Fellows

Ankit is a queer feminist activist. He is a member of Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (YCSRR) and also serves on the Board of Directors. Ankit is passionate about reproductive justice for queer and trans youth, and has worked on a range of issues from Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and public safety to environment and climate change. He serves on the Advisory Group to The Guttmacher-Lancet Commission on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and the CIVICUS’s Youth Action Taskforce.

Host Organization:  Gay and Lesbian Victory Institute

 Role at Host Organization: As a program manager, Ankit will be working on the international program expanding to other countries including India. He will contribute his knowledge of the situation in India to the program. Overall, he will be supporting Victory’s programs in a range of different countries.

Daliya Manuel has been working as a Brand Manager at Vyakta, a workplace learning company based in India, for over four years. Daliya has been instrumental in managing Vyakta’s branding and marketing communication activities. Her learnings from the PG Certification program in Digital Marketing with a specialization in Branding and Communication at MICA has given a deeper understanding of the nuances of the digital media space. She traces her alma mater to the Asian School of Business, where she successfully pursued a Postgraduate Diploma in Management, with a specialization in Human Resource Management and Marketing. Daliya, being a people person, has donned the role of English Teacher at Nirmala School, bringing about a drastic change in the students’ spoken language capabilities. She constantly endeavors towards making the world a better place in her own small way. In pursuit of this goal, she worked on an app that integrates farmers, under the mentorship of Ranveer Chandra, Chief Scientist, Azure Global at Microsoft. She is extremely passionate about people development and mental health. She considers emotional first aid as a vital, yet highly underutilized tool in addressing mental health wellbeing.

Host Organization: SAP

Role at Host Organization: At SAP, Daliya will serve as CSR Communications and Marketing Fellow: Daliya will lead marketing and communication efforts for the three strategic CSR pillars (building digital skills, accelerating best-run non-profits and social enterprises, and connecting employees with purpose) and for strategic partnerships as needed. She will also act as the brand ambassador for the SAP CSR team and represent CSR as an extended member of the sustainability efforts at SAP.

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.

Meher has ten years of experience in the citizen sector, both in India and South Asia. Documentation, evaluation and research are the core areas of her experience. Her experience also includes management of projects on issues such as women’s empowerment, gender and governance, child labor, disability, youth development and NGO capacity building. Her most recent experience was working at JAGORI (‘Awaken, Women’), a feminist group raising consciousness on violence, health, education and other issues critical to women. There, she researched and developed resource material to support the organization’s advocacy work on legal rights, food security rights and the health of women. Prior to this, Meher conceptualized and initiated a development program for youth called YES (Youth Enrichment Services) for a corporate body in Delhi. From 1999-2006, Meher worked at Association for Stimulating Know How where she coordinated the Evaluation, Research & Documentation Unit. She was primarily involved in planning, conducting, supervising and documenting evaluations and studies for national and international agencies. During that time she also managed projects on gender and governance in Rajasthan and economic empowerment of Muslim women in Uttar Pradesh. She organized women into groups and coordinated and facilitated trainings and other capacity building inputs to help women meet their development objectives. Meher also coordinated the advocacy component of a project providing developmental opportunities to children working in household brassware units in Uttar Pradesh. From 2004-2005 Meher was with Saarthak where she coordinated a UNIFEM project in tsunami affected communities of Sri Lanka. She was involved in the process of gendering the reconstruction work and addressing psychosocial impacts on women and children. She also worked closely with local organizations and the government, enhancing their capacities to identify and address gender related vulnerabilities after a disaster. Meher holds a B.S. in sciences from Delhi University and a M.A. in social work from Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi.

Host Organization: Population Action International (PAI)

Saket Mishra earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Mumbai in 2007. He has seven years of experience in healthcare marketing as a Creative Director, designing strategy, concept and ideas for pharmaceutical brands and campaigns. Looking to engage in more fulfilling work, he took a sabbatical in 2009 to set up his own nonprofit that launched Maid in India. The project has been a success, raising over $15,000 in grant money, changed 250 lives and reached 1000 households. The project is making revenue of over $10 million and working towards training and employing 1000 maids by 2015. He also helped Online Buddies, a LGBT dating site to launch in India, by helping with strategic partnerships and designing their offline marketing strategy. Saket is a skilled community mobilizer and uses his marketing background creatively to launch grassroots awareness campaigns that engage end users and brings them to the program. Along with strong program management skills and social marketing, Saket is interested and involved in advocacy for labor rights and women’s employment and health.

Host Organization: Massachusetts General Hospital

Role at Host Organization: Saket is joining Partners HealthCare, Center for Connected Health in Boston. The Center is working on technology-based programs to revolutionize the delivery of healthcare and public health efforts in the US. As a fellow, Saket will be executing research pilots for new delivery programs in areas of chronic disease management, cancer care etc. Also, he will contribute to user interface design, and design strategy for new LGBT-based projects, as well as project manage existing projects for their design philosophy.

Sana is a Water and Sanitation Expert and has 5 years of experience in the implementation of sanitation projects and programs. She has earned a Bachelor of Science in Zoology from the University of Calcutta in India and a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies from Nalanda International University, India. While working with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in the Government of India as a WASH ( Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) and Knowledge Management Specialist for Swachh Bharat Mission(Urban), Clean India Mission, she helped draft national-level policies and guidelines, and aided capacity building of government officials in order to improve solid waste management and sanitation practices in 4200+ urban local bodies of India. In her previous assignment, Sana worked with Tata Trusts to advance the sanitation practices of the rural community in Bihar and promote the use of toilets along with the help of other development partners like UNICEF and the World Bank. Sana has also worked as a climate change volunteer on the issue of displacement of migrants due to climate change. Through these experiences, she developed excellent leadership qualities, strategic thinking skills, program management experience, stakeholder management, and implementation skills. Sana enjoys focusing on the topics of water, sanitation, hygiene, and solid waste management and has a passion for gender mainstreaming.

Host Organization: American Red Cross

Role at Host Organization: At American Red Cross, Sana will be serving as the Knowledge Management & Learning Fellow. Sana will be sitting with the Quality, Data and Learning team at ISD/ARC Headquarters and will be responsible for supporting the Knowledge Management and Learning efforts of the department. She will help facilitate access to, utilization of, and learning from existing data, evidence, and knowledge generated from past operations both within the American Red Cross and with the RCRC Movement Partners