Aakash Sethi has over 20 years of experience in education and youth employment programs. He has been engaged in developing networks for knowledge creation and policy advocacy in corporate responsibility and technology for development. He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Quest Alliance, an organisation that promotes the use of technology in schools and vocational training to develop self-learning pathways for children and youth.

He is transforming classrooms and skill training programs into vibrant hubs of self-learning; role-modelling teachers as 21st-century facilitators and re-designing education technologies (both traditional to digital). These efforts will put young people in charge of their own learning and career pathways. And, also empower unemployable youth to become motivated self-learners and build 21st-century skills with purpose, choice and confidence. By doing so, he is enabling excluded youth to become ready for the future of work in India. He was an active member of AIESEC the world's largest youth organisation for 5 years. He is an Ashoka fellow and an Asia 21 fellow.  And also serves on the board of children's movement of civic awareness and Dalit Shakti Kendra.

Dr. Archana Patankar is a Consultant, Researcher and Practitioner with substantial National and International experience in the field of Climate Change, Health and Environment. She is currently associated with the National Skill Development Corporation as a Senior Consultant Economist and working on data and demand-driven skilling and livelihood generation initiatives for vulnerable communities in rural areas and urban MSMEs. Archana brings over a rich experience of conceptualizing, operationalizing and leading policy and practice-oriented assignments across different verticals such as climate change vulnerability and adaptation, urban health issues, applied environmental economics and economics of the energy sector. She has worked with global institutions such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNEP-DTU Partnership, Oxford Policy Management and Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research as well as private sector organizations in India. Archana is regularly invited to national/international fora to contribute to the knowledge-building and policy dialogues and maintains continuous engagement with international and national institutions to bring about cross-border and comparative dimensions into the Policy/Practice arena for Global Climate Change and local/regional responses. She holds PhD in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) and has taught Economics for more than a decade at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She recently completed her LLM in Energy and Environmental Law at Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham.

Indrani Bhaduri, PhD is Professor and Head, PARAKH and Educational Survey Division at
National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Ministry of Education,
India. She joined NCERT as Associate Professor in June 2002, prior to which, she taught
Education to graduate and postgraduate classes under Pune University. She supervised
several PhD scholars as guide in various Universities. She is a Post Graduate (MSc) in
Chemistry from Delhi University and has acquired her Master in Education (MEd) with
specialization in educational statistics and experimental psychology followed by PhD in
Education from Pune University. She is trained in ‘National Assessment Test Designs and
Psychometric Methods’ at Educational Testing Service (ETS), Princeton, NJ, USA; and
'Large Scale Educational Survey: Analysis and Reporting' at Australian Council for
Educational Research (ACER), Melbourne, Australia. Her area of specialization is
Educational Assessment and Psychometrics, Test Designing and Analysis and Reporting of
Large-Scale Achievement Survey and School Based Assessment to improve the Learning
Outcomes. She has been working in Educational Assessment and allied disciplines for 27
years. Her experience at NCERT includes addressing issues and activities pertaining to
planning, conduct, management, output, and dissemination of countrywide large-scale
studies/surveys for school education. She is associated with active policy level engagements
with state governments and other agencies in school education and largescale assessment
surveys under Samagra Siksha in India. She provides academic support in conducting
National and State level training programmes for various state and district level educational
administrators and other functionaries. Dr Bhaduri has presented papers in National and
International seminars/conferences. She has worked as resource person in workshops and
training programmes and delivered lectures in different universities/ academic institutes at the
National and International levels. Presently, she is also Head, National Achievement Survey
Cell, and Head, Educational Survey Division at NCERT. She is coordinating the
implementation of National Achievement Surveys (NAS) 2021, for Classes III, V, VIII, and
X and the National Achievement Survey at the Foundational Learning (FLN) for Ministry of
Education, Govt of India. She is a Steering Committee member for Implementation of NAS,
DIKSHA, and committee member for the Implementation of Programme of International
Student Assessment (PISA) in India.

Ms Lalduhawmi Thomte is currently working as a Joint Director at the SCERT Mizoram. She is the Nodal Officer for NEP 2020 (School Education) and looks after the Department of Teacher Education, Division of ICT which includes PMeVidya TV Channels and DIKSHA Mizoram Portal, Language Promotion Wing, Textbook Cell, Environment Orientation to School Education (EOSE), Population Education and Child Rights Protection Cell at the SCERT. She is a certified Trainer in Population Education under National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), MoE and in Drug Abuse Prevention under National Institute of Social Defence (NISD), MoSJE.

She has had more than two decades of experience at the SCERT contributing to the SCERT’s efforts in the academic aspects of School Education in the state. She is currently pursuing a Ph. D in English Language Teaching from Mizoram University. She received a Masters’ Degree in English from NEHU Mizoram Campus, Bachelor of Education Degree from Mizoram University and Post Graduate Certificate in Teaching of English (PGCTE) from the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL) now renamed the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad. She loves to read and skill-based education is one of her fortes as she believes that development of skills in an individual brings about changes in behavior of a person which makes them become better citizens of the world. Her stressbusters include knitting, listening to music and the occasional movies in her free time.

Mrs. Kavita Pathak is a well-known name of Rajasthan Administrative Service. She has 22 years of administrative experience. Now she is the Director of RSCERT and taking the lead in academic work of Rajasthan, especially in Teacher Education, Curriculum and Research previously she held the post of DIG Registration and Stamps Revenue Department, Deputy Director of Harish Chandra Mathur stale Institute of Public Administration and completed various innovation and administrative training.

The Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology improved in ranking of the university from 51 to 26 position in agriculture universities of the nation as Registrar. 

During the service, she completed the confidential and risky work of the Additional Commissioner, Excise very successfully.

Smt. Bandana Garbyal has been working as Director of Academic, Research and Training (ART) in Uttarakhand since June 2023. Earlier she held prominent positions in the department of school education as Secretory Uttarakhand Board of School Education Ramnagar, Additional Director of SCERT Uttarakhand, A.D., Director General's Office of School Education, Uttarakhand, Director, Secondary education and Director, Elementary Education Uttarakhand. As an efficient administrator, she is also known for her dynamic leadership and innovative ideas.

Samar is a Director at the India office of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. She leads several projects across the areas of education and livelihoods. In her current role at the Foundation, she partners with mission-driven organizations to scale high impact initiatives and drive lasting systems change. 

Before joining the foundation, Samar spent over 10 years as a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Ernst & Young (EY). She has worked across multiple sectors including media, consumer internet, consumer goods & retail. As a consultant, she focused extensively on researching & measuring consumer behavior and is now applying the same techniques to the most pressing social issues facing our world today.

Samar studied Economics at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University and holds a Dual Master’s Degree in Public Administration (MPA) from the London School of Economics (LSE) and Sciences Po, Paris.

Vishal co-founded Dream a Dream along with 11 others. Vishal is an Ashoka Fellow, an Eisenhower Fellow and a Board Member at PYE Global and Goonj. He has previously been a Founder Director of Unltd India and Board Member of India Cares Foundation. Vishal is a Steering Committee Member of Karanga – A Global Alliance on Social Emotional Learning and Life Skills. He is a Founding Member of The Weaving Lab – A Global Learning Ecosystem of weavers who are advancing the practice and profession of weaving thriving learning ecosystems. He is a Founding Member of Catalyst 2030 – A global movement of social change innovators collaborating to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He is also part of the Informal Working Group on the Future of Education & Skills 2030 project by OECD where he has been a Co-chair and Moderator at various convenings

Rathish Balakrishnan is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Sattva Consulting. His professional journey has three intertwined tracks - As a consultant, he is able to enable the impact agenda of inspiring leaders, institutions and collaborative initiatives. As an entrepreneur, he is committed to building an institution anchored on impact, integrity and scale. As someone committed to ending poverty, he is a lifelong learner deeply curious about the Systems that perpetuate inter-generational poverty.

In his own words, his ideal career would be at the intersection of deep social impact, entrepreneurship and Consulting. Which is what he does today.

Michael Stevenson leads innovation around the world on education purposes, policy and delivery. He is Senior Adviser Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, where he established and leads the High Performing Systems for Tomorrow initiative.

It was the spirit of "wanting to build something" that drove her interests in design, education, and entrepreneurship. She trained formally in engineering and developed her understanding of people, technology, and society by involving in social causes nationally and internationally for more than 16 years, including seven years working on aviation safety issues.

Since 2013, Dessy combined her knowledge and experiences in people, technology, and society to design targeted programs through social innovation and entrepreneurship education. Her experiences led her to serve Central Bank of Indonesia as Faculty Member and Research Fellow, innovation advisor in Central Bank, and subject-matter experts in various institutions and organizations, including BRI Micro-finance Center.

Dessy named for some achievements, including for 2019 Meaningful Business 100 Leader, Global Youth ICON Award 2019, STINT Scholarship from Sweden, The Rune Andersson Scholarship from Sweden, ICAO-WAI Scholarship from the USA, and NFP Fellowship from the Dutch Government. Dessy holds a Ph.D. in Business Management at Lincoln University - New Zealand, M.Sc. in Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology - Sweden, and B.Eng in Civil Engineering at Bung Hatta University - Indonesia.

Mauro Giacomazzi serves as Education Adviser at the Luigi Giussani Institute of Higher Education. Passionate about education, Mauro has a diverse background in designing professional development programs to enhance teachers' competencies in instructional design and to assess life skills. As the Co-Principal Investigator of Action for Life Skills and Values in East Africa (ALiVE) and a Board member of the Regional Education Learning Initiative, he actively contributes to educational initiatives and development in the region.

Vyjayanthi is the founder and executive director of the Centre for Science of Student Learning (CSSL) - one of the leading providers of diagnostic assessments across South Asia. CSSL is recognized as a thought leader in educational assessments and their work on measuring Social Emotional Learning is pioneering globally. The organization works in India and globally on diagnostic educational assessments and building institutional capacity for the same. 

A Fulbright Humphrey fellow and an Ashoka fellow, Vyjayanthi regularly consults at the global level for the Brookings Institution, The World Bank, UNICEF and several national governments across South Asia and about 21 governments in Eastern and Southern Africa.  In India, Vyjayanthi is a member of MoE’s technical committees for National assessments and learning outcome indicators, Government of India's SSA Joint Review Missions. She has served on the advisory board of the Educational Survey Division of NCERT, India. Vyjayanthi also advises the National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE) in its efforts to improve teacher quality across the country through TET and other reforms. 

Vyjayanthi specializes in psychometrics, modern Item Response Theory, and diagnostic assessments in multiple languages for academic and social-emotional learning domains. In the last 2 decades, she has pioneered several large-scale assessment studies in India and South Asia. Her insights are derived from over 150 large-scale assessment projects covering more than 25 million students.

Aditi Vyas is an Assistant Director- Gender, Youth, and Development, at ICRW’s Asia office. She brings over 14 years of experience in gender, adolescents and empowerment, and education. Her areas of expertise include program design and management, qualitative research, curriculum development and review and communication.

Her current work us focused on the development of teachers’ and system’s assessment tools as part of the Life Skills Collaborative program and assessing the impact of COVID-19 policy response on informal women workers in Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) as part of the REBUILD project.

Aditi earned a bachelor’s degree in History from Delhi University, a master's degree in Modern Indian History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and another master’s degree in History of Science, Medicine and Technology from the University of Oxford.

Anindya is a Programme Manager for CIFF’s GIRL Capital India portfolio where he leads on programmes in the domains of education, life skills and social norms change with a razor sharp focus on girls and young women. A PhD in Education, he has been working in the development space around issues of intersectionality of gender, education and social norms.

Devleena is a Senior Research Associate at the Research and Statistics Unit at ASER Centre. She holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota in Comparative and International Development and Education, with a background rooted in Sociology. She takes a keen interest in qualitative research methods at the intersection of gender and education. While field and local travel consume a large part of her time, Devleena is a homebody who loves to spend time surrounded by her family, dogs, books, music and kitchen experiments.

Swati is the Director of Research & Evaluation Centre at Breakthrough. She has more than two decades of experience in research, monitoring and evaluation in the development sector. An economist by training, she has vast experience of working on education, gender-based violence, adolescent empowerment, property rights of women, livelihood and HIV-AIDS related issues in India and South Asia. She has worked with various national and international organisations in different capacities. Swati has worked extensively with marginalised and vulnerable communities like denotified tribes, HIV-positive women, victims of human trafficking, prostituted women, children of red-light areas and women affected by domestic violence across India and South Asia. Swati has a number of publications to her credit.

Sunita Menon leads Strategic Partnerships and Scale Up at Breakthrough.  She has developed and implemented national and global projects on gender, health, citizenship and rights issues.She has conceptualised and written over 100 curriculums and publications on intersectional human rights issues in the past two decades.

Sapna Kedia works as an Assistant Director- Gender and Social Development at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Asia Office. At ICRW, Sapna leads and supports research and programs on the issues of men and masculinities, sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender, governance and public policy. She is currently leading a study on Women in Leadership in the Health Sector in India. She is also a founding member of the Women in Global Health (WGH), India Chapter and works in collaboration with other chapters across the globe. She serves as a member on the Global Steering Committee of WGH.

Srikrishna Sridhar Murthy brings over a decade of work experience working with the leadership team of global foundations, social organisations and corporates to design and scale their social impact initiatives, across India, SE Asia, Africa and Europe. He is passionate about solving global social problems using economics, institutions and ecosystems as key tools.

As the CEO at Sattva he is responsible for the overall strategic direction, growth and impact of the organisation. Srikrishna leads several collective impact initiatives across different themes like water, education and livelihoods.

Before founding Sattva, Srikrishna was the Founding Partner of Longhouse Consulting, a boutique executive search firm focused on technology and emerging sectors in India. He started his career as an early member of Dell R&D in India. Currently, he  serves on the Advisory Board of multiple social impact and technology start-ups as well.

He holds a Bachelor’s in Engineering Degree (Hons) from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. He also secured an MBA in Entrepreneurship from INSEAD.

For the past fifteen years, Shiv has focused on the school-to-work transition.  With his team at One Step Up he has worked with students in India’s best schools in 52 Indian cities. Currently managing partnerships in India for Aflatoun, he collaborates with governments, for-profits, private schools, and NGOs to build Social & Financial Education initiatives. A firm believer in alliances, he led the Entrepreneurial Mindset work at GAME. He is a Visiting Faculty at IIM Indore (his alma mater!) for the last 5 years. Based in Bangalore, Shiv is a Squash enthusiast and dreams of competing in Masters tournaments in India and abroad!

Sarah Misra is the Chief Operations Officer at Reap Benefit and works with the community to create and nurture champions across the country. She has been the Founder and Director of Chrysalis High and worked as a Chief Learning Officer at Hippocampus Learning Centres. Sarah has completed her PG Diploma in Special Education, Autism from Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

Maya is the Founder Director of The Teacher Foundation. Since 2021, she has led The Teacher Foundation as the Glossary Anchoring Partner of the Life Skills Collaborative. She has been in the field of education for 4 decades. Her areas of professional experience include conceptualizing, designing and implementing a wide range of school and teacher-related projects and services. These include the Wipro Applying Thought in Schools Teacher Empowerment Project initiated in 2001 and Safe & Sensitive Schools initiated in 2009. Since 2012, she has also worked on the development of the Indian Social and Emotional Learning Framework (ISELF); an age-banded set of standards for Social & Emotional Learning for Indian schools. ISELF is the only researched and contextualised SEL Framework existing in India.  

Her professional interests and expertise include school effectiveness research and whole school improvement, whole school well-being, teacher development, collaborative approaches to teaching and learning, interpersonal communication in the classroom, leadership and strategic management of schools.

She has been a full-time teacher trainer since 1996, conducting professional development programmes for heads and teachers of schools across India and abroad. She has trained several thousand teachers across the past 25 years. She has presented at leading education conferences both nationally and internationally.

She is an Accredited Teacher Trainer for Jenny Mosley Consultancies (UK) for training teachers on Whole School Quality Circle Time (QCT) across schools in India.  QCT is an ecosystemic model for fostering SEL amongst children and teachers alike.

Dr Shekhar is a child psychiatrist with 40 years of experience in the field of child mental health but his work extends beyond the clinical population, amongst others, to children in institutions, educational spaces and in the context of law, across the country as well as the South Asia region. With a view to enabling access to mental health for the most vulnerable child populations, his special areas of interest in child mental health are childhood trauma, gender and sexuality and life skill education. An artist and musician, he uses a number of creative methodologies in child mental health interventions, including theatre in development approaches. In the belief that wider psychosocial interventions are rooted in child rights, in addition to his preventive-promotive and curative child mental health interventions, he has undertaken various legal and policy-related initiatives. He was part of national deliberations on the POCSO Act 2012 during its drafting, and more recently an active part of the debates around the December 2015 Juvenile Justice Act on children in conflict with the law. He has also engaged extensively as a member of working groups of the National Commission for Protection of Rights of the Child on issues such as substance abuse and the elimination of corporal punishment in school. Finally, all his policy and practice work find their way into training and capacity-building programs for target audiences ranging from students of mental health disciplines and mental health care professionals in clinical settings to child care service providers in non-clinical settings, including community health workers, teachers, government and non-government staff and counsellors and Judicial personnel.

R. Maithreyi is the Strategic Lead for the Adolescent Thematic at KHPT and supports the overall strategic planning and management for the Adolescent thematic. She has over 10 years of experience and has worked extensively on life skills education for rural and marginalized youth. Her PhD is in the interdisciplinary area of childhood and youth studies, and she has several publications, including a forthcoming book on ‘Educating Youth: Regulation through Psycho-social Skilling in India (Sage), a chapter in ‘Childhoods in India: Tradition, Trends and Transformations’ (Routledge), and in international journals such as Childhood.

Nita Aggarwal is a programme manager at Porticus Asia. She is an experienced development sector professional and has been in the space for close to two decades, with a wide range of experience in education. She has been a key stakeholder in the design and creation of the Life Skills Collaborative.

Rubina Ann Philip, a development professional with experience in creating and executing transformative programs across diverse geographies to promote long-term social development, with a special emphasis on women and children. She has worked directly with survivors of gender-based violence to improve service delivery and access to justice, assuring economic, social, and emotional rehabilitation and reintegration. She has expertly translated her on-the-ground experiences and learnings into policy advocacy contributions to state government efforts aimed at safeguarding and advancing women and children.  In 2019, she was chosen for the US Department of State's International Visitor Leadership Program for her contributions towards the same.

She holds a postgraduate degree in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Rubina is currently the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child's Associate Director for Telangana, where she works to promote safety, diversity, equity, and inclusion in Telangana's residential school systems for some of the state's most marginalized and vulnerable children. 

Anshu is a Senior Program Director, SEE Learning and Life Skills at the School of Education & System Change at Piramal School of Leadership. She is a psychologist with more than two decades of experience spanning Social Emotional Learning, Life Skills, Behavioural Assessments and Compassion Training.  Anshu has been a member of various resource groups at the National and State level such as School Health and Wellness Curriculum by NCERT under the aegis of Ayushman Bharat for MoHFW and MHRD and several other groups with NCSL and SCERTs.

Anurag Hoon is the co-founder and CEO of a Delhi-based band and music non-profit Manzil Mystics. He looks after the organisation's training & development, fundraising, partnerships, accounts and M&E. Anurag is an ex-CEO of Manzil and is an experienced professional with a demonstrated history of working in the music and development sector for the last 10 years.

Rathi serves as the Associate Director of Programs at Slam Out Loud, an organization committed to social and emotional learning (SEL) through art. With 12 years of experience, Rathi leads a team dedicated to transforming the Arts Period in government schools by empowering teachers with art curriculum and SEL facilitation techniques. Beginning in the social sector as a Teach for India fellow, Rathi's journey involves mentoring 10 fellowship programs across the country, coaching social entrepreneurs in the space of education, and building high-performing teams. They derive purpose and joy from fostering inclusive and secure environments, advocating for LGBTQI+ rights, and dedicating their work to creating safe and brave spaces for all.

With 12+ years of work experience at some of the best MNCs - Google, LinkedIn, and MySpace as one of the early team members in India. Dolly has also been a founding team member at Qyuki - an Indian Digital Media startup by Shekhar Kapur, AR Rahman and Samir Bangara.

She led the "New Avenues and Operations" at the MIT Media Lab India Initiative where interdisciplinary efforts led to futuristic innovation way ahead of time. Also, a Co-founder at Tesseract Imaging - a spin-off from MIT Media Lab India Initiative which later got acquired by Reliance Industries.

While in her personal time, she was always working towards giving back to the community in the form of teaching students on the street since she was in college, she has finally focused her career on delivering social impact through "The Dharavi Dream Project's #AfterSchoolofHiphop" - an initiative to give hip-hop artists (under-served talent) of Asia's biggest slum a platform:

1. to have free and easy access  to share one's thoughts and expressions through music, dance and art form 
2. to give a voice to celebrate and a stage to showcase their talent not only in Dharavi of Mumbai but Dharavi's of the world
3. to develop life skills such as resilience, teamwork, creativity, and self-expression through "Music and Hip-Hop.

Akanksha leads strategy, program design, and training across NalandaWay's well-being and SEL programs, supporting organizational strategy and capability-building. Over the last 14 years, she has worked with corporates, foundations, NGOs, and schools as a consultant and facilitator on personal, leadership and systems transformation projects. Akanksha holds an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, a certificate from Yale on the Science of Well-being, and an MA in Psychology from IGNOU. She is also a trained counsellor, a drama-based practitioner and the Founder of Ripple Effect. She enjoys writing and performing poetry, travelling in nature, and dancing.

Suheil F. Tandon is the Director-Founder of Pro Sport Development, an award-winning social
enterprise dedicated to leveraging sport, physical activity and play to provide better futures for
young people. Suheil specializes in the sport for development field, with more than 12 years of
global experience, and has a professional background in sports management and coaching.
Suheil believes in the power of sport, physical activity and play in catalyzing social
transformation, and has led the conceptualization of several initiatives on behalf of Pro Sport
Development.

Sneh Gupta set up Indiability Foundation as a global sister charity to Sucheta Kriplani Shiksha Niketan (SKSN Institute), to help promote and share SKSN's learnings in the field of disability, from the last two decades, at an international level, and improve the lives of youth with physical disabilities across India.

Sneh has been actively and passionately involved with SKSN since 1998, and has taken over 2500 disabled students – each attending between 8-12 years of school education – through primary, secondary, and senior secondary school education.  By taking SKSN’s disabled students from ‘the doorstep of their classroom to their careers’, both Indiability and SKSN, have helped their beneficiaries to turn the tables on their families by going from useless, burdensome, sons and daughters, to becoming the sole breadwinners for their disbelieving parents.

In 2005, Sneh co-founded and developed Indian Mixed Ability Group Events (IMAGE) – Indiability’s Sport for Development & Social Change program, to create an inclusion pathway for SKSN’s youth with disabilities.

Rwmwi Rwmwi Basumatary has a vast experience of nearly 17 years in working with conflict affected communities in Assam and the Northeast. He has been associated with The ANT since the past 23 years. Rwmwi has worked extensively in The ANTs youth development program and brings his experience of working with and nurturing life skills in youth.

Anjali has overcome economic challenges, mobility restrictions, and societal pressures to become a strong and empowered youth in her village Hailymandi village, Haryana, India. In her community girls are not allowed to study after 12 class due to social and financial reasons. When she was studying on government school, Hailymandi, she came to know about Breakthrough Trust through “Taron in Toli” (Gangs of stars) sessions. She learnt many life skills from those sessions, such as communication, negotiation, collaboration which have improved her leadership qualities and given feathers to her dreams and aspirations.

She decided to negotiate with her parents to study further after school so that she can achieve her dreams. She negotiated for her education and mobility in her larger family and her family agreed on it. She is studying in college in Gurugram. She is also part of Breakthrough’s Team Change Leader (A voluntary position in Breakthrough who gets engage in community mobilization activities and other activities in the community to create discrimination and violence free environment.)

She is very passionate about supporting young girls and women in the community which reflects as when she intervenes and support her friend who was facing violence in married life and helped her to deal with the violence. Anjali's inspiring journey showcases how Breakthrough’s Life Skill Program adolescents and empower youth to advocate for equal rights, education, aspirations, and mobility within and outside their communities. Anjali’s journey’s served as an inspiration, illustrating how the acquisition and application of life skills can empower individuals to overcome their limitations and make a positive impact in their communities. She also became an inspiration for many girls of her community who were restricted to pursue their aspirations.

Anjali represented a Indian youth and Breakthrough at a global platform and successfully completed a 6 month’s project with Asian Girls Action Project supported by Garden of Hope Foundation, Taiwan. Now she is also selected for 2^nd phase of project where she is working for awareness on Higher Education for Girls in her community.

Dr Prerna Kumar has over 18 years of experience in the development sector. As a gender specialist, she is leading economic empowerment programs for adolescent girls and women at ICRW. She is also leading ICRW’s work on gender-integrated life skills through various initiatives. In her current role, Prerna also works with corporate clients to develop gender-responsive strategies and make workplaces inclusive. 

Throughout her career, she has designed and managed large-scale quantitative surveys and qualitative studies for impact measurement and generated insights to develop programs and social and behaviour change communication campaigns. She has strong multisectoral experience specifically in gender, economic empowerment, public health, education and climate change. In her work profile, she has always been responsible for translating research findings into actionable insights. Dr Kumar is also trained in human research ethics and is on the research ethics board.

Snehal has more than two decades of experience as a policy researcher and program evaluation professional spanning gender, education, skilling, youth, adolescent health and rights, water sanitation and hygiene, and natural resource management domains.

At Quest Alliance, she has anchored impact evaluations of its Youth Program, which engages with large-scale government systems and networks of civil society partners across the country. She has also anchored the research around Voices on life skills, and the future of work for women in the fast-digitizing 21st-century livelihood spaces, among others.

Ishani Sen heads the Learning Voyages –the training arm of Pravah. She has more than 25 years of work experience in the field of education, and youth leadership development. She has co created curriculum for different groups and institutions including schools NGOs working with out of school children, adolescents in conflict area, teachers, and NGO professionals in the area of social sciences, child rights youth development, gender issues, conflict resolution, life skills and citizenship education.  She specialises in instruction design and facilitation.

Dr. Subhomoy holds a Ph.D. in Sports Science from the University of Mumbai and has done his Masters in Sports Science from Lakshmi Bai National Institute of Physical Education, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. Dr. Subhomoy has been associated with Magic Bus for the past 14 years and is responsible for developing and designing the training curriculum for the programme implementation team. Dr Subhomoy heads the training team which delivers training to the implementation team including staff, volunteers, teachers, and sports coaches across different Magic Bus areas of interventions in India and abroad. He has many papers and a thesis to his credit which were presented at National and International platforms.

Supporting non-profits in Education, Financial Inclusion and application of Emerging Technologies in solving Social Issues

Akshay Gambhir is a Senior Manager in Bridgespan’s Mumbai office. Akshay has more than 10 years of experience in consulting, philanthropy, and social impact. At Bridgespan, Akshay has worked with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) organisations, nonprofits, and funders on a range of topics including extensive work on collaboratives. He is also involved in growing and delivering Bridgespan’s nonprofit capacity-building offering, Bridgespan Nonprofit Development Program. Through the program, he has coached over 30 nonprofit and social enterprise teams on strategy development and investing in leadership.

Before joining Bridgespan, Akshay helped build market linkage models for rural livelihood initiatives and led the scale-up of fisheries-based livelihood interventions at Tata Trusts. Prior to entering social impact, he worked at McKinsey Knowledge Center. Akshay holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management – Lucknow and a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Delhi University.

Pradeep Sharma is a partner at Sattva Consulting. He is an education sector expert and he leads Sattva’s efforts in incubating education collaboratives like Life Skills Collaborative, Model Schools Collaborative and Bharat Edtech Initiative.

He is a cross-functional leader with over two decades of experience, including 7 years as an entrepreneur and over 13 years in the education sector. Within education, he has worked in different contexts like public education, consumer market development and affordable private schools. He has built an educational assessment company, worked with Edtech organizations to drive student learning outcomes, and developed the ecosystem for affordable private schools.