Chief Executive Officer, Kaivalya Education Foundation & Piramal Foundation

Aditya Natraj

Looking back: In the last decade the most positive development in my view is that Indian companies through CSR and Indian citizens through strategic philanthropy are beginning to fund Indian development much more versus international development aid. In the previous decades international organisations supported Indian development a lot more.

Looking ahead: I would love to see this trend continue and for philanthropy and CSR to get more strategic and support improvement of government programmes through skills, innovations, audits and systems. The total CSR plus philanthropy amount is less than one percent of what government spends and so it must be used to leverage efficiency of government expenditure by 10-50 percent rather than creating parallel systems.

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, A.T.E. Chandra Foundation Chairman, Bain Capital

Amit Chandra

Amit Chandra is the Chairman of Bain Capital, Mumbai, and a philanthropist. He is or has been a trustee of the Tata Trusts, a founder/board member of Ashoka University, a board member of Give India and The Akanksha Foundation. Amit is also a member of the advisory boards of Bridgespan India, the Centre for Social Impact & Philanthropy, and Swades Foundation.

In Bain Capital, Amit was a part of the firm’s leadership team in Asia. Prior to this, he spent most of his professional career at DSP Merrill Lynch. Amit was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2007 and was on the Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy list by Forbes in 2016, along with his wife Archana.

Co-Founder & CEO, Haqdarshak

Aniket Doegar

Aniket Doegar is the CEO and co-founder of Haqdarshak, the first-ever enterprise to digitize welfare schemes on a single platform and provide application support to beneficiaries of these schemes in low-income regions. They have raised awareness and understanding of schemes for more than 300,000 citizens with a portfolio of 6,000 schemes digitized in 15+ Indian languages. The team comprises 5,000+ women entrepreneurs and full-time members working

across 20 Indian states. Aniket was previously a Teach For India fellow, and has worked with the Gyan Prakash Foundation and Indus Action. He is also an Acumen India Fellow 2018.

Aniket is an alumnus of SRCC, Delhi and has also been selected for Forbes 30 under 30, Asia.

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.

Board Director, Thermax Limited Board Member, Teach for India

Anu Aga

Anu Aga began her industry career in Thermax in 1985. In ‘91, she took charge of the company’s Human Resources function. In 1996 after her husband Rohinton Aga passed away, the Board appointed her as the Executive Chairperson of the Thermax Group and two years later she continued as Non-Executive Chairperson. She retired as Chairperson in October 2004. As Chairperson, Ms. 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 is also instrumental in driving a high performance culture. Recently she retired as the Director on the Board of Thermax and also from chairing the Thermax Foundation.

Mrs. Aga now spends more time for social causes and travelling. 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 on the board.

CEO - Azim Premji Foundation, Chief Sustainability Officer - Wipro

Anurag Behar

Anurag has been engaged with efforts to improve education in India for the past sixteen years. He has been a vocal advocate for the critical importance of public systems, in particular the public education system. His many years in business have given him an insider’s view into both the possibilities and limits of markets. For the past few years he has also been engaged with environmental and ecological issues. He writes widely, including a fortnightly column for the newspaper Mint.

Anurag has earlier played leadership roles in business. As the CEO of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering, he led the business from being No. 20 in the world to being the No. 1 in 5 years. The business has operations in Europe, India, Brazil, US and China. He has been responsible for many corporate functions for Wipro including Brand, Quality and Innovation. In the early part of his career he was part of the team that built the leadership position of Wipro GE Healthcare in South Asia.

He continues to be associated with Wipro, providing oversight to the social and ecological initiatives of the Wipro Group, as its Chief Sustainability Officer. He is a member of Wipro’s Group Executive Council.

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

Arun Maira

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.

Founder - CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW)

Arunabha Ghosh

Arunabha Ghosh is a public policy professional, adviser, author, columnist, and institution builder. As the founder-CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW),he has led CEEW to one of South Asia’s leading policy research institutions (seven years in a row); and among the world’s 20 best climate think-tanks in 2013, 2014 and 2016. Arunabha advises governments, industry, civil society and international organisations around the world. This has included India’s Prime Minister’s Office, several ministries and state governments.

Philanthropist, Founder-CEO, Central Square Foundation

Ashish Dhawan

Ashish Dhawan worked for twenty years in the investment management business and ran one of India’s leading private equity funds, ChrysCapital. In June 2012, he started CSF to pursue evidence driven and innovation led system reform in school education. He is also the founder of two new organisations to address the talent gap in the social sector – ISDM and ILSS. Ashish has also created the Foundation for Economic Development (FED) to focus on agricultural policy reform, and 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 has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a dual Bachelor’s (BS/BA) degree from Yale University. He is on the Chair of India Advisory Board of Harvard Business School and is a member of Yale’s Development Council.

Head of Outreach, PRS Legislative Research

Chakshu Roy

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 indepth 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

Development Expert/Public Policy Advocate/Author/Leadership Trainer

Dr. R Balasubramaniam

Having embarked on his journey in the development sector by living and working for several years among remote forest based tribal communities in the southern Indian district of Mysuru, Dr. R Balasubramaniam (Balu) is a widely respected development activist, leadership trainer, thinker and writer. After his MBBS, he earned his MPhil in Hospital Administration & Health Systems Management from BITS, Pilani. He has a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University. His living habits were greatly influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and at the age of 19, he founded the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement based on the principles of Ahimsa, Satya, Seva and Tyaga. He has spent more than three decades of his life in the service of the rural and tribal poor in the forests of India. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement, a public policy think tank in India.

Dr Balu embodies a rare blend of grassroots and macro perspectives and policy through his multi-faceted experience of more than three decades. He is a Tata Scholar, a Mason Fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Hauser Center for Civil Society, Harvard University. He was the Head and Visiting Professor of the Vivekananda Chair, University of Mysore twice.

He is currently a visiting professor at Cornell University, USA and at IIT-Delhi, India where he teaches courses on Leadership and Human Development. He coaches and mentors senior leaders in the non-profit, corporate, government and educational sectors globally, apart from running leadership workshops for people from these sectors. He is the Chairman of the Social Stock Exchange Advisory Committee set up by SEBI. He is currently the Member-HR in the Capacity Building Commission of the Government of India.

He has authored seven books, both in Kannada and English. More about him, his work and books are at www.drrbalu.com

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 & CEO, SaveLIFE Foundation

Piyush Tewari

Piyush is the Founder and CEO at SaveLIFE Foundation (SLF), a non-profit organisation committed to improving road safety and access to emergency medical care across India. SLF is best known for forgetting India a Good Samaritan Law that insulates lay rescuers of injured victims from systemic harassment and intimidation. It is also credited with delivering a dramatic 30 per cent drop in fatalities last year on one of India’s most dangerous roads, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, with plans to make it 100 percent fatality-free by 2021

Co-Founder, QYON

Preeti Mann

Preeti is a social anthropologist. She is an alumna of the University of Delhi and the University of Oxford, where she completed her doctorate on a Rhodes Scholarship. She has extensive research, teaching and applied work experience in development. Her experience ranges from working in the field with locals, alongside grassroots outfits, to working with international aid organisations in the US. She was a full time academic in Delhi and recently helped set up the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy at Ashoka University. Her areas of interest are local knowledge, social change, identity, wellbeing and development.

Founder & Director, Indian School of Development Management (ISDM)

Ravi Sreedharan

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.

Co-Founder, QYON

Saurabh Mittal

Saurabh is an alumnus of IIT Delhi and Said Business School, University of Oxford, where he was a British Chevening Scholar. He has over two decades of experience consulting with Fortune 500 firms and has lived and worked across multiple continents including a nonprofit entrepreneurial stint in Europe. After moving to the foothills of the Himalayas a few years back, he turned to leadership development, mentoring and coaching young entrepreneurs and works extensively with impact entrepreneurs in the Himalayan region. He is a trained leadership and life coach and his areas of interest are social entrepreneurship, conscious capitalism, ethics of profiteering and values based leadership frameworks. Saurabh serves on the boards of many educational institutions, including the technology business incubator Catalyst and a number of start-ups.

Managing Director Central Square Foundation

Shaveta Sharma Kukreja

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 Vantage (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. 

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.

Founder & CEO, Indus Action

Tarun Cherukuri

Tarun Cherukuri is the Founder CEO of Indus Action, a public policy do-tank in India. Indus Action’s mission to enable vulnerable families, sustainable access to legislated rights. He is passionate about community organising, active citizenship and system leadership to realise social justice goals in India. He has served in multiple roles at TeachForIndia (Fellow, City Director, Advisory Board Member) during the last decade. He graduated from Harvard Kennedy School in 2013 and is a 2019 Obama Foundation Fellow. 

Founder, Jyothirgamaya Foundation

Tiffany Brar

Tiffany completed her B.Ed in Special Education with a focus on visual impairment and set up Jyothirgamaya Foundation in 2012. with a mission to empower and support underprivileged blind and visual impaired. Jyothirgamaya provides training that helps them overcome the obstacles faced in their daily lives as well as ensure the imparting of skills that will help them to discover and pursue their passions. This education paves their way for gainful employment, leading to the students integrating into the mainstream and thus, earning respect and gaining self-confidence and dignity.

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.