Purnima Ramanujan is a development professional with 15 years of experience in education and policy research. She is currently Senior Lead – Research, Impact, and Learning at Transform Schools where she leads the organisation’s programme monitoring, evidence, and partnership agenda. Prior to Transform Schools, Purnima headed the Education, Child Protection and Skilling portfolio at Sambodhi and ASER Centre’s research unit. Her research spans early childhood and secondary education, school–community engagement, gender, life skills, school to work transitions and educational equity. She has led several large-scale longitudinal studies and impact evaluations in India in collaboration with UNICEF, the World Bank, UNDP, the University of Cambridge, University College London and Ambedkar University Delhi. Her publications address educational equity, early childhood education, community engagement, and mixed-methods research practice.

Kankana Trivedi is a programme and policy evaluation specialist with over seven years of experience in the social impact sector.Her work spans research, evaluation, and programme implementation, with a focus on sustainable development, livelihoods, climate action, and gender equity. She has led evidence-based programme design and institutional strengthening initiatives, working with government bodies, multilaterals, and communities to inform policy and improve programme outcomes.

Trisha Varma is a strategy, research and knowledge leader with over 25 years of experience across social impact, philanthropy, consulting and consumer insights. As Director of the Global Knowledge Hub at ISDM, she built and led its research and knowledge ecosystem for Development Management, including Centres of Excellence and the institution’s flagship sector convening, Dialogues on Development Management. Previously, she founded and led boutique insights and strategy consultancies, advising global organisations including P&G, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson across international markets, and headed P&G Baby and Feminine Care's Consumer & Market Knowledge division across Australasia, ASEAN and India. Her work centres on making sense of complex problems, connecting evidence to action, and building strategies and institutions for lasting impact.She is a Math major from St. Stephen's College and an MBA from XIM Bhubaneswar.

Vaishnavi Pawar brings over six years of experience in international development, working across sectors such as education, women’s collectives, and sustainable agriculture. She has worked with trusts, NGOs, and charities across India and the United Kingdom, contributing in areas including research, monitoring and evaluation, and programme management.

Swetha leads the Centres of Excellence at the Indian School of Development Management. The CoEs are driving knowledge and discipline building work across Philanthropy for Inclusive Development, Social Impact and Data Science.Swetha has 20 years’ experience in pedagogy design, leadership, and growth across the EdTech & development sectors and has had the opportunity to work in diverse contexts both within India and across SE Asia and Australia. She is currently on the board of two social purpose organisations working in the disability and inclusion space and one working in education in rural Assam. She has also been a LEAP fellow, helping organisations build evidence of their impact and strengthen their narrative.She has a Masters in Mathematics from IIT Madras and a Masters in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University.

Bikalp Chamola is an Assistant Professor at the School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, where he teaches in the MBA in Development Management and MA in Development programmes. He holds a PhD in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, where his doctoral research examined cross-sectoral collaborations in India's nonprofit sector.His current research centres on the long-term impact of nonprofits, using realist evaluation approaches to understand not just whether interventions work, but how and why they work across different contexts. He has also published on the ethics and epistemological limits of randomized controlled trials in development research. A mixed-methods researcher, he draws on household surveys, satellite data, interviews, and archival analysis in his work.

Prof. Ankur Sarin is a faculty in the Public Systems Group and Ravi J Mathai Center for Innovation in Education at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. His past works include investigations of the effects of social and economic inequality on welfare outcomes of children and understanding the influence of technology on the social and economic life of the marginalised. Recently, he has been working on making the Right to Education an instrument not only for increased access to education, but also one that promotes a more inclusive education system as part of the institute’s Right to Education Resource Center (www.rterc.in). He has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and prior to joining IIM-Ahmedabad, was a Researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, Princeton.

With over 20 years of diverse experience across general management, strategy, business development, operations, partnerships and programme management, Kakul has led innovative initiatives across education, telecom, aviation, financial services and vocational skilling, with a strong focus on impact and scale. Kakul led the setup of the Centre for Digital Governance under the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs and has also built skills organisations bringing global standards to India.

Arun Nathan is a Partner at Sattva Consulting, leading the Nonprofit Advisory practice. He has advised more than 100 non-profits and philanthropic institutions across India and the Global South on strategy, organisation design, fundraising and change management. An accredited change management coach with over 22 years across the social and corporate sectors, he has held CSR and Sustainability leadership roles at L&T Finance, Lifestyle International and the IDFC Group, and led philanthropy at the Jagtiani Foundation. He has taught at IRMA, TERI SAS and Shiv Nadar University, and is an alumnus of the London School of Economics and IRMA.

Dhruvi Shah is Executive Trustee and CEO of Axis Bank Foundation, which she joined in 2016, becoming CEO in 2020. Under her leadership the Foundation's Sustainable Livelihood Programme has reached 2 million rural households, with a roadmap to scale through Mission 4 Million by 2030. With over 25 years across banking, microfinance and development, she spent 18 years at ABN AMRO / RBS and was part of the team that set up RBS Foundation India. She is curator and author of The Book of Aspiration and advises NGOs and philanthropies on funding design and capacity building.

Kumar Madhu Sudan leads the Kilkari and Mobile Academy programmes at ARMMAN, bringing over 32 years of experience in the development sector. He has worked with CARE Inc., IntraHealth International, CARE India and BBC Media Action. For more than 12 years he has led the design, implementation, scale-up and management of mHealth initiatives across multiple states in India. His expertise spans programme leadership, digital health, health communication and technology-enabled interventions, focused on maternal, newborn and child health.

Dr. Aparajita Gogoi is an advocate for the rights of women and young girls who has driven systems change at scale through strategic norm-change initiatives. Under her leadership C3 has demonstrated that gender-based programs can be implemented at scale. A TEDx speaker, she was named by The Guardian as one of the world's 100 most inspiring women (2011) and featured by India Today as an Unsung Hero (2019). She holds a PhD in International Politics from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism.

Parikshit Luthra is Director for Policy & Government Partnerships at The Convergence Foundation, working with teams across the Foundation's partner organisations on policy reforms for economic growth and human capital development. Prior to TCF he was a Senior Anchor and Chief of Bureau at CNBC-TV18, a journalist and anchor for 20 years covering economic policy, business, politics, international affairs and the defence sector.

Saurabh Chopra is Senior Director, Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives at Central Square Foundation, working closely with central government stakeholders and leading engagements on the National Education Policy, NIPUN Bharat Mission, National Achievement Survey, DIKSHA and CBSE SAFAL. Prior to CSF he founded EnglishLeap, an online English learning application with two million users. He holds a B.Com from Shri Ram College of Commerce and an MBA from IIM Lucknow.

Dr. Garima Sharma is part of the Strategic Capacity Building vertical at ISDM, leading content development and curation for professional certificate programs. A development professional with over two decades of experience across the social sector, universities and private sector, she is UGC-NET qualified and has taught at the University of Delhi. She holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies. At ISDM she leads content for the Centre for Good Governance and has developed certificate programs in SPO Governance and Compliance Management and Results-Based Program Management.

Amrtha Kasturi Rangan is the Chief Operating Officer at A.T.E. Chandra Foundation, a strategic philanthropy that partners with governments, nonprofits and ecosystem organisations at scale. She has over 20 years of experience in philanthropy and development, including 13 years at Arghyam. She previously led A.T.E. Chandra Foundation's Water & Agriculture portfolio. Amrtha is a published author and has served as a peer reviewer for international journals on water governance and sustainable development.

Sonal Kapoor is the Founder and CEO of Protsahan India Foundation and an Ashoka Fellow, working to strengthen care and protection pathways for adolescent girls facing extreme poverty, migration and abuse. Trained in public health, child rights and business administration, she focuses on building the capacities of India's frontline caregiving workforce. What began with 43 girls in 2010 has grown by 2026 to reach over 96,000 marginalised girls across high-risk urban communities. Protsahan's CareVerse now trains thousands of frontline social workers across India.

With over 18 years of experience in the development sector, Aarti works extensively on strengthening governance, boards and leadership across Indian and international non-profits. She is part of the global pool of governance trainers with Medecins Sans Frontieres. With a focus on practical, sustainable governance, she helps organisations strengthen boards, clarify roles and build accountability.

Priya Subbaraman is Co-Founder and Director of Dhiraa SkillDev Foundation and a financial services professional with over three decades of leadership experience across Indian and global financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Kotak Mahindra Group and Standard Chartered Bank. Until mid-2023 she was Chief Regulatory Officer of the National Stock Exchange. She is faculty for ISDM's Certificate Program in SPO Governance and Compliance Management, holds a law degree, and is an associate member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India.