Ameen Haque

Story coach, Innovation consultant and Diversity champion, Ameen Haque is the founder of Storywallahs, a company that helps leaders and organisations leverage the power of stories. A Graduate Degree in Business Administration, Ameen has studied Advertising Media Planning at MICA. Formerly a Vice President at Ogilvy & Mather, Ameen has over 20 years of experience in advertising, theatre & consulting. These stints have exposed him to stories, human behavior, team dynamics and strategy. He loves climbing hills and playing table tennis.

Anjali Bhushan

Anjali is an experienced HR professional and now works as an independent Human Resource Consultant. She works across industries and collaborates across teams to achieve people change and transformation needed for business growth.

Arnab Das

An Educator, Innovator, Entrepreneur, Strategist and a Researcher. Dr(Cdr) Arnab Das is a former Naval Officer with over two decades of active service. He has a Masters and PhD degree from IIT Delhi and has spent close to seven years in IIT Delhi managing research projects for the Navy and the DRDO. He founded a technology driven think tank called the Maritime Research Center and a start-up named NirDhwani Technology Pvt Ltd. He is a visiting Professor at the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology at Pune.

Bhajju Shyam

Bhajju Shyam is an Indian artist, belonging to the Gond-Pardhaan community of Madhya Pradesh. He was a contemporary of the celebrated Pardhaan artist Jangarh Singh Shyam and has been a leading figure in furthering the Gond art form. He received international recognition for his book The London Jungle Book (2004), one of many he has written about Pardhaan Folk Art, and also a recipient of the Padma Shri award.

Binalakshmi Nepram

Binalakshmi Nepram was born in the state of Manipur in India's Northeast Region. She is an author-civil rights activist who is spearheading work on making women-led disarmament a movement and meaningful issue. In 2004, Bina co-founded India's first civil society organisation dedicated to conventional disarmament issues, the Control Arms Foundation of India. And in 2007 in order to help thousands of women who survived gun violence in her home-state, Bina launched the Manipur Women Gun Survivor Network.

G Vijaya Raghavan

G. Vijaya Raghavan has been a pioneer in the Indian IT industry as the CEO and Founder of Technopark, India’s first Electronic Technology Park in Kerala. Currently, he plays several critical roles across Software companies and other institutions. As a member of the Board of Directors in SunTec Business Solutions, Chairman of UST Global in India, Director for Centre for Autism and other Disabilities Rehabilitation Research and Education (CADRRE) he plays key roles in the strategy and direction, these premier institutions take. He is also the Founder Director of National Institute for Speech and Hearing (NISH) Trivandrum which is being raised to the level of a National University by Govt. of India

Harshad Barde

Harshad is a Director of the SWaCH Pune Cooperative, India's first autonomous cooperative of informal waste-pickers. A lawyer by training, he has been a member of the Central Government's drafting committee for finalising the 2016 Solid Waste and Plastic Waste Management rules. He also serves as the General Secretary of the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat, a ten thousand strong, member-based Trade Union of informal waste-pickers in Pune which strives to empower and enhance livelihoods of waste-pickers in Pune.

Johanna

The author is a student of political science in her home country Germany and a previously self-employed tour guide who had been living in Delhi for five months in 2019 as part of an exchange programme with Delhi University. Amongst other things, she used her free time to visit Tender Heart, an NGO she has been affiliated with since her first visit to India in 2015.

Liby T Johnson

Liby T Johnson is a Social Development Management specialist with 23+ years' experience of grassroots and policy level work in areas of livelihoods, disaster management and organisational development. He is currently the Executive Director of Gram Vikas, with area expertise in Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. He has worked with several social development organisation, including the UNDP, and has been instrumental in setting up a national level resource organisation, that helps adapt experiences and lessons from Kerala to other States under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission.

Manav Kambli in conversation with Prithwi Ghorpade

Manav Kambli is a writer and translator with a bachelor’s degree in Literary and Cultural Studies from FLAME university. Currently, his work revolves around translating a few of Hamid Dalwai’s works into English, juggling content marketing projects for companies and envisaging far-fetched plots when idle. Prithwi Ghorpade is a happy sower, plougher, reaper, watcher. He has been a student of natural systems and has worked on growing food naturally for the last twenty five years. He bides his time between Pune and the farm (a 100km away) so that he can see with clarity what is inevitable without, and what is easily possible with, an aware connection with nature.

Paulina Lopez

Paulina Lopez has an international academic background and a professional experience in the field of water, acquired at the intersection of natural and social sciences. After being qualified as a cartographer (Santiago, Chile), she obtained a MSc in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (Toulouse, France), a MSc and a Ph.D. in Water Sciences (Montpellier, France) and a MA in International Relations (New Delhi, India). Currently she works at TERI - The Energy and Resources Institute, is a consultant in the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) – India and associate researcher in CSH. Her research focuses on water scarcity and the various political, socio-economic and environmental issues that emerge from it.

Prashant Ingole

Prashant Ingole is a doctoral candidate in humanities and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar. He works on representation and lived experiences of Dalits in visual and verbal mediums.

Renu Bali

Renu Bali is the founder and director of Tender Heart NGO. A highly qualified educator, she served as a lecturer at Delhi University before a recipient of the prestigious Derozio Award by Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, New Delhi for education and human enrichment. Her warmth, courage and tenacity is boundless and her positivity is infectious.

Rupal Bhandari

Rupal Bhandari is a young feminist, trying to find the best way to make a relevant contribution to the world. She has a Master’s degree in English Literature from Hindu College. When not buried in her laptop at work studying the impact technology is having on businesses, she spends her time reading, writing, travelling, and discovering the best food. You can find her on Instagram as @TheLoudBrainedBrownGirl.

Saba Dewan

Saba Dewan is a documentary film-maker. Her documentaries have focussed on issues of gender, sexuality and culture. Her first book 'Tawaifnama' has emerged from her trilogy of films on stigmatised women performers: Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi(2006) about the lives of bar dancers; Naach(The Dance , 2008) on woman dancers in rural fairs and The Other Song (2009) about the art and lifestyle of the tawaifs or courtesans.

Shivani Karmarkar

Shivani Karmarkar is an anthropologist with specialisation in social development and a background in journalism, research and project coordination. Her experience includes designing and conducting surveys and interviews for academic as well as journalistic projects and developing courses and pedagogic methodologies for adult learning programmes. Having worked as a journalist with organisations like Bloomberg and Cogencis (formerly Newswire18), she also has a natural disposition to engage with diverse people and document their stories.

Sudharak Olwe

Sudharak Olwe has been a Mumbai-based photojournalist since 1988 and has worked as a press photographer with some of the leading newspapers in India. Sudharak has travelled the length and breadth of this nation and seen first hand some incredible stories of resilience, courage and change. He has worked in tandem with many NGOs presenting their extraordinary work with both rural and urban communities. In 2016, Sudharak was conferred the Padma Shri, India’s 4th Highest Civilian Award by the President of India.

Swati Paradkar

Swati Paradkar is the current President of Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad. Popularly known as Lijjat, the organisation is an Indian women's cooperative involved in the manufacturing of various fast-moving consumer goods. The organisation's main objective is empowerment of women by providing them employment opportunities.

Tara Nair

Tara Nair is a Professor at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR), Ahmedabad. Her research mainly concerns issues in policy and institutional development in the areas of small and microfinance, rural livelihoods and political economy of media. She has researched and published widely on these themes since the late 1990s. She is currently leading a multi-institutional and interdisciplinary research on the implications of financialisation on household economies. Apart from pursuing a career in research, Dr. Nair has served on the boards of a couple microfinance institutions and works closely with national and international policy groups and feminist organisations.

Team Interactions

V Anand

Anand is an experienced learning professional since 1993, spanning the entire learning life cycle including training need analysis, learning solution design & development, learning systems design and implementation, training design and delivery as well as content development and delivery across all platforms including instructor-led, computer-based, web-based, mobile, voice and blended. His experience spans both industries and geographies. Having worked with several corporates both in India and abroad, Anand currently is an independent learning consultant and advisor to companies and departments where there is a learning solution to be designed. These include content development, learning & development, training delivery, skill development, publishing houses, CSR initiatives, FMCG. He also volunteers with Setu (www.mysetu.org), an NGO facilitating education and skilling of the underprivileged.