Shaveta is the CEO & Managing Director at Central Square Foundation. She has been part of the founding team at CSF since 2012.  Shaveta leads CSF’s work on FLN (Foundational Literacy & Numeracy), Early Childhood Education (ECE) and EdTech, and oversees the organization’s institution building. She is passionate to bring to life CSF’s vision of quality learning for all children and government-led system reform for scale and sustainability.

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Shaveta is on the advisory board of Language and Learning Foundation Foundation (LLF), Madhi Foundation and Saarthi Education. She is also on the advisory board of India Leaders for Social Sector (ILSS) in line with her commitment for high-quality leadership for the social sector. Another passion area for her is gender, and she is a founding mentor to The Udaiti Foundation that is working on women economic empowerment.

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Prior to CSF, she worked at The Boston Consulting Group and Citibank. She has also been a visiting faculty member in the Human Resources and Organizational Behavior disciplines at many business schools. Shaveta earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, and holds an MBA in Management from IIM, Bangalore. 

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She is a proud parent to two young adults (a boy & girl) & furry-boy. In her free time, she enjoys reading, watching Hindi movies & listening to music, solving Sudoku & Kakuro puzzles and traveling with her family.

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Shifali Thakkur serves as the Chief of Staff at Samagra, where she leads the organization’s central functions including Organization Development, Outreach, and Recruitment. She has been with Samagra since 2019, beginning her journey as a Consultant with the Saksham Haryana team, working to improve learning outcomes for over 1.4 million students in government schools across the state.

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Prior to Samagra, she has worked with Teach for India for 5+ years and after a brief stint at Sattva Consulting in 2021, Shifali returned to Samagra in 2022 to lead key organizational building initiatives. She holds a Master’s degree in Education from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Amity University, Noida.

Ms. Shilpy Kochhar is heading the Strategic Partnerships and Entrepreneurship Development vertical at BIRAC, a Section 8 Public Sector Unit under the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. She holds more than 15 years of experience of leading large national level grant programmes, implementing policy initiatives focused at promoting startups and building strategic national and international relationships. During her tenure at BIRAC, she had led several new initiatives, scaled processes through gap identification and developed relationships with key stakeholders.

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She is a post graduate in biotechnology from IIT-Roorkee and has studied Public Policy from ISB. She is currently an Executive Fellow at IIM Lucknow in the area of Economics (Business Environment).

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Shobhini Mukerji is the Executive Director of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) South Asia, which she has led since 2011, overseeing partnerships across 20 Indian states, central government agencies, and regional training initiatives. She works with governments, civil society, and development partners to strengthen data-driven policymaking and scale evidence-based social programs across India and South Asia, advising donors and multilaterals on high-impact policy investments.

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Prior to joining J-PAL, Ms. Mukerji worked with Pratham, one of India’s largest non-governmental organizations focused on improving primary education outcomes. Her research interests span education, gender, and employment, and she has co-authored several large-scale randomized evaluations on foundational literacy with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. This body of work has contributed to programs currently scaling to reach more than 60 million children across India and Africa.

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Ms. Mukerji serves on the advisory boards of Community Jameel and Indus Action, is a Board Member at Helvetas, and is a Steering Committee Member of the Jameel Arts and Health Lab in collaboration with the World Health Organization. She holds a Master’s degree in Social Research Methods from the London School of Economics and initially joined J-PAL in 2007 as a Research Associate.

Shriya leads Employability and Skills at The Convergence Foundation. Before this role, Shriya led the Social Sector practice at McKinsey & Co,  India where she worked with non profits, foundation and the government on strategy engagements. Prior to joining McKinsey, she was the Country Director of the International Innovation Corps, a University of Chicago social impact program that works on large scale development programs with central and state ministries in India. At IIC, Shriya has led multiple large scale projects in Health, Gender, Education, Waste, and Technology & Data, for Central and State ministries, such as the Ministry of Health, National Health Authority, Ministry of Electronics and IT, NITI Aayog, and multiple state governments. Shriya has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and has also run her own Export firm in India.

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Shubha Sarma is an Indian Administrative Service officer of the 1999 batch from the Odisha cadre. She currently serves as Principal Secretary in the Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Odisha.

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Born on April 20, 1976, she holds a graduate degree from Delhi University, a Master’s degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and an MBA from Amity University. A multilingual officer fluent in Assamese, English, French, Hindi, and Odia, she has contributed significantly to governance and public welfare initiatives, particularly in areas related to women and child empowerment.

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Shweta Punj is Editor for Economic Policy at Moneycontrol, where she drives Moneycontrol Policy Next—India’s only platform for deep-dive discussions on policies shaping the country’s growth and governance landscape. A Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, she has over two decades of experience across TV, print, and digital journalism, tracking India’s political economy, innovation, and policy reform.

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Previously Deputy Editor at India Today, Shweta has also worked with CNBC-TV18, Bloomberg UTV, and Inside Washington Publishers, and has reported from Capitol Hill on U.S. health policy.

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A Polestar and South Asia Laadli Award winner, she co-founded the Whypoll Foundation, which developed India’s first women’s safety app and crowd-sourced safety map. She is also the author of Why I Failed, which was translated into 5 languages. 

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Shyam Suryanarayanan is the Director of Udhyam Shiksha at Udhyam Learning Foundation.He leads the mission to integrate entrepreneurial mindset education into government schools, a program that has already reached over 4 million students across 12 Indian states.

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With a 25-year career spanning everything from tea tasting to building successful life sciences career platforms and ed-tech ventures, Shyam brings a unique, real-world perspective to his focus on employability, experiential learning, and mindset transformation for India’s youth.