Meenu Venkateswaran
Meenu is an alumnus of Delhi School of Economics and IIM Bangalore and has over 30 years of experience with leading organizations in the corporate and social sectors.
She is co-founder and Board member of two not-for-profit organizations - Pravah and ComMutiny the Youth Collective. She is also part of the founding team of vartaLeap, a multi-sectoral coalition incubated by ComMutiny the Youth Collective to support the mission of Every Youth a Jagrik, and Every Space Nurturing Jagriks.
She is a Trustee of Spanda – a performing arts Trust set up by Ms Leela Samson. In 2018 she co-founded Indicult, a social enterprise which works with artisans and slow fashion designers to promote Indian crafts and hand made.
As CEO of Pravah (a youth development NGO) from 2005 - 2010, she led the strategy development process for the organization and its various programs, managed and nurtured a team of competent professionals, and provided oversight to all of Pravah’s programmes. She currently works part time with Pravah, supporting their fundraising and HR functions, mentoring social entrepreneurs who are part of their Changelooms programme, and several members of the Pravah senior leadership team. She has been actively involved with the design and implementation of innovative programs and curricula for organizations, adolescents, youth, teachers and youth facilitators. These include programmes that nurture leadership and build agency of young people, employability enhancing abilities beyond skills and HR and organisation development interventions.
She is co-author of ‘Ocean In A Drop – Inside Out Youth Leadership’ (Sage 2013). Other co-authors are Arjun Shekhar, Kamini Prakash and Ashraf Patel.
As an independent consultant, she has undertaken assignments with national and international organisations including Ashoka Innovators for the Public, Change Alliance, CRY Child Rights and You, ComMutiny the Youth Collective, CII, Fresh Water Action Network, South Asia, Global Health Strategies Institute, IPPF, Plan International, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and Vyaktitva.
