Fellows

Aishwarya is a professional with three years of experience in the nonprofit sector. She holds an MBA in Marketing & Biotechnology from the University of Pune and currently works as a consultant with social enterprises and state governments. Her project themes range from education to environment, and her skills include program management, partnership building, training, and facilitation. In her previous role, Aishwarya led successful projects aimed at advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals through global mobility programs. She has also taught over 200 underprivileged children at a government school for two years as a Teach for India Fellow. Furthermore, she has spearheaded mindfulness programs in various organizations and is a Toastmasters International Ambassador, advocating for building leadership through public speaking. Aishwarya’s passion lies in nurturing leadership and empowering individuals towards a more inclusive society.

Host Organization: Northwestern University, Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Role at Host Organization: As a Global Engagement Programs Fellow, Aishwarya will play a role in managing global engagement programs at GLO. The Fellowship will have some flexibility based on the Fellows interest and experience—possibilities include assessment, event planning, program/partnership management and development, marketing and recruitment, curriculum development, and alum engagement.

Akhil holds an honors degree in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, and comes with a unique mix of private and social sector experience. In his most recent role, Akhil worked as a strategy consultant with a social enterprise in India to develop and execute their expansion plans, while simultaneously managing their global partnerships. Akhil previously worked as a consultant at two leading global human capital consulting firms, Towers Watson and Marsh & McLennan Companies. At the same time, Akhil managed social impact experiences for students and professionals across the globe. Over the past three years, Akhil’s work involved developing a model for using MBA students and young professionals as pro bono consultants to fill human capital gaps for nonprofits and social enterprises in India. Through this work, Akhil maintained a strong network of nonprofit leaders, pro bono consulting chapter leaders, and MBA program directors at top 10 and Ivy League Universities. With his strong passion for human capital development and social entrepreneurship, Akhil hopes to bridge the talent access gap faced by nonprofits and social enterprises.

Host Organization: Creative Associates International

Role at Host Organization: Akhil will work on business development, partnership management, and communications strategies at Creative Associates, an international development firm. He will be engaged on one of their initiatives called CreativeU, which is positioned as a process to integrate blended learning for “people in development” across the world.

Ankur has an entrepreneurial mindset with a blend of corporate culture (Processes) and startup experience (Result-oriented). He is passionate about analytics and creativity, with an expertise in understanding and managing the integration of marketing, sales, operations, customer service and analytics in order to create effective, meaningful and result-oriented business strategies. As a communications specialist, Ankur takes utmost care in the finer points of both oral and written communication. He finds it incredibly fulfilling to build excellent, high performing teams–individually, we can’t always be at our best but when camaraderie persists, a team can go far. Good teamwork makes every journey better. Ankur also loves to pursue innovation. And while he enjoys connecting the dots across seemingly unrelated information, his MBA has also refined his pragmatic business knowledge to implement explorative growth ideas.

Host Organization: American India Foundation

Role at Host Organization: At American India Foundation, Ankur will be serving as the Executive Assistant Fellow to Chief Executive Officer. In this role, he will act as a key partner to the Chief Executive Officer, helping to brainstorm and identify solutions to challenges faced by the organization. He will develop relationship building skills while managing interactions with external volunteer bodies and board members, and also manage a variety of program design, resource mobilization, marketing, and communication projects across the US and India.

Meenakshi has eight years of experience in the development sector. She earned her Bachelor’s of Science followed by a Post Graduate Program in Hospital Administration from IILM Institute and Master of Arts in Psychology from India. Meenakshi was recently involved in the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative assessment for India. Prior to that, she worked as a program associate in collaboration with UNICEF and the Lady Harding Medical College and Hospital, New Delhi where she developed communication and training materials for maternal, infant and young child feeding practices for communities and frontline healthcare providers. In 2015, Meenakshi worked as a member of Nepal Earthquake emergency response team with Christian Aid and RedR, conducting Multi-Cluster Initial Rapid Assessment of Nutrition and Health sector. Previously, Meenakshi worked as a research associate with UC Berkeley for a study of sensor-enabled cookstoves in Orissa, India. She also worked with the Public Health Foundation of India, engaging in a research study assessing disease burden across India. Meenakshi also worked with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Centre for Communication Programs in India, developing social behavior change communications to promote and support maternal and child health and nutrition. She is passionate about humanitarian aid work, social equality, and positive collaboration.

Host Org: The Nature Conservancy

Fellow role at Parent-Child Home Program: Meenakshi will work as part of the research team at Parent-Child Home Program, focusing on internal and external research projects and data analysis, and leveraging that information to improve home visiting training and practice to prepare young families for school success.

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.

Pragya has seven years of experience in the nonprofit sector and holds a Master’s degree in Social Entrepreneurship from Tata Institute of Social Sciences as well as a Post Graduate Diploma in Counselling and a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from University of Lucknow. As part of the Fellowship team at Ashoka Innovators for the Public (Ashoka), Pragya helped design and implement leadership development and strategic planning programs to help scale impact of Ashoka and Ashoka Fellows across India. She designed two new programs – Changemaker Dinner (CMD) and Half-Time conversations to facilitate collaboration between social, business, media, and government leaders. She has organized over 30 of these events across India connecting over 500 leaders and resulting in several partnerships. She also launched Ashoka Support Network program in India to raise unrestricted funds for Ashoka and enable business leaders use their core competencies for solving social problems. Prior to Ashoka, Pragya was awarded Rural Transformation Fellowship to work towards community empowerment. She lived in an indigenous village for three years and helped establish micro enterprises to tackle under-nutrition, generating livelihood, and led a grass-root movement to build first school in the village.  In 2011 Midory co-founded a social enterprise, Saudaagar, for creating dignified livelihood options for differently-abled people. This was recognized as grass-root innovation by Confederation of Indian Industries in 2013. Through her experience, Pragya has learnt to engage with diverse stakeholder for co-creating solutions. She is interested in social entrepreneurship, social impact strategy and leadership development.

Host: Atlas Corps

Fellow Role at Atlas Corps: Pragya will support the overall strengthening of leadership development in the nonprofit sector by helping to expand the American Express Leadership Academy franchise. She will coordinate and grow the alumni network; manage and coordinate the global Alumni Summit, and help develop and improve communication.

Quaifa Andaleeb has a strong passion for women empowerment. She has more than four years of experience of working with and in the Indian government departments/ organizations. She holds two master’s degrees in Gender and Development and Women’s Studies from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex (UK) and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (India), respectively. Quaifa worked in the UNV/ UNDP India and held the position of District Youth Officer under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India. She was the district nodal head for the implementation of all the programs as per the Ministry’s approved Annual Action Plan. She had also worked closely with two of the Bihar government’s programs namely, the Integrated Child Development Scheme and the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotional Society. She assessed the training needs of the ‘barefoot’ functionaries of these programs and developed self-explanatory training modules and capsules for them. Previously, she has worked as a Young Professional at the Maharashtra State Rural Livelihoods Mission (Rural Development Department, Government of Maharashtra) where she was entrusted with the end-to-end management and implementation of a state level pilot project on mobilization and institution building of community resource persons. She has also contributed in drafting the organization’s policy for its community-based trainers. Quaifa is a feminist and aspires to achieve gender equity and human well-being in this resource constrained world. Her professional experiences have equipped her with a strong skill set in project management, implementation, coordination, and communication.

Host Organization: SAP

Role at Host Organization: AT SAP, Quaifa will serve as a Code Unnati Fellow: Quaifa will support and coordinate with stakeholders involved in the initiative, coordinate the employee engagement opportunities for Code Unnati (digital literacy/skilling) Document Communications and Report writing for initiatives

Radhika Ralhan is a sociologist, a sustainable systems thinking professional, and an impact strategist. As a University Gold Medalist, she enhanced her academic erudition in diverse professional contexts. These contexts include extending strategic advisory at leadership levels, executing critical sustainability programs in diverse themes, such as renewable energy, menstrual hygiene, and health, and devising policy research projects on SDGs. She also spearheaded teams by working primarily on social impact analysis and global and national-level positioning of programs. She has been instrumental in curating innovative partnerships platforms such as CSR Collaboration Hub and SDGs Drivers Forum among private sector, government institutions, and NGOs with set-focused outcomes. She has enhanced her professional dynamism by working with leading multi-faceted organizations, such as IIT Delhi, United Nations Global Compact, Development Alternatives, CAF, and Dr. Reddy’s sustainability unit. At the policy front, in her independent capacity, the Bureau of Indian Standards, Government of India appointed her to formulate the first of its kind CSR Standards as a key drafting expert. She has presented her research work and perspectives at global platforms in Milan, Istanbul, and Copenhagen and has taught at prominent universities such as IHM, Pusa, and Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi. For Radhika, innovation, unconventional thinking, working on unexplored avenues, and leveraging social outcomes are key drivers in the sustainability discourse.

Host Organization: Collaborating for Resilience

Role at Collaborating for ResilienceAt Collaborating for Resilience, Radhika will serve as the Program Management Fellow: promoting citizen engagement in policy reform and implementation, managing partner collaborations, undertaking action research in one or more program areas, and contributing to program development, marketing, and communications initiatives.