India at the Crossroads

Speakers

• 
  Rohini Nilekani

  Chairperson, Arghyam

  Rohini Nilekani is Founder-Chairperson, Arghyam, a foundation for sustainable water and sanitation, which funds initiatives all across India. From 2004 to 2014, she was Founder-Chairperson and chief funder of Pratham Books, a non-profit children's publisher which has reached millions of children with indigenous, attractive books in multiple languages. She sits on the Board of Trustees of ATREE- Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment and serves on the Eminent Persons Advisory Group of the Competition Commission of India. She is also Director on the Board of EkStep, a non-profit education platform. A former journalist, she has written for many leading publications such as Bombay Magazine, India Today, Sunday and the Times of India. Her first novel, Stillborn, was published by Penguin Books, which also published her book Uncommon Ground, based on a TV Show she conceptualised. Under the pseudonym 'Noni', she has also authored several books for young children. Rohini Nilekani continues to fund work in areas such as governance and accountability, independent media, education and research and environmental sustainability.

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• 
  Rikin Gandhi

  Co-founder and Executive Director, Digital Green Foundation

  Rikin co-founded Digital Green as a research project on Microsoft Research India’s Technology for Emerging Markets team. With a master’s degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Space Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor's in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, Rikin began his career at Oracle, researching and productizing a linguistic-based search system for text retrieval that used phonetic similarity and entity extraction for document matching, receiving two patents for the work. Growing up, time spent in India's rural communities changed his life. He developed a passion for helping the country's smallholder farmers, whom he sees as heroes. He has been honored as a TED Fellow, Ashoka Fellow, and won numerous awards from MIT Technology Review TR35 and the Stockholm Challenge, among others.

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• 
  Tim Hanstad

  CEO, Chandler Foundation

  Tim Hanstad leads the Chandler Foundation as CEO. Tim co-founded Landesa, the world’s leading land rights organization and a Top-10 Global NGO with over 20 offices worldwide. Tim is a Skoll Social Entrepreneur Awardee and Schwab Foundation Outstanding Social Entrepreneur. He has authored numerous books and articles on economic and social development, with work appearing in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, and Stanford Social Innovation Review. He holds two law degrees from University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree from Seattle Pacific University.

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• 
  Neera Nundy

  Founder & Partner, Dasra

  Neera Nundy is Partner and Co-Founder of DASRA India which started in 1999. Her overarching goal is to enable social entrepreneurs and funders with the support they need to achieve big goals in areas such as gender, urban resilience and sanitation through system change and collaborative philanthropy. Neera plays a crucial role in bringing capacity building, knowledge, funding and networks to the sector. She holds a MBA from Harvard Business School and is a fellow of the third class of the Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship of the Ananta Aspen Center and a fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She is a Board Member of The Hunger Project, American School of Bombay and Aangan Trust. She is Canadian, has lived in Mumbai for 21 years, runs Dasra with her husband Deval and busy raising feminist sons – Ayush, Laxman and Akbar. – all teenagers!

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