Nikita has over 15 years of experience and has been working with Quest Alliance since its inception. She has worn multiple hats through this journey in areas including strategy, program design & execution, content & facilitation, fundraising, and using technology for learning.  She currently leads the Youth Program which engages with large-scale government systems and networks of civil society partners across the country. She is passionate about systems reform towards enabling career journeys for youth, for that to thrive in 21st-century livelihood spaces.

Suman Bhattacharjea is Director, Research at ASER Centre, the research and evaluation unit of Pratham Education Foundation in India, where she leads a variety of large- and small-scale research projects examining different dimensions of schooling and learning. She holds an undergraduate degree in Economics with Honours from Delhi University, and a Master's and Doctoral degrees in Education from Harvard University.

Meghana Desai comes with 16 years of experience in the non-profit and corporate sectors. She has diverse experience in leading the design of assessments, impact evaluation, programme design and strategy, educational research, capacity building, government engagement and documentation. She currently leads the monitoring & evaluation of SMF’s initiatives in the education, health and water sectors. She has closely worked with the NCERT, New Delhi in developing a Common Minimum Program for Values Education in schools. She holds a PG Diploma in Business Management (Finance and Mktg) and is an Electronics engineer from NIT Nagpur.

Vyjayanthi is the founder and executive director of 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. 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, and UNICEF. She also consults for 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 also 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 of improving 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 two 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. 

LinkedIn | Ashoka Fellow | Fulbright Humphrey Fellow

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.

Monal Jayaram is the program director and Faculty at the Piramal School of Leadership, a leading institute in India that specialises in researching and providing leadership development programs for nation-building.  Ms Jayaram is trained as an art historian and has been practising in the field of education for twenty years.

Dhanashri Brahme is a postgraduate from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has more than 24 years of rich experience in gender and rights-based programming as well as in the areas of health, micro-finance and adolescent empowerment, at the grassroots, in the government and with the UN alike.

Dhanashri’s recent employment was with United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), as National Programme Specialist, Gender. She was responsible for leading overall programme coordination with a specific focus on gender and rights portfolio management that also included government and partner management. Before UNFPA, she worked with the World Bank and IFAD and assisted the Swa-Shakti Project in association with the Ministry of Women & Child Development, Govt. of India. As an individual consultant, she has worked with clients such as the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude and Seva Mandir, Udaipur. The latter was her first exposure to grassroots development, helping to build a keen sense of programming with an eye to ground realities.

Mr Vidyadhar Shukla was Deputy Director, MSCERT, Pune. During his tenure with the state government, he served as the head of training programs for SSA in MSCERT and Maharashtra Prathamik Shikshan Parishad, and as the principal of the State Institute for Audio-Visual Education. He has been a consultant for several agencies including UNICEF. He has authored two books for the D. Ed. course, led the development of curricula and written many training modules and manuals. He advises SMF on programme content, training and working in the government school system.