AIF Banyan Impact Fellowship

Manushi Sharma is a global health professional with over seven years of experience in program management and implementation. Through her engagements with – The George Institute for Global Health, The Royal Thai Ministry of Public Health, and The Public Health Foundation of India, she has developed a deep insight into the context and complexities of addressing health system gaps in countries of the global south. Manushi has hands-on experience in supporting and providing strategic leadership for planning, developing, and implementing public health research projects in the developing countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific. Notably, she has published in peer-reviewed journals and has co-authored a book on the economics of non-communicable disease prevention. She has organized and delivered several capacity-building sessions and policy dialogues and presented her work at international conferences. She has liaised and managed partnerships with various stakeholders, including United Nations agencies, the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, governments, and civil society organizations. Manushi is passionate about social entrepreneurship, participatory approaches in social research, and evidence-based policy.

Host Organization: Collaborating for Resilience (CoRe)

Role at Host Organization: As the Learning, Monitoring, and Evaluation Fellow at Collaborating for Resilience, Manushi will gain experience in principles of multi-stakeholder dialogue to promote citizen engagement in policy reform and implementation and will apply these principles through one or more international partnerships. Manushi will manage partner collaborations and undertake action research in one or more program areas, and lead analyses focused on outcome monitoring, learning and evaluation. The Fellow will also help support action research and learning systems that build the capacity of civil society partners to drive governance innovations, distil insights from comparative analysis of outcomes across different partnership sites working towards systems change, and communicate lessons for policy and practice.

Pragati Singh has over nine years of experience in the fields of public health, gender, and sexual and reproductive rights. She earned a MBBS degree from Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi University, in 2012, followed by a diploma in organizational leadership from Swedish Institute, Stockholm, in 2018. For her recent project with The Girl Effect, she developed a series of educational videos on sexual and reproductive health & rights for young Indian girls. As Learning & Training Fellow with Girl Up, Pragati’s responsibilities include identification, adaptation, and development of learning and advocacy resources on sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice (SRHRJ) for Girl Up’s youth members, as well as the building out of Girl Up’s learning and advocacy resources and engagement strategy for LGBTQI+ youth. Pragati also supports a variety of other work that the Girl Up team does, such as outreach to increase and measure the impact of Girl Up’s curriculum, “Let’s Talk About Gender-based Violence: Building Awareness and Solidarity.” Her roles have involved advocating for policy change, liaison and partnership building, data interpretation, capacity building, and program management. Pragati has gained hands-on skills in project management, grant management, business development, conference organizing, partnership building, community building, and communications and marketing. She received a number of awards for her visionary leadership, and was recognized by the BBC as one of the world’s hundred most influential, inspiring, and innovative women in 2019.

Host Organization: Girl Up

Role at Host Organization: As the SRHRJ Global Strategy Fellow, Pragati will work closely with the Training & Learning Team at Girl Up to identify, adapt, and develop learning and advocacy resources on sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice for Girl Up’s youth members. The Fellow will also build out Girl Up’s learning and advocacy resources and engagement strategy for LGBTQI+ youth and support ongoing outreach to increase and measure the impact of Girl Up’s curriculum. Additionally, the Fellow will support the development of Girl Up’s programming on mental health and wellness and support the team with planning for in-person engagement.

Shivalika Gupta is a rural development specialist committed towards generating quality evidence in development programs and policy. During the past eight years, she has progressively engaged with a variety of stakeholders, including consultants, academics, international donors, and the Government of India across topics including agriculture, financial inclusion, health & nutrition, and energy. It is her conviction that the missing key to the infamous challenge of policy implementation gap is providing access to credible evidence to all stakeholders, especially the communities concerned. As a technical expert for monitoring, evaluation, and policy research, her strengths are research designs (experimental & quasi-experimental), leading evaluation studies, developing logical frameworks, developing indicators for projects and programs, designing monitoring systems, and documentation. In her prior engagement as Welthungerhilfe India’s first M.E.A.L Coordinator (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, Learning), she led the creation of a new technical support unit for the country program comprising 31 local NGO partners nationwide. The unit supports the partners on planning and implementing M&E functions, accountability initiatives, and capacity building initiatives. Previously, she has worked in various research-oriented capacities with research consulting, J-PAL, and NITI Aayog (Government of India’s policy think tank). As an evaluator, she has singlehandedly led field studies across eight states in India. As a trainer, she is known to deploy a hands-on approach to M&E related topics across all levels of program implementation. Shivalika continues to work on challenges related to agrarian distress and farmer welfare.

Host Organization: International Fertilizer Development Center

Role at Host Organization: As the Global Engagement Programs Fellow, Tabish will play a role in managing global engagement programs at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. The Fellow will be working within different fields, including assessment, event planning, program/partnership management and development, marketing and recruitment, curriculum development, and alumni engagement.

Tabish Bilal is a development sector professional with experience across domains such as education, curriculum and fellowship design, community work and mobilization, prison reformation/ rehabilitation/ reintegration, gender-based violence, and disaster management. He has completed both his Bachelor’s in Economics and Master’s in Human Resource Management from Jamia Millia Islamia University (New Delhi). After a short stint in the corporate HR sector, Tabish quickly moved to the social space. His work experiences range from working in remote villages of Satpura Forests with tribes in Central India, setting up a school inside Delhi Prisons and working with schools in the lower Himalayas in Northern India. As a Global Engagement Programs Fellow with Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, Tabish’s current responsibilities incorporate program management at GLO. His portfolio also includes COVID relief emergency services in the first and second waves of the pandemic, where he and his teammates worked to provide essential services like the Auto-Ambulances in Delhi, boosting vaccinations among slum-dwellers in Delhi-NCR region through e-rickshaws operating as vaccine express, supporting understaffed government hospitals with manpower to combat the overflow of patients, transportation support to migrants going back home and a direct cash support pilot program to COVID-affected families across India. Through these experiences, Tabish has developed a strong niche for program management, partnerships, analytical and operations skills. Tabish is enthusiastic about youth empowerment, alternate education, and human rights within the social sector domain.

Host Organization: Northwestern University, Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Role at Host Organization: As the Global Engagement Programs Fellow, Tabish will play a role in managing global engagement programs at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. The Fellow will be working within different fields, including assessment, event planning, program/partnership management and development, marketing and recruitment, curriculum development, and alumni engagement.