Ms Srilatha Batliwala, a social activist, advocate of women’s rights, scholar, and author of many books on empowerment of women is from Bengaluru. She graduated from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai with a Master of Arts degree in Social Work. She has been engaged in promoting the feminist movement, building leadership qualities in women, monitoring and assessing gender sensitive issues, and creating a pool of women activists. She was instrumental in establishing four institutions and two grassroots-level feminist campaigns.

Ms Batliwala has worked for various international institutions, such as the Ford Foundation in New York, the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University and has been Chair of the Board of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). Ms Batliwala is actively involved in many organisations dealing with women’s rights – she is Scholar Associate with the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), Co-Chair of the board of ‘Gender at Work’ (a global network of women), and member of the board of Samudaya Nirman Sahayak and IT for Change (SPARC) in Mumbai, founded in 1984 to facilitate urban poor to take part in development works of the community. She has many publications to her credit and is a Fellow, Women’s Policy Research, and Advocacy at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru.

Dr Leela Visaria is Honorary Professor and former Director, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad. A Princeton University-trained demographer, her research interests include historical demography as well as field-based studies on health, family planning, education, and demographic transition. She has authored several peer-reviewed articles and has co-authored and/or edited six books including Twenty-first Century India: Population, Economy, Human Development and the Environment (2004) and Abortion in India: Ground Realities (2007). Between 1994 and 2008, she served as a coordinator of HealthWatch, a network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and researchers that engaged in dialogue with policymakers, donors, researchers and activists on gender sensitive population and health policy issues. In March 2008, she was awarded a two-year national professorship by the Indian Council for Social Science Research, a parent body of all social science research institutes in India. She was the first President-elect of the Asian Population Association (2009–10).

Dr Saroj Pachauri, MD, PhD, DPH is a Population Council Distinguished Scholar. She joined the Population Council in 1995 as Regional Director, South and East Asia, and established the Council’s regional office in New Delhi. Prior to joining the Council, Dr Pachauri worked with the Ford Foundation, where she developed the Foundation’s child survival and reproductive health programmes. She initiated work on HIV and AIDS when there was little acknowledgement of the problem in India and no government programme was in place. From 1971 to 1983, Dr Pachauri worked with Family Health International and conducted research on international health issues, especially clinical trials on fertility control technologies.

She has published extensively on family planning, maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, adolescents, and reproductive tract infections, played a major role in influencing policy and been a board member of numerous national and international organisations. An awardee of the Grant’s Gold Medal at the University of Calcutta, Dr Pachauri specialised in community medicine.

Dr Saroj Pachauri, MD, PhD, DPH is a Population Council Distinguished Scholar. She joined the Population Council in 1995 as Regional Director, South and East Asia, and established the Council’s regional office in New Delhi. Prior to joining the Council, Dr Pachauri worked with the Ford Foundation, where she developed the Foundation’s child survival and reproductive health programmes. She initiated work on HIV and AIDS when there was little acknowledgement of the problem in India and no government programme was in place. From 1971 to 1983, Dr Pachauri worked with Family Health International and conducted research on international health issues, especially clinical trials on fertility control technologies.

She has published extensively on family planning, maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, adolescents, and reproductive tract infections, played a major role in influencing policy and been a board member of numerous national and international organisations. An awardee of the Grant’s Gold Medal at the University of Calcutta, Dr Pachauri specialised in community medicine.

Dr Mirai Chatterjee is an Indian social worker who works at the Self-Employed Women’s Association, SEWA in Ahmedabad. She was appointed a member of National Advisory Council in 2010.

Dr Chatterjee is the Director of Social Security at SEWA. She is responsible for SEWA’s Health Care, Child Care and Insurance programmes. She is currently Chairperson of the National Insurance VimoSEWA Cooperative Ltd and of LokSwasthya health cooperative, both promoted by SEWA. She joined SEWA in 1984 and was its General Secretary after its Founder, Ela Bhatt. Dr Chatterjee has served on the Boards of several organisations in India, including the Friends of Women’s World Banking (FWWB), and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). She was advisor to the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector and is in the Advisory Group of the National Rural Health Mission. She was also a Commissioner in the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.

Dr Chatterjee has a B.A. from Harvard University in History and Science and a Masters from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, U.S.A.

Mr Sanjoy Hazarika is a human rights activist recognised internationally for designing and developing innovative strategies for inclusive health and governance. He is also a scholar, author, journalist and film maker, and currently the Director of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). Prior to this, he was honorary research professor at the Centre for Policy Research. Mr Hazarika held the Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew Chair at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, where he also directed the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research of which he is a founder. He has been a member of various academic organisations and official committees, including the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee to Review the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), the Society of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, and the North East India Studies Programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University

Mr Prem Das Rai, one of the most distinguished alumni of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, is an Indian politician from the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) party. He has been associated with the party since its formative years and has helped shaping the party’s manifesto and vision. Mr Rai has held all the key posts in the party including being the party’s General Secretary. In 2009, he earned the distinction of being the first and only Member of Parliament with degrees from both an IIT as well as an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) after being elected to the Lok Sabha from the Sikkim constituency.

Mr Rai continues to work towards the betterment of the Sikkimese people. Being a technology and a management expert, Mr. Rai is credited for introducing IT and Sustainable Eco-tourism to Sikkim. Through social networking, he has facilitated exchange programmes and promoted diversity. He has played a crucial role in strengthening the network of NGOs and creating an environment for a proactive Sikkimese civil society. In 2002, he was awarded the prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship (USA) for making tremendous contributions to Sikkim’s economic and industrial growth.

Ms Karminder Kaur has been working in the field of eliminating domestic violence against women and prohibiting child marriages for the last nine years. Prior to this, she was in the Research, Monitoring and Evaluation Wing of the Haryana State Resource Centre, which works on adult literacy and gender sensitisation in Haryana. She has made a mark as Protection Officer-cum-Child Marriage Prohibition Officer of Rohtak and Jind, and was presented with the state-level Woman Achiever Award by the Haryana Government in 2017. Selected for her achievements and outstanding work in the field, Ms Kaur has been recognised for her exemplary performance in preventing child marriages and checking instances of domestic violence in these two districts. She was also awarded by the State Commission for Women during the International Women’s Day programme held in Gurugram in 2017, and honoured by the Rohtak district administration on Independence Day in 2010 and on Republic Day in 2016.

She represented Haryana in an episode of the Aamir Khan production, ‘Satyamev Jayate’ that focused on female foeticide. She has published articles on different social issues in Dainik Tribune and other newspapers.

Dr Arvind Pandey is currently Advisor, National Institute of Medical Statistics at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). He is a Post-Doctorate from University of North Carolina, USA. He is an eminent statistician specialised in Biostatistics, Population Dynamics and Epidemiology. He has served various positions at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai for more than 18 years and as Director of National Institute of Medical Statistics, ICMR for 16 years. He has more than 35 years of experience in leading the country’s largest demographic surveys such as the National Family Health Survey since the first round till date. His research areas are varied; important ones include (i) Survival Analysis Models; (ii) Child Survival and Reproductive Health Issues; (iii) Monitoring and Evaluation of Programmes Impact and; (iv) Epidemiological Studies on Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases including HIV/AIDS, Nutrition and Integrated Disease Surveillance (IDSP) of NCD.

Dr Pandey is a member of several national and international professional bodies such as the International Epidemiological Association, International Biometric Society, International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Indian Association for the Study of Population, Indian Society for Medical Statistics, National India) Academy of Medical Sciences. He has authored more than 200 articles in peer reviewed national and international journals and books, 12 books and 44 research reports/monographs.

Dr Meenakshi Gopinath is an Indian educationist, political scientist, writer and a former principal of Lady Shri Ram College (LSR), New Delhi. She is the founder and incumbent director of the Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), a non-governmental organisation promoting peace and socio-political leadership among the women of South Asia and a former member of the National Security Advisory Board, the first woman to serve the Government of India agency.

Dr Gopinath has served as a member of the selection panel of the Lokpal, a legal body which has jurisdiction over legislators and government officials of India. The Government of India awarded her the Padma Shri in 2007, for her contributions to the Indian educational sector. Dr Gopinath did her graduate studies (BA honours in political science) at LSR, her master’s from Massachusetts University and doctoral degree from the University of Delhi. Earning a Fulbright Scholarship, she did post-doctoral research at Georgetown University. She started her career as a member of faculty at Jawaharlal Nehru University

Dr Pramath Sinha is the Founder and Managing Director of 9.9 Media. He has worked in diverse fields spanning business and strategy, consulting, leadership and academia. He spent 12 years with McKinsey & Company in North America and India, heading leadership and media practices. He was the Group MD and CEO of ABP Pvt Ltd., a $200 million Indian media conglomerate with interests in newspapers, magazines, television and online. Passionate about education, he forayed into the field as the founding Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB). Setting it up in collaboration with Wharton, Kellogg and London Business School, Dr Sinha was instrumental in building ISB into a world-class business school in India. He is the Founder and Trustee of Ashoka University (ashoka.edu.in), India’s first liberal arts university. The Young India Fellowship (youngindiafellowship.com) launched under its aegis in 2011, was another first of its kind scholarship programme in the country.

Dr Sinha mentors and advises various educational groups that seek his expertise. In addition, he is currently a Senior Counselor with Albright Stonebridge Group, helping international businesses set up operations in India. Pramath holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BTech degree from IIT, Kanpur.

Dr Raman Kataria is a founding member of Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS – People’s Health Group). JSS works in providing and developing low-cost and effective health programmes in rural India. A paediatric surgeon from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a premier medical institute in India, Dr Kataria and five other doctors from AIIMS relocated to serve in the remote villages of Chhattisgarh in 1996. With a deep understanding of the social determinants of health, recognising that people everywhere have complicated health needs, JSS reaches out to 225 remote villages through its community health workers and sub-centres. Today JSS has become a resource centre for government and NGOs working on public health in India.

Ms Sonalini Mirchandani has three decades of experience in social sector communication in India. Her work in the subcontinent in communications research, strategic design, capacity building and implementation of interventions has spanned sectors including reproductive health, child rights, communicable diseases, gender-based violence, governance, and others. Ms Mirchandani started her career as a civil servant in the Indian Foreign Service. Moving on to work in the private sector, she was Vice-President of Operations Research Group (presently AC Nielsen- ORG) before joining Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in 1995 as Resident Advisor on the Innovations in Family Planning Services Project (IFPS) in Uttar Pradesh. Subsequently, as Country Director JHU (2004-07), Ms Mirchandani led the design and implementation of a USAID-supported HIV/AIDS communication programme in India.

She has handled an array of communication consultancy assignments for the private sector and also for leading bilateral and multilateral organisations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UKAid, among others. Today she heads The Communication Hub, an organisation founded by her in 2007. Besides addressing several forums on communication, she also scripts for documentaries and audio visuals, and is a visiting faculty at leading communication institutes in India.

Dr Vikas Amte, medical doctor and social worker, heads the Maharogi Sewa Samiti, Warora, (MSS) a pioneering institution and an apex non-governmental referral centre for people afflicted with leprosy. The organisation is headquartered at Anandwan in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra. MSS was established in 1949 by his father, Muralidhar Devidas alias Baba Amte with the basic objective of treating and rehabilitating leprosy patients and giving them a life with dignity and self-respect through productive work.

Dr Amte is an innovative scientist by knowledge, a creative researcher by need, a developed environmental entrepreneur by trade, a liberated management executive by profession, a genuine financier by intelligence, a sincere social worker by roots, and a learned physician by education. He would have liked to become an engineer, but seeing the need for a doctor at Anandwan, he studied medicine.

Dr Rajani Ved is currently the Executive Director of the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC), which provides technical support to the National Health Mission. She has worked for over 25 years with grassroots NGOs, governments, donors and private foundations in programme implementation, evaluation, research and policy formulation in women and children’s health and nutrition. She has worked on strengthening convergence between women’s empowerment and reproductive health among self-help groups. Dr Ved is actively involved in analysis, documentation and scaling up of innovations led by NGO and government health systems and has conducted seminars and workshops for scaling up training.

Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India, has for over 40 years been a strong advocate for women’s health, reproductive and sexual rights, and rural livelihoods.  She has co-conceived the popular transmedia initiative, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon – I, A Woman, Can Achieve Anything. Before joining Population Foundation of India, she served as the India Country Director of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation for 15 years and has also co-founded and led the Ashoka Foundation, Dastkar, and the Society for Rural, Urban and Tribal Initiative (SRUTI). Poonam is a member of the Governing Council and Board of ActionAid International and India and is a member of a committee on Population Dynamics and Women’s Empowerment at The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington DC.

An alumna of Delhi University and Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government, Poonam serves on the governing council of several non-governmental organizations, and is a regular commentator in India and globally for television and the print media