Team

Aditi is a graduate in Philosophy from Delhi University and a Postgraduate from the London School Economics in Public Policy, Philosophy and Development Studies. She has worked across the development sector with organizations such as HelpAge, Save the Children, and other smaller charities in India, and with Action Against Hunger and Teach Africa in the UK. She has 12 years of experience in Implementing community-based programs, Proposal writing, Communication, and fundraising. (Institutional and corporate).

Administration Executive

Afsar started his first job in 2009 with a BPO for inbound and outbound sales processes. He then worked with Wyra Knowledge Solutions as a Customer Care Executive and education counselor, also handling a team for education processes. Afsar has a B.Com. from Delhi University.

Manager, Marketing

Amita Wadhwani comes from a background in marketing and advertising, digital marketing, and communications. She holds a bachelor's degree in English Literature from Delhi University and an MBA degree from the DPC Institute of Management. Previously she was associated with World Animal Protection – an International NGO whose mission is to create a better world for animals. Before this, she worked with advertising agencies and handled brand building, marketing, and strategic planning for various top-notch brands. She is passionate about protecting animals and believe that animals should be off plates, a die- hard fan of William Shakespeare, and loves to upgrade skills in digital marketing, SEO, and new trends in marketing. When her phone rings, she takes one deep breath and smiles before answering. She can never start her day without doing half an hour of meditation. She loves London because it makes her feel like walking through history. Unique museums, coffee, Big Ben, and more -- all are incredible and beautiful.

Director, Research and Body of Knowledge - ISDM

Dr. Aruna Pandey  teaches  Research Methods, Overview on Social Purpose Organisations, Development and Environment  at ISDM Aruna comes with deep engagement in domains of Natural Resource Governance, Institution Building and Sustainable Livelihoods. In her 14 years of experiencing and co-creating social change with communities, Aruna has worked with institutions like BRLF, an autonomous society of Ministry of Rural Development - Government of India, TISS (Mumbai), SOAS - University of London, IIM - Ahmedabad, ISAP (New Delhi).  Her domain of expertise and interest are environmental governance, social research, education, innovation and Institution Building. She has received the Young Analyst Award by EU and DPG, the prestigious M. K. Tata Prize and the NTPC gold medal for her Masters dissertation and the Felix Scholarship Trust award for her PhD at SOAS on ‘Solidarity Economy: Negotiating claims, solidarity and dissent in India’, amongst others. Aruna also is a board member of Swechha - We for Change Foundation. At ISDM, Aruna leads the Knowledge and Research Centre. As faculty for ISDM’s post-graduate programme in Development Leadership, Aruna also co-leads and supports learning modules on Environment and Development, Systems Design for Social Interventions and Radical Transformation Leadership amongst many others.

Director, People Management.

Deeksha has over 20 years of experience of which significant time was spent with Sapient, where she held multiple senior management roles in the Human Resources (HR) domain ranging from talent acquisition and development and workforce planning and deployment. Her journey in the social sector started back in 2012 in Kenya with fundraising for various causes. On moving back to India, she formalised her transition to the social sector by first undertaking the ‘India Leaders for Social Sector’ - ILSS program. Deeksha holds a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A) from University Of Madras and a Bachelor Of Engineering (BE) from Thapar Institute.

Associate – Research

Devika is a postgraduate in Society and Culture from IIT Gandhinagar. During her masters, she worked on the social impacts of COVID-19 on different socio-economic groups, inter alia. She holds a bachelors in Economics, Sociology and Psychology from Mount Carmel College, Bangalore. She believes that her approach to research is interdisciplinary and uses her academic background to view social issues from multiple perspectives. Few of her research interests include geopolitics, diplomacy, public policy and international relations. She is a basketball and badminton player. She likes traveling, exploring cultures and people. She enjoys dancing and theatre.  

Senior Research Fellow

Dr. Ria Sinha has expertise in the areas of Climate Finance, Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS, Sustainable Finance, ESG with ten years of experience in research and academia. Ria holds a PhD in Sustainable Finance from TERI School of Advanced Studies (TERI SAS), New Delhi and is a Masters in Economics from University of Calcutta. She was an HSBC Scholar in TERI SAS. As a DAAD-German Indian Climate Change Dialogue Fellow, she has spent quite some time in Germany and presented her research at conferences held in Vienna, Berlin and Boston MA. She was also invited as an ICRIER Young Scholar by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Summer Institute, Massachusetts. She has previously worked with the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), Development Alternatives Group (DA) on various issues pertaining to taxation, climate finance, blue finance and resource efficiency. At present Ria is a Senior Fellow at Indian School of Development Management (ISDM) working on various sustainability issues, philanthropic funding and impact investments. She is also a Visiting Faculty at TERI SAS, New Delhi in the Department of Business and Sustainability teaching a course on Financing for Sustainability. Previously Ria has also been a consultant with EU Switch Asia and Department of Finance, University of Szczecin, Poland. She has various research articles, academic papers, book chapters, op-ed’s and reports to her credit.

Associate - Admissions & Outreach

Grishma Purewal graduated in 2020 with a degree in History and English Literature. Prior to joining ISDM, Grishma worked for a year at an EdTech company in their Admissions Consulting Division. She has now joined ISDM as an Associate in the Admissions and Outreach Department. Grishma has spent most of her life in Delhi and was born in Meerut. She likes reading, writing, trying new cuisines, and talking long, meandering walks.

Itisha is pursuing a Ph.D. in Education Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR). She has a keen interest in learning various aspects of research and undertaking collaborative research and intends to bring a positive outcome from her work. In her personal time, she loves to engage in numerous creative activities. Recently, she got married and shifted to Ghaziabad.

Jaskirat studied Business Economics during her undergraduate years but is also fascinated by everyday economics and human behavior. Questions of what people choose to do with resources as individuals and as a collective drove her to read development economics, in addition to managerial economics. She likes to interact with people, which was one of her motives to join the Young India Fellowship. She came out of YIF not only with connections but with a deeper understanding of the social sciences. As much as she was intrigued by the idea of a society driven by markets, where human potential can flourish, moral philosophy made her question what human potential is and ponder the issues of accessibility. From finding creative experiences to the intersection of academia and the development sector, she hopes to maintain a balance among her diverse interests in her future endeavors. At ISDM, Jaskirat works as an Associate with the Global Knowledge Hub. She also manages the communications and operations at the Centre of Philanthropy for Social Justice. Previously, she has assisted faculty in delivering management courses to the PGP-DM students and worked as a Research Associate with the Knowledge and Research Centre.

Over the last 20 years, Kamini has worked with a number of social purpose organizations, including Care India, Hope Project, Pravah and WSSCC. Social inclusion and non-discrimination have been recurring themes in her work. As Executive Director of the Hope Project, Kamini learnt first-hand the challenges of organisation building, and also gained an in-depth view of the myriad ways in which social exclusion impacts the lives of the poor. Her tenure at Pravah helped her build expertise in designing and implementing youth development programs, as well as leading research and impact evaluations of youth programs. Kamini has a Masters in Social Policy and Planning in Developing Countries from the London School of Economics. She is co-author of “The Ocean in a Drop: Inside – Out Youth Leadership” (SAGE Publications).

Chief Digital Officer

Kanwaljeet joined the ISDM family earlier this year to help realise the vision of a Digitally relevant and innovative ISDM 2.0 that is ready to embrace technology in all its aspects. Kanwaljeet is a professional with over twenty years of experience in technology and has worked for organisations like Capgemini, TCS, and Fidelity with significant onsite experience in USA and Europe. Over the last seven years, Kanwaljeet has worked with various start-ups, managed digital transformation projects, and also launched an e-commerce venture. He has a strong interest in contemporary technologies, has researched and published books on Blockchain. Kanwaljeet has completed PGCPM from IIMK and a Master’s degree from Bethel College, MN, USA.  

Kushagra Merchant  teaches Financial Management  at ISDM. Kushagra Merchant is the Founder of Social Synergy Foundation.  Kushagra provides organisation development support to organisations in impact investing, social enterprises as well as organisations in the development sector. 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. Kushagra is an engineer from Mumbai University and went on to do his PGDM from IIM Calcutta.

Lopamudra has been working in different domains within the development sector for the last 11 years. Her experience lies primarily in Communications, Advocacy and Dissemination in the domains of Environment, Child Rights and Protection and Public Health.  Before joining ISDM, Lopamudra spent close to 4 years in the Public Health sector working on advocacy with government departments, elected representatives and health influencers. She completed BA (Cons) English Literature from Miranda House, University of Delhi, and MSW from Department of Social Work, University of Delhi. Lopa (as she is addressed) loves to travel, cook, read and write.

Mallika is a postgraduate in Environment and Development from Dr. B.R Ambedkar University Delhi. During her Master’s she has worked on understanding the social aspects of Waste-water farming in Peri-Urban areas of Delhi and Human-Elephant Interaction in India. She enjoys baking desserts, going out to eat at restaurants, and spending time with dogs.

Manish worked for 8 years in the education start up space and has contributed in several ways in accounts and administration of reputed organizations – handling MIS, maintaining all official records including invoicing and payments, controlling inventory, issuing of purchase requisitions, vouchers and bookkeeping. He is trained in Tally, Taxation, Company law and MS Office programs. Manish has a B.Com and a Diploma in Computer Application from NIFA.

Maroof Khan began his career as an Assistant Store Manager in New Zealand after pursuing B.com. from M.J.P. Rohilkhand University. He returned to India after 2 years with a vision to make Indian societies as ‘Just and Equitable’ as he has seen during his time abroad. He joined Department of Social Work, Jamia Millia Islamia to pursue Masters in Social Work and went on to work with PRADAN to live up to his dream of working at the grassroots with some of the most vulnerable Scheduled Tribes of Jharkhand. Managing flagship projects like NRLM and CFT-MGNREGA and simultaneously coordinating several other thematic projects, Maroof has developed proficiency in Project Management and identified Women Collectives and Governance & Citizenship as his areas of interest. At ISDM, Maroof is the Programme Associate for PGP DL.

Mukund Marodia is a passionate educator, facilitator, and coach. He believes in enabling the agency of individuals & organisations by helping them reach their full-potential. He has 4 years of professional experience spanning across the corporate, government, and academic world. He is working as Manager, Strategic and Academic Affairs at the Indian School of Development Management, Noida. He has previously worked as a management and governance consultant with Bain & Company, The Boston Consulting Group, and the Government of Himachal Pradesh. He graduated from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University and pursued the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University. He collaborates with multiple award-winning international faculty members to design and deliver a diverse range of courses at leading Indian higher-ed institutions. He has directly taught and mentored 2000+ participants including senior civil servants, business executives, MBA students, liberal arts students in the last few years. Outside of work, he is a serial national-level quizzing champion, theatre enthusiast, and yoga practitioner.

Naghma has approximately 20 years of experience of working and consulting with Social Purpose Organisations and teaching at reputed institutions.  Her field experience has strengthened her teaching both graduate and post graduate students in Delhi School of Social Work, School of Planning & Architecture, Ambedkar University and University of Pittsburgh. Her forte is designing and facilitating learning experiences. Through her work with Pravah, she has mentored many young people and youth led organisations across the nations. Currently, she is part of the founding team and board of Rubaroo, Hyderabad and Trustee of Had Anhad, Indore. Both organisations working with adolescents and young people to empower them to be active citizens. Naghma is pursuing her PhD from Ambedkar University, Delhi and holds degrees in Clinical Psychology and Applied Development Psychology.   

Nilusha graduated from the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University in 2020 and started working as an Editor in Admissions Consulting Services at CareerLabs|BYJUS. She holds a Bachelor’s in Psychology, Economics, and Political Science from Osmania University. Previously, she was associated with non-profits like the Aga Khan Development Network and NGOs like SANG and Chhoti Si Asha. She’s passionate about advocating for mental health & accessibility. A language enthusiast and a tea connoisseur, she loves to read historic fiction in her free time!

Nivedita is the co-founder of Karghewale, a social enterprise that works with young artisan entrepreneurs across 13 states of India to enable and support their business ventures by providing access to services such as market linkage, access to finance, legal and compliance, training, workshops, design assistance etc. She was leading Gudi Mudi Khadi, the flagship project of WomenWeave Charitable Trust, an organization that aims at providing dignified livelihood to women weavers, spinners and ancillary workers from 2016-2020. WW’s mission is to overcome vulnerability of women artisans and works towards making handloom a profitable, fulfilling, and life-improving activity. Prior to joining WomenWeave, Nivedita was pursuing her post-graduate diploma in rural management from Institute of Rural Management, Anand. An engineer by accident and a development professional by choice, she lives with her 6 months old puppy named Dobby (ref. a handloom weave and not Dobby from Harry Potter). Her comfort food is red sauce pasta. She loves exploring places of historical importance and wandering through antique and craft shops.

Priti has worked as a clinician and a researcher for over 7 years.  She has led a number of outreach programmes and research studies in oral health. While working in public health, she felt the need to understand the development sector to be able to think and design in systems for ethical and sustainable social change. She began this exploration at ISDM as a student and now as a part of the research team. She feels strongly about issues around the ‘child-parent eco-system and volunteers for the same.  She completed her PGP in Development Leadership from ISDM, and Post-Graduate Diploma in Health Economics, Health Care Financing and Policy. She is a qualified Dentist having studied BDS and MDS (in Public Health Dentistry)

Priyanka graduated in English Literature from Indraprastha college For Women, University of Delhi; post which she entered the social sector with Teach For India joining them as a Fellow in 2011. The Fellowship turned out to be a great learning experience for her and she continued this journey as a Program Manager at TFI, coaching and mentoring more than 85 teachers and helping them undergo a personal transformation from college graduates to successful leaders. This Journey further continued as Priyanka joined the Akanksha Foundation as an Instructional Specialist coaching teachers and School Leaders. The desire to ground herself in a solid knowledge base and learning from experts and practitioners in the sector brought her to ISDM where she was a part of the first batch of PGPDL. Priyanka continues her journey at ISDM as a part of the Continuing Education Programme strategising and designing Leadership Development Programmes for Leadership in the sector. 

Ravi worked for 24 years in the corporate sector, most of which was at HSBC where he was the Regional Marketing Head for 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 in 2011, joining Azim Premji Foundation where he was the Head of Education Leadership & Management. Ravi has an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and a B. Tech. from IIT-BHU.

Rohini has over 18 years of experience in the secretarial field. She worked for top management in the service and product sectors at Azim Premji Foundation, Gokak Textiles, Trident Infosol and Ocean Sparkle Ltd. Her areas of expertise include executive correspondence, calendar management, travel arrangements (domestic and international), report management, and coordination between various teams. She has an MBA (Tourism) and BA (Economics) and PGDCA.

Sajit has been actively involved with various 'Social Purpose Organisations' in the field of Education, Disability, Livelihood and Healthcare over the last 12 years. Prior to being part of ISDM, Sajit was involved with 'Yuva Parivartan' and was responsible for Resource Mobilization, Grants & Proposals Management, Donor Relationships and Program management for livelihood projects across 17 states in India. He is passionate about building capacities & capabilities of small Community based organisations and actively supports them in various capacities. Currently @ ISDM, his role as a 'Senior Academic Associate' includes building the Knowledge Infrastructure in collaboration with other teams, ensuring lack of bottlenecks in transfer of knowledge to the students and  maintaining & evolving a functional 'Learning Management System'. He has completed his Post-Graduation in Voluntary Service Organisation from NMIMS and B.Sc. Physics from Mumbai University

Sangita is a commerce postgraduate from Panjab University with specialization in Marketing and Human Resource Management. She is working in ISDM as a marketing executive and is a part of Communications and Engagement team. She is an ardent animal-lover, she enjoys spending time with nature, reading books and listening to poetry.

Senior Manager-Research Fellow, Knowledge and Research Centre

Satender Rana recently joined the Knowledge and Research centre at ISDM after completing an MSc in Development Management (Applied Development Economics) on a Commonwealth Shared Scholarship from the London School of Economics (LSE). As a development consultant, Satender has worked with the World Bank, UNDP, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Ministry of Rural Development, GoI, JSW group, JK Organisations, ACC Limited, Epsilon Carbon, NTPC, Read India, and Sparsh. He recently founded “Devnomica” (Development Economics and Analytics), a development research and consultancy company, to enable companies, governments, and SPOs in taking evidence-informed policy decisions to create positive social impact. He likes to travel and watch tennis, and spend time with his family. 

Sharad has worked extensively in the automotive industry working for global OEMs from different parts of the world. Besides building a solid business, Sharad has also travelled widely around the world. In addition to this, he has been working with schools driving scale and quality. Sharad is on the Board and actively supports IIMPACT which has established 2000 centres, working with over 55,000 out-of-school-girls to educate and mainstream them. Sharad has an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and a B.Tech from IIT Kanpur.

Associate, Global Knowledge Hub

Shubhi is a postgraduate in Management Practice and Leadership from Vedica Scholars Programme for Women where she got an opportunity to study multiple aspects of management and liberal arts simultaneously and understand various social issues with context. During her masters, she has worked on understanding the impact of caste and gender on mental health economics in India. She hails from Bhiwani, Haryana and has worked with Lok Seva Charitable Trust to raise awareness about girl education in the state. After completing her Bachelors in Computer Science Engineering from Chandigarh Group of Colleges, she has worked in the edtech sector in Bangalore for a short while. She believes in the magic of conversations and storytelling and loves singing, reading and writing for her soul.

Trisha comes from a background of market research & data analysis, market strategy, and marketing. She is the founder of a consulting company and previously worked with Procter & Gamble, first in India, then in Singapore. While she lives in Singapore, her heart continues to remain in India. Contributing in some shape and form to social development has been her long-standing desire, and, with ISDM, she hopes to be able to do both – be a part of the development sector in India. She has had some experience working for her alma mater’s social service league, and more recently, with a global marine conservation fund, a migrant workers support group, and an Indian coalition to fight the pandemic and drive change. When not working, she’s deeply engrossed in long chats with her pre-teen and teen, playing with the newest addition to the family of the 4-legged kind, reading, eating, travelling, trekking and organising vacations for family and friends (and herself)!

Associate, Admissions

Tuhin completed his bachelor's and started his journey as a Food Technologist. He set up a start-up by the name Farmer's Soul which was funded by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) and focused on helping women from the rural parts of Solan, Himachal Pradesh, to earn a livelihood. He has worked at other food production organizations in various capacities. He felt the need to improve his skills to advance his career in the social sector and therefore pursued his postgraduate studies in Development Management from ISDM. He has 3+ years of combined experience in social media marketing, people management, product management, and marketing & design in the Corporate and Social sectors. He is a state-level Table Tennis and Chess player. He loves to do theatre and cook for everyone.

Urvi Shriram is leading the Centre of Philanthropy for Social Justice at ISDM. She is passionate about studying the intersection between philanthropy, management and social justice and co-creating lasting social change. Before this, she led a research initiative jointly with the Research Triangle Institute India to promote social mobility for the under-privileged in India. Prior to joining the development sector, she was an economist at Willis Towers Watson, a global advisory company, for nearly a decade. Her research and expertise concentrated on developing thought leadership on improving the people-focused elements of business strategy implementation. Urvi’s research has been published in local and international platforms like the Centre for Economic Policy Research’s (CEPR) policy portal (VOXEU.org), the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology (WASET) and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. She has been a frequent speaker at the Global Economic Symposium (GES). She is an Economics graduate from the Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi and holds a Masters in Economics from the University of Warwick, UK. Her passion for learning led her to attend the India Leaders for the Social Sector (ILSS) program in 2019 and more recently the Executive Education program on Strategic Philanthropy at the Cambridge Judge Business School.

Vinita is a Health and Applied Psychology professional with over 5 years experience in CARE India on UNDP projects and youth and adolescents health and psychological counseling also focussing on capacity building ,Implementation of youth interventions in the schools and community, Government liasoning with ICDS and district officials ,project review and planning . Before joining ISDM Vinita has also worked with various schools as a Counselor focussing on career guidance and counseling them on Life skills ,behavioural issues , conflict resolution and developing a positive and progressive mindset. Her drive and calling is to apply her skills and expertise in addressing Mental health issues ,providing guidance and psychological counseling and supporting as many as she can in dealing with their Intra and interpersonal issues. In her current role she is part of the Admissions team at ISDM providing support and guidance to prospective students in terms of career planning,psychological counselling and assisting them throughout the admissions process.

Zuha holds a degree in political science and social work. She was associated with social purpose organizations and has experience of working with children from vulnerable backgrounds, women and elderly from community and shelter home settings. She was a student of second batch of ISDM and is now a part of the ISDM family.