Shraddha Deo is a development sector professional and psychologist with over 15 years of experience in mental health, education, CSR and social impact. She is currently a Lead Consultant at Atma, supporting organisations in strengthening strategy, systems, and long-term sustainability. She previously served as CEO of SNEH Foundation for 8.5 years, and has contributed to policy and systems-level change, having served on the state-level Mental Health Core Committee in Maharashtra. She also founded 'The Vent,' a mental health platform aimed at making emotional well-being more accessible and stigma-free.

Slesha Shah is a development professional with experience in livelihoods, skilling, strategy, program design, management, and impact measurement. At Sambhav Foundation, she designs and strategizes programs focused on women’s economic empowerment, employability, entrepreneurship, and sustainable livelihood pathways. Previously, she worked with CSRBOX on impact assessments and capacity-building initiatives for nonprofit organizations. She holds postgraduate degrees in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and Environmental Science, with an academic foundation in Life Sciences. Her research interests include women’s agency, gender-responsive skilling, workforce participation, and livelihood ecosystems that support long-term economic empowerment.

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.

Sonal Jain is a development professional with over 18 years of experience across the nonprofit and public sectors. She has led programmes in education, adolescent lifeskills, skilling, and livelihoods, working with organisations such as Unnati, Room to Read, and the Ministries of Women and Child Development and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship. As the Program Lead of Sambhav Foundation, she leads strategy, programme design, partnerships, fundraising, and impact. Her research interests include youth skilling, agency-building, workforce participation, and the intersection of gender, skilling, and employment pathways for young people.

Sreya R Menon is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Data Science and Social Impact (CDSSI), Indian School of Development Management, with over four years of experience in evidence-based research. A quantitative researcher specialising in public policy, gender, and impact, she co-leads research on data maturity among social sector organisations at the Centre. She authored the first State of the Sector Report on Data Maturity of Social Sector Organisations, based on a study of 360 organisations. She has collaborated with government stakeholders and contributed to peer-reviewed publications. Her expertise spans programme design and stakeholder engagement, with a focus on organisational capacity, data systems, and development management.

Srishti Sharma leads the Social Impact Practice at ON PURPOSE, a practice she has built since joining as the firm’s first employee. She trained in sociology, started in corporate communications, and moved to social impact by choice. That path matters: she brings integrated communications thinking to causes she genuinely cares about, across mental health, climate, education, financial inclusion, SRHR, and public health. Her work spans across development and corporate sectors with the likes of UNICEF, UNDP, USAID, the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, ADB, MacArthur Foundation, GIZ, and Dasra, among others. She specialises in category creation: establishing the conditions for a public conversation before one exists. She helped put indoor air quality on India’s public health agenda before the country had a national air quality index. She established senior living as a category in India. She is currently making the case, at national media scale for the first time, that lived experience counts as expertise in mental health. Her clients stay. She has been named IPRCCA Young PR Professional of the Year (2021) and ET Kaleido Young PR Professional of the Year (2026), and sits on the ICCO Next-Gen Board.

Dr. Sudha Kothari, fondly known as Sudha Tai, is one of India’s recognised voices on Self-Help Group (SHG) federations and women-led institutions. A sociologist by training, she brings a rare combination of deep grassroots experience, institution-building and sector leadership.

In 1993, she co-founded Chaitanya, a pioneering organisation that helped shape the SHG federation movement in Maharashtra. Its work subsequently informed and partnered with initiatives such as Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal (MAVIM) and the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), contributing to the evolution of thinking and practice around financial inclusion, women-led enterprise and community-owned institutions.

Over the years, Sudha Tai has served on the boards and governing bodies of institutions including Friends of Women’s World Banking (FWWB), Sa-Dhan, MicroSave, YASHADA and APMAS, bringing her grassroots perspective to wider sector and policy conversations.

She currently serves as Founder & Managing Trustee of Chaitanya and continues to contribute to institutions including AFARM and Jnana Prabodhini.

Sumit Ghosh is Co-founder of Sankalp, an Indian social enterprise advancing the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 17. A postgraduate in Marketing & Finance and MCA-certified Independent Director, he has over three decades of senior management experience with Fortune 100 companies including P&G, Philips, New York Life Insurance, HDFC Life and Edelweiss Finance. He is a UGC-empanelled Professor of Practice, international mentor and researcher who has mentored 10,000+ people globally. His research on women entrepreneurship was published by NABARD, and his work on impact investment has been presented at leading forums, including G20. Sankalp received the PRTHVI Sustainability Award 2024. Sumit is author of Emotional Currency: The Truth About Emotions and Financial Decisions and mentors institutions in India and abroad.

Swati began her career as a corporate trainer with multinational companies before moving into dramatics, working extensively across India and the Middle East as a theatre trainer. She holds a Master's in International Relations from Italy and has backpacked across 30 countries. Returning to India, she entered the NGO sector through women's empowerment work, which drew her into direct, immersive engagement with artisan communities over the years that followed. This fieldwork became the foundation for MEDHA, her philosophy proposing hand-mediated, culturally rooted making as cognitive infrastructure. She founded an NGO where she also runs Sabhinayam, an inclusive theatre initiative that set a world record staging a performance entirely cast with visually challenged actors.

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.

Tanvi Lal is a Senior Program Officer at the India Country Office of the Gates Foundation. She works with the policy, communication, and partnerships team, with a focus on advancing inclusive economic opportunities. Prior to joining the Foundation, she worked at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) where she led the strategic communication and research impact team. Tanvi has a master's in International Development Studies from The George Washington University, a post graduate diploma from the Asian College of Journalism and a bachelor's in English Literature from the University of Delhi.

Tanya Gunjan is a sustainability professional with over seven years of experience spanning public-sector advisory, urban development, impact assessment, and institutional governance. Associated with the Indian School of Development Management, she works to strengthen governance for institutional impact and resilience. She has served as consultant to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and contributed to urban digital-governance initiatives under the National Urban Digital and Smart Cities Mission. Formerly with PwC, Tanya brings a systems-thinking lens to helping institutions translate frameworks into sustainable, measurable 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 holds a degree in Mathematics from St. Stephen’s College and an MBA from XIM Bhubaneswar.

Vaishali has worked in the development sector for the past decade. She brings grassroots experience and learnings on issues of child rights, violence against women, and education. She holds a Masters in Education from TISS, Mumbai, and is interested in law, caste, and gender.

Vaishnavi is a Senior Research Associate at the Global Knowledge Hub at the Indian School of Development Management, where she works on research and knowledge-building initiatives in the development sector. She has over eight years of experience across the development sector, with work spanning education, women’s collectives, sustainable agriculture, and philanthropy in India and the United Kingdom. She has worked with trusts, NGOs, and higher-education institutions, with experience across research, monitoring and evaluation, programme management, and organisational development.

She holds an MSc in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, and an MSc in Agribusiness Economics from the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics.

Vanitha Prabu is the Co-Executive Director of VOICE 4 Girls, India, and a development practitioner with over 18 years of experience in research, programme design, monitoring and evaluation, strategy and partnerships. Her work focuses on adolescent girls’ agency, gender-transformative approaches, leadership and ecosystem-level change. She has led and contributed to research and evidence-generation initiatives examining adolescent development, gender norms and girls’ leadership, and works at the intersection of research, programming and policy. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy.

Vijay serves as CHRO at HelpAge India, a leading nonprofit organisation committed to improving the quality of life of disadvantaged older persons through care, advocacy, and empowerment. With over two decades of experience across the nonprofit, humanitarian, and international development sectors, Vijay has held senior leadership roles with globally reputed organisations including ActionAid, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and ChildFund International. He partners closely with executive leadership and governing bodies to align people, culture, and organisational systems with organisational mission and strategic priorities. Vijay is recognised for successfully leading complex organisational transitions, shaping high-performing and values-driven workplaces, and strengthening governance, accountability, and institutional effectiveness across diverse and multi-stakeholder environments.

Vinita Gursahani Singh is the Founder and Managing Trustee of We, The People Abhiyan (WTPA), a non-profit promoting citizens participation in governance across India, established in 2010. She has facilitated hundreds of trainings that help marginalised communities use the constitutional and legal framework to solve problems in their own communities. Her journey in the social sector goes back to 1991, spanning rural livelihoods, women's and youth empowerment, fair trade, right to information, and governance. She writes and speaks widely on these themes, including at TEDx, and has been featured in The Hindu, Times of India, and The Print. She was honoured with the Social Excellence Alumni Award (2019) and named among Her Story's 100 Emerging Women Leaders.

Vinita Tyagi is a State Resource Group (SRG) Member in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, working on school education, teacher capacity building, and classroom practice under initiatives including NIPUN Bharat Mission and Mission Prerna. Her work focuses on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), teacher training, mentoring, competency-based learning, and academic support. She works closely with teachers and academic functionaries to strengthen child-centred, activity-based, and experiential teaching practices.

Vivek Pradeep Rana is a communications and reputation strategist with over 25 years of experience advising founders, boards, startups, venture funds, corporations, foundations, and public institutions across India and global markets. His work spans brand, public policy, stakeholder engagement, crisis management, leadership positioning, and impact investing. He is Managing Partner of Gnothi Seauton Advisors, a communications lab focused on purposeful storytelling. Vivek has worked with organisations including Sequoia, WestBridge, Acumen, Omidyar Network, IFC, the World Bank, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Adobe, Infosys, GSK, and the Ford Foundation. He has built and led teams of over 120 people and teaches at MICA, IIM Calcutta Innovation Park, and IIM Ahmedabad, drawing on formal training in public policy and business law.