Aditya Natraj

Chief Executive Officer, Kaivalya Education Foundation & Piramal School of Leadership

Aditya Natraj is the founder and director of Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF) and the Piramal School of Leadership. KEF supports large scale systemic changes in public education systems in India through leadership development of State, District and School leaders. KEF works with 10,000+ education leaders across 14 states in India – directly affecting the lives of 5 million children across 50,000+ schools. KEF also runs the Gandhi Fellowship programme – a 2 year full-time programme to train young people in leading social change. Previously Aditya was Director of Pratham in Gujrat for 5 years, Vice-President of Business Development at ProXchange for 2 years and a Consultant at KPMG for 5 years. Aditya is a qualified Chartered Accountant, a Masters in Economics and has an MBA from INSEAD. Aditya is an Ashoka Fellow, an Echoing Green Fellow and an Aspen India Fellow. Aditya also serves on the governing board of the Quality Council of India, the Akanksha Foundation and Bridgespan India. Aditya was awarded the Times Now Amazing Indian award in the Education category.

Adrian Sargeant

Co-Founder & Co-Director, Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy

Adrian Sargeant is the Co-Director of the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy. He was formerly the first Hartsook Chair in Fundraising at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University. Adrian is a Visiting Professor of Fundraising at Avila University and the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. In 2010 in the United States he was named to the prestigious Nonprofit Times, Power and Influence list and in the same year received a Civil Society award in the UK for his services to the profession of fundraising. In 2016 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Institute of Fundraising. Adrian designed the UK’s system of professional education for fundraisers and is currently working on the European qualification framework for the European Fundraising Association.

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.

Deval Sanghavi

Co-Founder & Partner Dasra

Starting out working with street children in Mumbai in 1996, Deval’s passion and commitment to serve marginalized communities led to the creation of Dasra over 2 decades ago. By working with NGO founders and leadership teams helping them dream big and providing them with strategic and operational support to create greater impact, he has played a critical role in the incubation or scaling of organizations including Magic Bus, Villgro, Sharanam Centre, Educate Girls and Aangan Trust. These grounded experiences have allowed him to share insights with newer philanthropists and established foundations leading to over INR 350 crores of funding being committed to NGOs and India’s development sector. He firmly believes in collaborative action to achieve Dasra’s goal of a transformed India where a billion thrive with dignity and equity.

Gaurav Gupta

Partner & Founder, Dalberg Asia

Gaurav Gupta is Partner and Founder of Dalberg Asia. Dalberg is a global strategy and policy advisory firm focused on global development. He globally heads Dalberg’s Energy and Environment practice as well as it’s Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning practice which has led him to evaluate and advise on large social programs across the globe. Outside of Dalberg, Gaurav sits on the Board of Educate Girls, one of India’s largest NGOs focused on girl education and empowerment. He also is an angel investor in social enterprises.

Prior to Dalberg, Gaurav was at The Boston Consulting Group in Sydney and London. He holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford and an MA in International and Development Economics from Yale University. He also attended the United World College of Hong Kong as a Fairfax Scholar.

Geeta Goel

Country Director, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

Geeta is Country Director, India at the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. In her role, Geeta manages the strategy and implementation of the foundation’s work in India in two key areas of Education and Family Economic Stability. Geeta has represented the foundation on several Boards of its investee companies, including Ujjivan, Janalakshmi, Swadhaar, Arohan, and Micro Housing Finance Corporation. She is also on the Investment Committee of India Educational Investment Fund and Education Catalyst Fund and has served as Chairperson of the Impact Investors Council in India from April 2017 to March 2019. Geeta is on the Advisory Board of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad’s Advancement Trust. In 2020, she was nominated by Forbes India’s list of Women Power – 20 women changing the game, and in 2017, she was amongst Business Today’s 30 Most Powerful Women in Impact. Before joining the foundation, Geeta spent more than 12 years with PwC. She is an alumna of the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) and Lady Shri Ram College (Delhi).

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, 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.

Dr Rukmini Banerji

Chief Executive Officer, Pratham Education Foundation

Rukmini Banerji is Chief Executive Officer of Pratham Education Foundation.

She joined Pratham in 1996. Over the years, she has learned a lot from working directly with children of all ages in villages and urban slums. She also has experience of working in large scale partnerships with governments for improving basic reading and arithmetic of children in primary schools. Rukmini led Pratham’s research and assessment efforts for many years including the well-known nationwide ASER initiative (Annual Status of Education Report) from 2005 to 2014. Originally from Bihar, Rukmini now is based in Delhi. She loves being a grandmother and telling and writing stories for children.

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 & CEO, Sattva

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

Vice President, Development and Alumni Relations, Ashoka University

Venkat is Vice President, Development and Alumni Relations at Ashoka University. He has been with Ashoka since its inception and works closely with it’s Founders, Board of Trustees and Governing Body. Venkat’s responsibilities include fundraising, developing and implementing strategy, providing leadership and heading alumni relations at the institution. He formed and led the team that has raised the largest collective philanthropic fundraise in India. Venkat also ideated and helped create the Ashoka Archives for Contemporary India, which now possesses a formidable collection of documents and papers from eminent people across the world. Prior to joining Ashoka, he spent 21 years in building and growing start-ups in financial services and related sectors. Ashoka is his fifth association with a start-up and early stage venture. His core strengths lie in building, growing and managing geographically diverse operations. Venkat is an alumnus of St. Xaviers College, Calcutta and is fluent in four languages. He has a deep and abiding interest in wide-ranging musical genres and writes a blog on fundraising, organisation building and strategy.

ARNAV KAPUR

Lead – Philanthropic Partnerships, India & South Asia Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Arnav leads Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Philanthropic Partnerships portfolio in India and South Asia with the objective of strengthening the philanthropic ecosystem and partnering with individuals, family offices, and corporates to have impact at scale across the priority areas of the foundation. He is also anchoring Gates Foundation’s Asia strategy across Bangladesh, Singapore, and Nepal. He previously worked with the India Policy & Global Growth and Opportunity team, where he helped develop the investment portfolio and foundation’s agriculture development and health policy strategy. Prior to joining the foundation in July 2013, he worked as a Consultant with Deloitte Consulting, where he advised senior clients across sectors on strategy development, e-governance, supply chain management, and financial planning. He holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi, India, where he graduated in the top 10% of his class. He also holds the Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP) certification from APICS, USA.

BHARATH VISWESWARIAH

Director - Investments, Omidyar Network India

Bharath is currently the Director of Investments at Omidyar Network India. He is responsible for leading the organization’s strategy development and its investments in Governance and Citizen Engagement.  His work in this space spans a broad set of fields including Urban Governance, Access to Justice, the Independent Media, and Open Data. Bharath currently partners with over a dozen organizations across these fields, supporting them in their journey to expand their impact in their operations. Prior to Omidyar, Bharath was a Director at the Antara Foundation, before which he worked at the University of Chicago as Executive Director of their research center in India. Bharath started his career as a management consultant, working with McKinsey & Co for about six years and the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) for about eight years. Bharath has an MBA from IIM Calcutta and a B.Tech from IIT Madras.

GAYATRI DIVECHA

CSR Head, Godrej Industries & Associate Companies

Gayatri heads Corporate Social Responsibility for Godrej Industries and Associate Companies. She drives the Group’s sustainability agenda that works towards skilling 1 million young people to help them become more employable. Gayatri has 14 years of experience working in the development sector across a range of roles and organisations including academia, the private sector and non-profits. Prior to Godrej, Gayatri was part of the Corporate Sustainability team at HSBC India where she played a key role in driving the bank’s portfolio of community investment programmes across the three strategic pillars of HSBC’s global Corporate Sustainability strategy – future skills, sustainable networks and entrepreneurship and sustainable finance. She has also worked at Dasra, and led their advisory research and business development teams. Gayatri has consulted for several multi-national corporations, leading Indian companies and Harvard University’s South Asia Institute. She holds a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the University of Westminster, London. In her free time, Gayatri enjoys painting, reading and travelling. She mentors a young college student who is a first-generation learner in her family, and also sits on the board of Bansuri Foundation, a family philanthropic initiative.

GAYATRI NAIR LOBO

Chief Operating Officer, ATE Chandra Foundation

Gayatri is Chief Operating Officer at ATE Chandra Foundation. She has a mix of close to 20 years of strategy consulting and development sector experience,having worked most recently CEO of India School LeadershipInstitute (ISLI). Before joining ISLI, Gayatri was at Dalberg Advisors and prior to that the Chief Operating Officer at Teach For India, and was part of the scale up of operations during its first six years. Gayatri has also previously worked at OC&C Strategy Consultants and Avalon consulting, working with clients across sectors. Gayatri has a Masters in Management Studies and a Bachelors in Commerce from Mumbai University.

GITANJALI GANDHIOK

Assistant VP - Development, Ashoka University

Gitanjali has a career spanning 24 years with diverse experience, across end to end operations, leadership advisory services, organisation and capability building, business integration, project management and change & organisational transformation initiatives. She has worked in start-ups and multinationals, in close proximity to businesses and their leaders, to deliver value through appropriately aligning people, processes and business objectives to organisation-wide goals. She earned her MBA from the National University of Singapore and B.A. (Hons.) in Political Science from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University. She is also a certified Life Coach and a Volunteer Mentor with The Aspire Foundation.

Prior to joining Ashoka University, she worked with Egon Zehnder, Odgers Berndtson and Microsoft. She joined Ashoka in July 2018 as Director Development to help strengthen the fundraising efforts of the university.

HISHAM MUNDOL

Chief Advisor, India Environmental Defense Fund

Hisham is the Chief Advisor, India for Environmental Defense Fund, for operations in India.  He started his career in sales, marketing and consulting with Hindustan Unilever, WorldTel, Accenture & Infosys. He subsequently moved to the development sector where he led the National Condoms Programme for the Indian Government’s National AIDS Control Organisation and later set up operations in South Asia for Wikimedia Foundation, promoting projects like Wikipedia. Most recently, he led the work of Children’s Investment Fund Foundation in India (across health, nutrition, adolescence, education, girls & women’s rights and livelihoods, child protection and climate change.)

NAGHMA MULLA

Chief Executive Officer, EdelGive Foundation

Naghma Mulla serves as the President, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Board Member of EdelGive Foundation, the philanthropic initiative of Edelweiss Group – one of India’s leading diversified financial services group. Over the last nine years, Naghma has been instrumental in strategically driving the vision of social transformation by steering the holistic development of small to medium-sized grassroots NGOs spread across the span of India. Naghma plays a critical role in enabling these commitments and triggering meaningful conversations by forging valuable partnerships with diverse international and national stakeholders within the ecosystem. Today, EdelGive has also built two successful collaboratives – The Collaborators for Transforming Education (in partnership with the Government of Maharashtra) and the Coalition for Women’s Empowerment (in partnership with Ford Foundation and Chintu Gudiya Foundation) – both created and nurtured by her. Naghma is also a member of the Core Committee of the India Climate Collaborative (ICC) – a collaboration of India’s leading philanthropies committed to addressing the climate crisis in India. She began her career with Bajaj Alliance General Insurance and played an instrumental role in their foundational team. She is a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and has earned a Master of Commerce (M. Com.) degree from the University of Pune.

NAMITA DALMIA

Director – Investments, Omidyar Network India

Namita is an engineer from IIT Bombay and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She has been working at the intersection of innovations and policy discussions in education and skilling. In her most recent role as the Director of Investments at Omidyar Network India, she led impact investing in the education sector for the organization. In her previous role at Central Square Foundation, she incubated and launched several edtech initiatives and supported state/central governments on building their edtech platforms . Previous to this, she worked at a national policy think-tank focused on education and an edtech start-up in the Bay Area

SHAVETA SHARMA-KUKREJA

Managing Director, Central Square Foundation

Shaveta has been part of the founding team at CSF, and co-leads CSF’s strategy, operations and strategic partnerships. She leads CSF’s work on Foundational Literacy & Numeracy across State engagement & Classroom Instruction, Grant-making, and also oversees CSF’s organizational development. She led CSF’s work on human capital and institutional structures in Education.

Her corporate background includes work at The Boston Consulting Group and Citibank, and has been a visiting faculty member in the Human Resources and Organizational Behavior disciplines at business schools. Her primary areas of interest are systems adoption at scale and leadership & organizational behavior. She is certified in the psychometric tools MBTI, FIRO-B and FIRO-Business.

Shaveta earned her BA in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi and holds an MBA from IIM, Bangalore.

SRIRAM VENKATRAMAN

Director – Partnerships The/Nudge Foundation

Sriram heads partnerships and engagements at The/Nudge Foundation where he works closely with foundations, corporates and individuals towards poverty alleviation, sustainably and at scale. Prior to leading fundraising for The/Nudge, Sriram led community engagement at The/Nudge Centre for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

An undergraduate from the BITS, Pilani, Sriram spent 8 yrs in healthcare consulting and market research before his entrepreneurial journey in 2011 led him to build the India community mobilization and individual fundraising at Amnesty International towards protection of human rights in India. In 2015, he joined The/Nudge Foundation as part of its leadership team.

SUDHA SRINIVASAN

Chief Executive Officer, The /Nudge Centre for Social Innovation

Sudha heads The /Nudge Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), 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, CSI’s incubation program has jumpstarted 35 nonprofit startups on a growth path.  Prior to heading CSI, 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.

UJWAL THAKAR

Chairman, Educate Girls 

After 28 successful years in the banking sector, in various leadership roles at SBI, Standard Chartered Bank, TimesBank and BNP Paribas, Ujwal Thakar moved to the social sector as CEO of Pratham in 2002. After six years at Pratham, he moved to GiveIndia, where he was CEO until he retired in 2010. Ujwal continues to be actively involved with both corporate as well as social sectors:  he has been an advisor to PwC and KPMG for their banking practice, a board member at an NBFC and an advisor to a fintech startup. He chairs the board of Educate Girls, sits on the boards of Ummeed Child Development Centre, Shoshit Sewa Kendra and Arogya World, and is a partner at the social incubator, N/Core. Ujwal holds a Master’s in biochemistry and post-graduate qualification in bank management. He has been a speaker at leading business schools in India, the US and the UK.

VATSALA MAMGAIN

Director – Resource Mobilisation, CRY

Vatsala has worked in advertising for close to two decades on clients like J&J, Unilever, LG and Maruti. She has also set up a design portal, run a successful home catering business, worked as a textile consultant and is a published writer. She believes that every single person has limitless potential and she hopes that her work at CRY will help India’s children realize theirs.

VENKATESAM ESHWARA

Pro-Vice Chancellor – Development, Placements, and Alumni Relations, Ashoka University 

Venkat is currently Vice President, Development at Ashoka University. His responsibilities include fundraising, providing leadership and developing & implementing strategy for the institution. Prior to this, he has held central roles in top management with 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.

VISHAL CHOWLA

Former Chief Operating Officer, Save the Children, India

Vishal has worked for the non-profit and corporate sectors for the last 29 years, having held a variety of leadership roles in Save the Children, Walmart Inc., Coca-Cola Inc. and PepsiCo. Vishal, in his last assignment, has worked with Save the Children in India as the Chief Operating Officer and also served as the Director Fundraising and External Engagement, driving change for children. He has driven revenue growth for Save the Children, almost doubling incomes on the corporate and individual giving channels over 4 years. He is passionate about the development sector and is now working on various initiatives, helping building capacity and capability for mid-size non-profits. At Save the Children, Vishal was also the leader for the Global Brand. Vishal in his corporate avatar has held senior roles at Walmart India, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, leading businesses in India and in South West Asia. He has studied management at XLRI, Jamshedpur, commerce at Delhi University and schooled in Calcutta.

ZIAA LALKAKA

Chief Executive Officer, HT Parekh Foundation

Ziaa has close to 25 years of work experience. She moved to the Development sector 5 years ago. She started her career with KPMG India, when the firm was just a year old in India, joining them for her articleship training in the Mumbai office. She worked for close to 10 years with KPMG across the Audit and Corporate Finance divisions, with a focus on Audit, Transaction Advisory & M&A Advisory for companies in the Financial Services and Oil sectors. She subsequently moved to the Corporate Banking groups of ICICI bank and then BNP Paribas India, overseeing & managing the credit requirements of mid-sized to large corporates based in Mumbai & Pune. She joined the HDFC Property Fund in 2006, to lead the Investor Relations team. This venture was the HDFC’s Group’s foray into real estate private equity, with a domestic & international fund of US$ 1.10 billion. She spent 6 years here, building and developing relationships with both domestic & international investors who were part of the real estate fund. Ziaa transitioned to the development sector in 2014, when she joined to lead the H T Parekh Foundation, started to honour the rich legacy of HDFC Limited’s Founder, Mr H T Parekh. The Foundation is the CSR implementing entity for HDFC, and provides grants to exemplary partner organisations across rural & urban India in the areas of Education, Healthcare & Livelihoods.
Ziaa is a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accounts of India and a graduate from Sydenham College of Commerce & Economics, Mumbai.