India Welfare Trust

Venkat is the founder and Principal Trustee of India Welfare Trust. A social activist and philanthropist, he spends most of his time and efforts on promoting philanthropy and volunteerism in India, through initiatives like #DaanUtsav, #LivingMyPromise and #EveryIndianVolunteering. He co-founded Eklavya School (Ahmedabad) and Education Initiative Pvt Ltd, an organisation working on improving the quality of school education in India. In 2000, Venkat set up #GiveIndia to create a culture of giving in India.

Venkat is a graduate from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and has previously worked for The Times of India in various corporate and brand management functions. He later joined the founding team of Sony Entertainment Television in India.

Vishal Talreja

Co-Founder, Dream a Dream

Vishal is co-founder of Dream a Dream, a charitable trust empowering children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds to overcome adversity and flourish using a creative life skills approach. Currently, Dream a Dream works with 10,000 young boys and girls every year through two innovation labs – After School Life Skills Program and Career Connect Program. The organisation has trained over 8000 teachers/educators reaching out to over 200,000 children and young people.

Through its Happiness Curriculum in partnership with the Delhi Government, Dream a Dream has been able to impact over 1 million children. Over the years, Dream a Dream has received recognition for its innovative model and work, significant among these are being recognised by Lego Foundation and Ashoka as a Champion in the space of re-imagining learning in the world.

Vishal is an Ashoka Fellow, an Eisenhower Fellow and a board member at PYE Global. He also serves on the boards of Unltd India and India Cares Foundation. Vishal has been recognised as an “Architect of the Future” by the Waldzell Institut in Austria. He is an advisor and mentor to Reap Benefit and is deeply committed to mentoring start-up NGOs and young social entrepreneurs. He is a poet, a TEDx speaker and an active writer on development challenges and human-interest stories . In 2018, he was awarded the ‘Heroes of Bengaluru’ award.

Vishal is a graduate in Commerce and Accounting from Bangalore University and worked with Xerox India and a startup investment bank called Technology Holdings India Pvt. Ltd. He was an active member of AIESEC, an international student-led organisation with presence in over 80 countries, during his college days.