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.

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.

Noshir Dadrawala

Programme Director - Legal & CSR Compliance, Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy

Noshir H. Dadrawala is CEO, Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy (CAP) through which he has been offering compliance related advisory to nonprofits and corporate social initiatives. His career spans over 35 years in the nonprofit sector, working with a diverse range of organisations, from large established national and global organisations, to corporate and family grant makers, to start ups. Drawing upon three decades of hands-on experience and practical insights, Noshir’s main role at CAP involves simplifying the confusing and complex maze of old, but ever changing, new laws. Noshir’s legal expertise in the sector is widely recognized, as is his deep understanding of compliance within philanthropy.

His current international affiliation includes serving as member on the advisory board of the International Center for Not-for-profit Law (ICNL). Earlier, he was on the Board of Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support (WINGS) as also Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium (APPC).

In India, he serves as a trustee of a few Foundations namely the Forbes Marshall Foundation, Everest Industries Foundation and the Bombay Community Trust.

Noshir has authored several resource books and is also invited as a speaker at many local and international conferences and as guest faculty at leading business schools.

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.

Priya Naik

Founder & 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.

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.

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.

Srikrishna Sridhar Murthy (Krishna)

Founder and CEO

Krishna is the Founder and CEO at Sattva and is responsible for the overall strategic direction, growth and impact of the organisation. Over the last decade, Krishna has been working with the leadership of Global Foundations, Social Organisations and Corporates to design and scale their social impact initiatives, across India, SE Asia, Africa and Europe. Krishna leads many collective impact initiatives across different themes like water, education, livelihoods and is an active member of the CII National Committee on Sports.

Krishna started his career as an early member of Dell R&D in India and was the Founding Partner of Longhouse Consulting, a boutique executive search firm focused on technology and emerging sectors in India. Krishna is an alumnus of BITS, Pilani and INSEAD and serves on the Advisory Board of multiple social impact and technology start-ups.

Sundeep Talwar

CMO, The Akshaya Patra Foundation

Sundeep Talwar is the Chief Marketing Officer of The Akshaya Patra Foundation, the World’s largest school meal program run by an NGO feeding over 1.8 million children every day in 51 locations and 13 states in India.

Akshaya Patra has received ‘Gold Shield ‘ award for 6th time in a row from the prestigious Institute of Chartered Accountants ( ICAI ) of India for excellence in financial reporting.  It’s in the hall of fame of ICAI.  Harvard Business School has done a case study on Akshayapatra. MIT has featured it in its technology review. Akshaya Patra has been covered by Forbes Magazine, National Geographic, Discovery channel, CNN, BBC, etc. AkshayaPatra has also been certified as “ Great Place to Work by the GPW Institute of India in the category of Small & Mid sized organizations.

Sundeep is a dual Post Graduate in Management from Duke & IIM-Ahmedabad and certified Black-Belt in Quality with over 26 years of work experience in the areas of marketing & communications with leading corporates especially in Telecom Sector.

Before joining Akshaya Patra, as CMO, he was associated as National Business Head (Mobility Operations) with Aircel driving the Mobile Banking operations nationally. Prior to that, he has essayed Senior Leadership Roles with brands like Bharti Airtel, Motorola, Escotel (Idea) & Essar (Vodafone) across country and in Africa. He is also awarded with an international accreditation from BID  Spain for developing the first anti-virus application He is a vivid professional Trainer too and have talked on various subjects in prestigious schools like IIM, IIPM, IMT over years

His search for ‘Existential Purpose’ in life made him quit a corporate career and join the Akshaya Patra Foundation, a not-for-profit organization with a vision that ‘No Child in India shall be deprived of Education because of Hunger’.

Akshaya Patra’s mission is to feed ‘5 million children daily by 2025 ‘. It has been rated as one of the top 100 NGOs in the world (ranking 23) by the Global Journal of Geneva and recently, in Feb’19 our Honorable Prime Minister, Narender Modi jee served the 3 Billionth meal.

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.