Rohini Nilekani

Dr. Janhavi Nilekani

Dr. C. Shambu Prasad

Kiran Anandampillai

Neelima Khetan

Sunita Nadhamuni

Nandita Chandavarkar

Rohini Nilekani set up Arghyam with a private endowment in 2001, to work on water and sanitation issues in India. Other than Arghyam, Rohini supports causes anchored in strengthening communities and networks. She has co-founded Ek Step, Pratham Books and is the Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. She has also been deeply involved with development issues and is currently a member of the Audit Advisory Board of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. She sits on the boards of many non-profits, notably ATREE and Sanghamithra Rural Financial Services. Rohini has authored a novel “Stillborn”, and a non-fiction account of dialogues she moderated between social and corporate leaders in a book titled "Uncommon Ground".

Sunita Nadhamuni is Chairperson of Arghyam. Sunita is a social entrepreneur driving technology-enabled programs for societal impact at scale for the last 2 decades. Sunita  was most recently the Global Head of Social Innovation at Dell Technologies where she founded Digital Lifecare,  an open-source technology platform used for India’s national NCD (non-communicable diseases) program with more than 400 million people enrolled across 32 states. She is currently advisor to several Government and social initiatives including the Atal Community Innovation Centers of the NITI Aayog and CII Council for Public Health. 

Sunita was the founder-CEO of Arghyam leading the organization to scale with civil society partners across the country. She was also briefly with the Asia Pacific Water Forum and a former TED India Fellow. She has more than a decade of IT experience in the Silicon Valley at companies like Sun Microsystems, SGI and Healtheon/ WebMD. Sunita has an MS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in NY and a BE degree from Andhra University.

 

Dr. Janhavi Nilekani is the Founder and Chairperson of Aastrika, a public health organization that envisions a future in which "every woman is treated with respect and dignity during childbirth, and the right treatment is provided at the right time." She is a development economist by training with a background in academic research in environmental and development economics, with a particular focus on air pollution. Janhavi is a 2018 alumna of Harvard where she completed her PhD in Public Policy, and holds a 2010 BA, cum laude, in Economics and International Studies from Yale.

 

Dr. C Shambu Prasad is a Professor of General Management (Strategy and Policy) at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand(IRMA). At IRMA he coordinates the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprises (CSEE) and the Verghese Kurien Centre of Excellence (VKCOE). He has been involved in promoting social entrepreneurship and instrumental in setting up IRMA’s incubator, ISEED (Incubator for Social Enterprises and Entrepreneurs for Development).His expertise is in science and innovation policy and his education has been multidisciplinary with a basic training in mechanical engineering, a Masters in Industrial Management with specialisation in science policy (both at IIT Madras) and a doctorate in science, technology and society studies from IIT Delhi. Dr Shambu Prasad was awarded the Villgro-CSIE award for ‘Academic Contribution to the Field of Social Entrepreneurship’ in April 2013 and was the Fulbright Nehru Senior Research Fellow attached to Cornell University pursuing a long term study on the System of Rice Intensification or SRI. His work seeks to create innovation spaces and learning alliances to foster knowledge dialogues between practitioners, academics and policy makers. He has been a member of a Sub Group on Upscaling Innovative Technologies in agriculture for the 12th Five Year Plan. He has taught courses on social entrepreneurship, managing collectives, ecosystem and sustainability management, public policies and public systems management, innovation management and rural livelihoods.

 

Kiran Anandampillai is currently the Advisor -Technology at the National Health Authority (NHA). He supports NHA to create digital public goods under India’s two large digital health initiatives - The National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) and Ayushman Bharath (PMJAY). Kiran is a telecom engineer by training and was a founding member of OnMobile, where he helped build it to become a public company. He was a volunteer with UIDAI for the Aadhaar program and is currently a volunteer with the iSPIRT foundation where he works on the Health Stack. He dedicates his time to driving impact in healthcare. He is the founder and CEO of iDrishti, which delivers high quality eyecare from a district capital to the village level. iDrishti currently manages 12 eye hospitals across Karnataka, India

 

Neelima Khetan is a CSR and Social Sector expert. She has over 3 decades of experience in this space, having worked with leading for-profit and non-profit organisations in the country. Her current affiliations include Visiting Fellow with the Centre for Social and Economic Progress and Partner, Nous Consultants. Earlier, Neelima has been the Group CSR Head for Vedanta, Vice President CSR at Hindustan Zinc and Director, CSR and Sustainability for Coca Cola India and South-West Asia. Neelima has long experience of the social sector, having held leadership positions like –India Country Director of the American India Foundation and Chief Executive of Seva Mandir in Udaipur. In between, she was also the Acting Director of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). Neelima holds a Master’s in Rural Management from IRMA and a Bachelor’s in Commerce from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University.

 

Nandita Chandavarkar has been associated with the Life Sciences sector for over 30 years of which her notable contributions were as Director – Operations at the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE) and as Consultant Advisor – Entrepreneurship at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP). 

Having joined ABLE at its inception, her 10 years there focussed on building the organization and coordinating with various stakeholders on policy and fiscal initiatives to support the nascent life sciences sector.  She actively participated and led the engagement between association members and government policy makers, investors, researchers and students.

During her decade long association with C-CAMP, she worked at the intersection of the start-up incubation ecosystem and academia, innovation and industry.  She played a pivotal role in several entrepreneurship programs including the National Bio Entrepreneurship Competition (NBEC) - one of the largest such programs in India- and in developing the AMR Program (Antimicrobial Resistance) and the IAIH - India AMR Innovation Hub, a convergent platform that brings together organisations and industry from around the world to combat AMR in India and beyond.

Her interests include interacting with startups, nature &amp; wildlife, travel and cultural events.

Board of Trustees