Development Economist, Professor and Policy Advisor

AK Shivakumar

A K Shiva Kumar (Shiv), a New Delhi based development economist, he has been 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.

Founder & CEO, The Education Alliance

Amitav Virmani

Founder, Goonj

Anshu Gupta

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.

Co-founder, Prosperiti

Baishali Bomjan

Chief Executive Officer, Tech Mahindra Foundation

Chetan Kapoor

A thought leader and seasoned development sector professional, Chetan has worked with multiple stakeholders, across rural and urban landscapes in a career spanning over two decades. With a strong belief in finding collaborative solutions, Chetan has always espoused the importance of scaling deep before scaling wide.

He joined Tech Mahindra Foundation in 2016 as the chief operating officer and conceptualised the Foundation’s flagship Skill Development Program (SMART), which is one of the largest urban skill development programs in India and has been furthering the vision of the foundation, “Empowerment through Education”.

Chetan has served as a jury member of the FICCI Excellence in Higher Education Awards, and has been part of their Skill Development Committee. He has also been a member of the Curriculum Reform Committee constituted by the Government of Delhi for transforming education in Delhi Government schools.

Economist, Co-Founder at {X}KDR Forum

Dr Ajay Shah

Artist & Professor, Former Provost, Anant National University

Dr Anunaya Chaubey

CEO, Pratham Education Foundation

Dr Rukmini Banerji

Social Entrepreneur, Founder - Impulse NGO Network

Hasina Kharbhih

Co-founder, Indian School of Democracy

Hemakshi Meghani

Chief Advisor - India, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)

Hisham Mundol

CEO and Senior Executive Coach

J. RajaGopal 

Raj is a seasoned management consultant with over 35 years of experience, collaborating with marquee clients globally across various industries and organisational levels. He has held significant roles as the managing director of KPMG Consulting (India) and Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC). Additionally, Raj has held two global roles at TCS as head of its Life Sciences & Healthcare Practice and the Global Consulting Practice. Known for his exceptional leadership and people empowerment skills, Raj boasts a proven track record in talent identification and development. He has successfully coached numerous individuals into leadership positions, focusing on guiding leaders through career transitions globally, including expats in India and Indian managers abroad.

Raj is the visionary behind Coach4Good, a groundbreaking sustainable coaching platform for social organisations in India. With over 750 hours of coaching experience with individuals and groups, he is passionately dedicated to helping people “Be the best they can be.” Beyond his professional achievements, he has served as a board member of the Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF, New York). Raj is a sought-after speaker at prestigious international and national forums and currently serves as the Class Secretary for the Harvard AMP class 114. Raj is a Chartered Accountant & Company Secretary from India, Certified Management Accountant from the UK, an MBA from the US and has completed the Advanced Management Program from the Harvard Business School.

Co-founder, Iamgurgaon

Latika Thukral

Founder and Chairperson, Universal Team for Social Action and Help (UTSAH)

Miguel Queah

Founder DESTA Research LLP

Mihir Mathur

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 Program 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 modelling. Mihir currently works as a consultant with TERI, He is also visiting faculty at many well known Indian Educational Institutions.

Founder-Trustee and Director, QUEST

Nilesh Vishnu Nimkar

Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy

Noshir Dadrawala

Noshir is CEO of the Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy (CAP), through which he offers compliance-related advisory services 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 grantmakers to start-ups.

Drawing upon more than three and a half 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 recognised, as is his deep understanding of compliance within philanthropy.

His current international affiliation includes serving as a member of 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), the Resource Alliance, and also Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium (APPC).

In India, he serves as a trustee of the Forbes Marshall Foundation, Everest Industries Foundation, Collective Good Foundation, G. J. Kapoor Foundation, Bharatiya Samaj Seva Kendra, Ashta No Kai Foundation, Make a Wish Foundation and the Bombay Community Trust. He is also a member of the audit committee of the Akshay Patra Foundation.

Noshir has authored several resource books and is currently an active blogger on compliance-related issues for NPOs. He is also a speaker at many local and international conferences and guest faculty at leading business schools.

Founder & Chief Executive at Arpan

Pooja Taparia

Pooja Taparia is Founder and Chief Executive of Arpan, a globally recognized, award winning NGO working towards the elimination of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) in India. Based in Mumbai, with a team of over 100 dedicated professionals, Arpan is India’s largest NGO providing CSA Prevention and Intervention services for both children and adults. Pooja is a member of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) and has received numerous awards for her work on Child Abuse, including the Inspire Award, the Astitwa Award, the Architects of the Future Award and the Karmaveer Puraskar Award.

Co-founder, Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions

PR Ganapathy

PR Ganapathy supports social entrepreneurs making a difference to the next billion. He is a an Executive Consultant to Teach for India, and was formerly South Asia Regional Director for Stanford Seed, the President of Villgro, and co-founder of three organisations: the Menterra Social Impact Fund, Haqdarshak (a civic-tech social enterprise), and Gridstone Research (a financial information company in the US). 

He is a graduate of IIM Ahmedabad, and Hindu College, Delhi University and worked at Infosys and the Tata Group in India and the US before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey.

Co-founder and CEO, EkStep Foundation

Shankar Maruwada

Founder & CEO, RTLWorks

Sudarshan Rodriguez

Sudarshan Rodriguez is a development professional with multi-disciplinary backgrounds in disaster management, environmental sciences, environmental economics, policy, and environmental law. Until recently he was Programme Director at Mahatma Gandhi Academy of Human Development (MGAHD) a center of the Tata Institute of social sciences, Mumbai located in Nagaland focusing on Livelihoods and Social Entrepreneurship. He has since then worked in several locations with a range of civil society groups on interdisciplinary aspects of natural resource and environmental management.  Since 2010 he has been trained under Dr. Monica Sharma in the Conscious Full-Spectrum Response Approach, a transformational leadership approach based on universal values and ethics.

Partner, Career Coach, Quadrangle

Surabhi Bikhchandani

An alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and St. Stephen’s College, Surabhi has over 25 years of experience largely in Recruitment Consulting and recently in Career Coaching. Leading the Executive Search practice at Quadrangle, she has successfully closed many leadership positions for her clients that include start-ups and social purpose organisations. Her focus is on detailed assessments of candidates to get the right organisation culture fit. Surabhi has been associated with ILSS since its inception. She is an advisor to Project Udhyam that is helping build rural entrepreneurship in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. She is a certified Career Coach (Nov 2018- Erickson International ACSTH Certified) with a mission to make her clients experience a positive transformation.

Feminist Writer, Publisher, Activist

Urvashi Butalia

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.

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

Venkatesam Eshwara

Managing Trustee, We, The People Abhiyan

Vinita Singh

Looking back: I can identify three positive shifts in the last decade:

1. The development sector seems to be regaining the focus on human empowerment and building agency. Away from an obsession with service delivery. Yes, the development sector can truly bring services effectively to people, possibly much better than the govt. But I feel that we had got limited by this. I am glad that in the last decade various models and methods of empowering people with knowledge and skills have been adopted. This will play a big role in unleashing human potential.
2. Human rights and the constitutional framework are being recognised as fundamental to development efforts. There is far more interest in recognising and building connections with Constitutional rights with the varied development issues we work on.
3. There are just so many more young people coming into this sector. Bright and committed people who may either join the sector full time or intern and spend some months in the sector. In both cases, these young people gain lifelong learning and insights. And we gain a wealth of new thinking and hands on the ground.

Looking ahead: Over the next 10 years, I would like to see a conversation on the matter of scale: what are the opportunities and limits of scale? Can we achieve deep impact and large scale? How? What kind of models respect and encourage diversity?

I would also like to have more conversations on how those with economic privilege could be sensitised and more involved in development efforts. And, in education, I would like more focus on building the ability of teachers and students to fully live our rights while respecting the rights of others.