MENTORSHIP AT ISDM

Joint Director, SEARCH & Advisor, Tata Trusts

Anand Bang is a medical doctor and public health practitioner. He works with the Society for Education, Action & Research in Community Health (SEARCH), a non-profit working in the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra for the past 14 years on health service delivery, training, research and advocacy for influencing policy in the field of tribal health, mother/newborn & child health, chronic diseases and substance abuse. He is also Advisor to Tata Trusts, where he helps in defining strategy, and Advisor, Health to the Chief Minister, Maharashtra for projects, policies and partnerships in the social sector.

Founder & Director, Shakti Foundation

An engineer-MBA by qualification, Anurag has more than 25 years of experience in diverse fields–from tennis coaching to selling pagers, internet and mobile connections; from advising governments on public-private partnerships to designing and implementing CSR programs. He is the Founder-Director of Shakti Foundation which broadly operates in rehabilitation of children with special needs, alternative livelihood development for women, environment and sustainability, and remedial education and life skill development for children. Widely recognised for its varied, multi-sectoral, high impact and quickly scalable initiatives, Shakti Foundation and allied projects have received phenomenal recognition from independent quarters besides the stakeholders they directly impact.

CEO, Apnalaya

Arun Kumar is the CEO of Apnalaya–an organisation that works with the disadvantaged to overcome social, political and economic barriers and help them lead a better quality of life. He has worked with SPOs in the field of social development/education/child rights for over two decades. Through the lens of social justice, he has engaged with issues of marginalisation, both in urban and rural spaces. He has also developed programs and strengthened organisations invested in holistic development of communities on the margins. Strategising, envisioning, enabling and managing teams and partnerships at state and national levels, and evaluation of programs have been his broad areas of work. In his free time, Arun writes on social development issues and has authored a few books and articles.

Country Director, Pathfinder International

Daniel Sinnathamby is the Country Director for Pathfinder in India. Of Sri Lankan origin, Daniel is a development and humanitarian professional with 30 years of strategic leadership and management experience with agencies in Asia and Africa. Prior to Pathfinder International, Daniel worked with Oxfam for 9 years as a Regional Program and Humanitarian Manager in Asia and Southern Africa. He was also Country Director for Oxfam in the Philippines, Mozambique and Angola, and Leadership Advisor for Oxfam in Indonesia. Prior to Oxfam, Daniel worked for CARE USA for 17 years, managing diverse projects and country teams in Asia and Africa. He served as Country Director for Lesotho and South Africa, Assistant Country Director at CARE in India, one of CARE’s most complex and significant country operations, and Deputy Regional Director for Asia. His work has had impact in 28 countries.

Entrepreneur Coach, Social Impact Advisor & Co-Host of WorkWisePod

Deepak Menon is an Executive Coach, Social Impact Advisor and Co-Host of WorkWisePod focusing on entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs and small business owners. He gets inspired by entrepreneurs with a sense of mission–both from the social impact space and the commercial world. He takes pride in coaching those whom he calls ‘Purposeful Entrepreneurs’–who build something grander than themselves to achieve sustainable growth with ease and joy. Deepak helps develop their leadership potential, design a trusting work culture, and resolve complex strategic problems. He guides entrepreneurs by combining three methods: Systems Thinking & Systems Design, Self-Managed Organisations, and Inner Mastery for Leadership Development.

Board Member, Under The Mango Tree

Kannan Gopalakrishnan has 20+ years of corporate experience in Consumer Goods and FMCG in general management, marketing, sales and distribution and retail. He leads rural/agriculture initiatives and is part of the healthcare and micro-enterprises initiatives at Social Venture Partners. Earlier, he was Retail Director for Nokia India, and MD of Adidas Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia for nearly 14 years. He specialises in consumer insights, brand building and retail, business strategy and execution for growth and profitability, change management, and developing top & extended leadership. He also teaches Social Entrepreneurship at ISDM.

Founder, Mantra4Change

Khushboo Awasthi is the co-founder of Mantra4Change, a social enterprise that works to improve the quality of education in low-income schools, serving the first-generation learners from underprivileged sections of society. Founded in 2013 by a team of committed and passionate individuals and growing in strength, Mantra4Change believes in the need for an association of like-minded people and organisations to inspire action and sustain change efforts. It aims to create a better world with equal opportunities for all with quality and equity in education.

Co-founder, Social Synergy Foundation

Kushagra Merchant is the Co-Founder of Social Synergy Foundation. He works with small to medium-sized non-profits and grant-based old-fashioned institutional donors to provide organisational development support. He has been in the management consulting profession since 2007, and has experience in strategy consulting, organisational restructuring & development. Before he founded Social Synergy, Kushagra was a Management Consultant at Monitor Group and Accenture. Having worked in both corporate as well as social sector organisations, he believes strongly that the leadership and management that social sector organisations need are different from that in the corporate sector since the purposes that drive them are different.

Founder, Healing Fields Foundation

Mukti Bosco, Co-Founder of Healing Fields, has utilised her deep understanding of rural communities and their needs to pioneer a series of community-driven innovations in health and women empowerment. Mukti's 20-yr journey developing community health and empowerment began with one of the first micro-insurance programs in India and has expanded to include education, health services and livelihood development. Today, Mukti leads a preventative health education program that reaches over 6 million families in India. She is working to enable women’s agency in order to amplify the ability to access and hold health systems accountable for 300 million people in India by 2030. Mukti has presented papers at many national and international seminars and conferences, including the Clinton Global Initiative. Mukti is an Ashoka Fellow and was named the Woman Social Entrepreneur of the year 2009 by MSDS. Besides speaking at the Annual Mayo Clinic’s Transform Conference, she was also a panellist at the World Economic Forum in New Delhi.

CEO, Grameen Foundation

Prabhat Labh is the CEO of Grameen Foundation India, an innovator in the use of digital technology to advance financial inclusion. He is an international development expert with over two decades of experience in leading programs and initiatives across 20 countries in Asia, Africa and North America. Prabhat previously designed and led programs at The MasterCard Foundation that focused on access to savings services for low-income populations. Combining insights from the fields of sociology, behavioural economics and technology, he developed a coherent strategy that succeeded in extending access to savings services for millions of people across 17 countries in Africa. Earlier, Prabhat served as the Senior Technical Advisor for CARE USA’s Pan-Africa microfinance initiative, ‘Access Africa,’ where he provided technical assistance to more than a dozen country programs in Asia and Africa. He has also served on the faculty of the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, where he focused on the development of youth-led microenterprises and rural industries.

Executive Director, SeSTA

Pradyut Bhattacharjee is the Executive Director of Seven Sisters Development Assistance (SeSTA)–a premier development organisation of North-East India since 2015. He is an Engineer by education and has been a development professional for the past 18 years, leading teams and projects during his stint with Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) in Jharkhand & Chhattisgarh. He has varied experience of promoting & nurturing women’s collectives, grooming young professionals, and organisation development processes. Pradyut is also an empanelled National Resource Person of NRLM supporting State Rural Livelihood Missions (SRLMs) all across North-Eastern states. He has extensive experience of working on institution building, social mobilisation and sustainable livelihoods. He has worked as CEO of one of the largest women’s cooperatives in Jharkhand, working on input and output linkages. Pradyut has been engaging with the rural poor under different projects in collaboration with APPI, ITC, TATA Trusts, UNDP, TWC, IFAD, TRIFED, WFP, MORD, NRLM and the local administration in several areas of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and the North-East.

Co-Founder & CEO, Agrasar

Prerit Rana leads Agrasar, a non-profit social impact organisation working with the disadvantaged communities in India for attaining equitable access to education, and safe schooling opportunities. Having worked for a telecom company as an engineer, he quit in 2006 in the pursuit of a more "meaningful career" and joined a non-profit organisation as a full-time volunteer. In the initial days of Agrasar, Prerit had also worked as a consultant for the Government of India and various corporates and SPOs. In Agrasar, Prerit is more like a mentor to the team than a CEO and supports the organisation wherever needed. He was also selected for the coveted Acumen Fellowship in the year 2014.

Co-founder, Lend A Hand India

Raj Gilda is a banker-turned-social entrepreneur. He is the Co-Founder of Lend A Hand India, an NGO focused on providing vocational education in secondary schools in India. Raj's journey in the world of skilling began as a son of a small kirana (grocery) store owner as an ‘intern’ to his father at the age of 9, learning invaluable skills–right from sweeping the floor and managing cash to handling customers. The same trend continued with Raj selling life insurance policies to partly pay for his studies. Raj has been instrumental in launching an innovative internship program for higher secondary government school students, placing them with small and micro-enterprises across 4 states covering 10,000+ students. He has worked across Asia, Europe and North America in the fields of education, banking, insurance, and IT. Prior to leaving the corporate sector in 2011 to focus full-time on Lend A Hand India, he spent 10 years in New York working with Citibank and Deloitte Consulting. Raj was appointed by the Government of India as a General Body Member of the National Skill Development Agency (NSDA) from 2014-17.

Secretary General and CEO of WWF-India

Ravi Singh is the Secretary General and CEO of WWF-India since 2003. Prior to this, he was the General Manager and Head, Multi National Corporates, Deutsche Bank, Mumbai. He started his career as a Lecturer of History in Bhagat Singh College, Delhi University, later joining The Chartered Bank (now Standard Chartered Bank) in 1976 and Deutsche Bank in 1985. Beside his professional achievements in the corporate sector, Ravi has been involved in conservation-related issues since 1976, and has been a member of several conservation organisations, including WWF and the BNHS. He has participated in several national fora including the Standing Committee of the Indian Board of Wildlife, served as a member of the Board of Directors of IIFM, and in Wildlife Boards of various states in India. He was the Vice-President of the Himalayan Club and one of the founder members of the Eco-Tourism Society of India.

CEO, Save the Children India

Sudarshan Suchi is Save the Children’s Chief Executive Officer. He is a seasoned civil society leader with three decades of local to global experience in academics, development and corporate setting; and, an authority in participatory practices to empower communities to lead transformation. An alumnus of St. Stephens College, Delhi and Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Sussex, UK, Sudarshan comes with the core competency of conceptualising development programs, development-based business models, efficient resource mobilisation, establishing partnerships, collaboration and coalitions towards issues that impact children’s fair access to basic human rights. He has worked in leadership positions with eminent organisations like Reliance Foundation, Reliance Life Sciences, Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) and National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). Prior to joining Save the Children, Sudarshan was the Secretary General at SOS Children’s Villages of India. He also brings in grass-root experience from his association with NGOs like Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development (SPWD), Udyogini and Udayan Centre for Collaborative Learning.

Chief People Officer, Azim Premji Foundation

Sudheesh Venkatesh is the Chief People Officer of Azim Premji Foundation and serves on the board of management of Azim Premji University. He is the Regional President–South of the National Human Resource Development Network (2019-21) and serves on its National Board. He was earlier the Shared Services Lead for Tesco's People & Payroll program in the UK. Prior to this, he headed Human Resources for Tesco in India. He started his career with Asian Paints where he was instrumental in setting up the training function. He has also worked on an assignment on ‘Organisation & Strategy’ with Booz Allen & Hamilton (now Strategy&). Sudheesh also co-edited the NHRD journal on 'Education, Employability and Employment' and is often invited to speak on education and people matters.

Founder-Director, Viridus Social Impact Solutions

Sujatha Rao is Founder-Director at Viridus Social Impact Solutions. She works in the areas of education, technology and organisation development. Over the last two decades, her interest and research have been in studying how SPOs can be designed in ways that empower human agency and enhance organisational impact. She has worked in and consulted widely in the areas of organisational development, leadership, executive development, and in vocational and school education across private, not-for-profit and public sectors both in India and overseas. Sujatha has taught at the University of Western Sydney, University of Sydney, Azim Premji University. She is currently a member of the Academic Working Group at ISDM, teaching ‘Perspectives on Organisations’, and has been guiding the academic team on the Bricolage.

Founder and Innovation Artist, Marketing Unplugged

Passionate about the role of marketing in the social sector, Suman Srivastava teaches ‘Marketing and Communication’ at ISDM. He is the Founder and Innovation Artist at Marketing Unplugged, and the author of the book, Marketing Unplugged: Spotting the Elephants in the Room (2016). Suman has been the CEO of Euro RSCG India, and the Vice Chairman & Chief Strategy Officer of the FCB-Ulka Group in India. He has taught at IIMs in Ahmedabad & Bangalore, ISB Hyderabad, IITs at Bombay and Kharagpur, and MICA. He has also run workshops for Microsoft, Intel, Reckitt Benckiser, Max New York Life, Dainik Bhaskar, Raymond, Daikin and Bharat Petroleum. Suman has been involved with the social sector for the past decade as a trustee on the boards of 3 NGOs, and as an advisor to several others.