Transforming gender and social norms through community engagement, media and education systems.

Abirami Jotheeswaran is a Dalit women’s rights activist and lawyer from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. She has been a member of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) since 2005. She played a key role in advocating for the amendment of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, leading to its 2015 update, which mandates quicker trials to prevent atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis.

Currently, she is the General Secretary of the All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM-NCDHR), focusing on empowering young Dalit women to fight caste and gender-based violence. Under her leadership, AIDMAM released the “Dalit Women Rise for Justice” report in 2021, pushing for stronger enforcement of laws protecting Dalit women.

She also advocates globally, representing Dalit women’s issues at forums like the United Nations and the European Union.

Ratnaboli Ray has been a mental health advocate almost all her life, from the time in her childhood, when she understood, through experiences at home, that people with mental illness were treated differently. It led her to study Clinical Psychology and further train in Human Rights and Health from Harvard School of Public Health and Hygiene to work with people with mental health conditions and psycho-social disabilities. She ventured into the untouchable world of government mental hospitals over two decades ago and in 1999 received an Ashoka Fellowship to start Anjali. Anjali’s thrust is twofold – one, to establish Mental Illness within the mainstream health paradigm of India and two, to ‘speak for’ a large population of marginalized people with mental illness vis-a-vis their right to a professional and inclusive system of care and treatment. In the last 18 years Anjali has impacted people through its social inclusion, capacity-building and livelihoods programmes in government mental hospitals. Abandoned people have been reintegrated with their families, through a complex process of community tracing and advocacy with caregivers and State mechanisms like the police, Panchayat, Municipalities and the Welfare, Health and Women & Child departments of the government. A trainer on gender, sexuality, disability and mental health issues, more recently, Ratnaboli has been an invitee member in the drafting of the Mental Health Care Act of 2017, is part of the Rules Framing Committee of the Govt of West Bengal and is now deeply invested in a national campaign called Bridge The Care Gap which will advocate for the inclusion of mental health as a health and development priority of all major political parties in the country. She was the first Indian woman to receive the Alison Des Forges Award in 2016 for Extraordinary Activism from Human Rights Watch, USA, in 2016.

Samik is a visionary leader with over 3 decades of experience in building, scaling, and transforming businesses across diverse markets and industries. He has been recognized for strategic clarity, sales and operational excellence, and the ability to deliver sustained high growth by reshaping businesses and ecosystems.

Over a distinguished 32 year career, including 9 years of international leadership exposure, Samik has held leadership roles across MNC’s like Microsoft and Oracle, alongside senior roles within Indian technology firms operating internationally. He held leadership roles across multiple strategic functions, including Sales, Pre Sales, Industry, Channel, and market segments. He is currently serving as the Chief Operating Officer of RS Software, a company of Indian origin with a global footprint, with responsibility for driving accelerated growth via strategic transformation.

Samik serves on the board of EmployWise, Breakthrough, and WES Foundation.

Santosh Desai, a post-graduate from IIM Ahmedabad, is the founder of Think9 Consumer Technologies Pvt Ltd and a prominent figure in branding and marketing. With 21 years in advertising, he has served as President of McCann-Erickson and served as the CEO of Future Brands Ltd. He is a veteran in his field and has served on the boards of ING Vysya Bank and OXFAM India. He is currently on the boards of Think⁹ Consumer Technologies Pvt Ltd, D.B. Corp. Ltd, FSN E-Commerce Ventures Limited, Nykaa -KK Beauty Pvt Ltd, STVK Consultants Private Limited and a Trustee in Breakthrough Trust. He has been writing a weekly column for the Times of India for over 20 years and is the author of the book Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India, which explores the evolution of middle-class Indian life. His latest book “Memes for Mummyji: Making Sense of Post–Smartphone India” has just been published.  He is recognised for his ability to connect culture and marketing, making complex concepts accessible to diverse audiences.

Sashwati Banerjee is an award-winning strategic communications and social impact leader with over two decades of experience designing and executing behaviour change, public awareness, and multi-stakeholder campaigns across India and the Global South. With a deep understanding of the intersection of communication, gender equity, and development, she has built and led some of India’s most impactful campaigns in education, health, renewable energy, and digital inclusion.

Sashwati currently serves as Director & Regional Lead for Dalberg Media Asia, where she heads cross-country storytelling and movement-building projects. She brings expertise in crafting narrative frameworks, managing creative and production teams, and leading co-creation with public and private sector partners.

She is also the Founder of Top Parent, a free mobile-first EdTech at home platform with over 2 million+ downloads, promoting early learning outcomes among low-income families. Previously, as the Founder and Managing Director of Sesame Workshop India, she localized and scaled the iconic Sesame Street brand to 9 Indian languages and raised over $25M for impact-driven content across TV, radio, and community media.

Sashwati’s past work with USAID-funded health programs, and advisory roles with CREA, Point of View, and ARROW, reflect her ability to design inclusive communication strategies for hard-to-reach audiences. Her cross-sectoral experience spans government, multilateral agencies, foundations, and grassroots organizations.

She has spoken at TED India, Brookings, and UNESCO, and serves on the Boards of Breakthrough and Katha. She holds a degree in English Literature from Delhi University and a diploma in Advertising & PR from Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan.

Yogita Verma has over 25 years of experience spanning Marketing, Fundraising, and Communications across both the corporate and development sectors. She is currently the co-founder and Director at NetImpact Solutions, a company specializing in analytics and market intelligence. Additionally, Yogita serves as a trustee for the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO), an apex body of over 200 animal protection organizations, and sits on the board of Puretech Digital, a full-funnel marketing company based in Mumbai.

Alongside her co-founder, Yogita has built NetImpact into a globally recognized analytics firm serving blue-chip clients across four continents. Prior to this entrepreneurial chapter, she spent over a decade in the development sector. She first served as Director of Resource Mobilisation & Communications at CRY – Child Rights and You, where she was instrumental in steering the organization’s fundraising growth and brand impact for nearly five years. During this period, she also served on the boards of both CRY America and CRY UK. More recently, as the Head of Resource Mobilisation & Communications at Breakthrough for nearly six years, Yogita spearheaded the diversification of income streams, accelerated sustainable fundraising growth, and defined a cohesive brand positioning framework to ensure a singular, powerful voice in the external world.

Yogita holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. Before transitioning into the development sector, she spent close to a decade building her foundation as a marketing professional at Nestle India.

With more than 25 years of experience in working in the social section, Nayana is a strong believer in the power of the collective. She vouches for the power of collective action in ensuring that it is the most marginalised who lead, both with their stories and in bringing together others in the community.

She has been associated with Breakthrough since 2010, initially as a donor, and then formally in 2018 as the Director – Programmes. With Nayana, Breakthrough’s work in Haryana and UP evolved further, pivoting towards deeper engagement in communities to keep rising against gender-based violence and discrimination.

Priyanka is the Chief Strategic Partnerships and Communications Officer at Breakthrough, where she leads strategic partnerships, organisational positioning and communications. A member of the organisation’s Strategic Leadership Team, she plays a key role in shaping Breakthrough’s growth and influence.

With over two decades of experience across media, strategic communications, sales, marketing, advertising and production, Priyanka has worked in India, New Zealand and the United States. She has been with Breakthrough for nearly a decade, previously leading media and digital strategy to advance large scale gender norm change initiatives.

Deeply committed to communication for social good, she believes in the power of storytelling to shift mindsets and move people to action. Her professional interests include Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC), Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) and the use of entertainment media to drive social impact.

An avid reader and traveller at heart, she is often found planning her next journey usually with a cup of coffee in hand.

Dr Renu Golwalkar brings over two decades of global leadership experience across Asia and Africa, working at the intersection of gender equality, youth participation, social inclusion, and systems change. She has held senior leadership roles with leading international and Indian organisations and large multi-country donor-funded programmes, where she led strategy, programme design, capacity strengthening, and impact measurement at scale.

With deep technical expertise in gender-transformative programming, organisational change, safeguarding, Do No Harm, and inclusive leadership, Renu is known for translating feminist and inclusion frameworks into practical, measurable action. She is equally passionate about mentorship, coaching, and building resilient teams and institutions.

Sunita has over 24 years of experience spearheading world-class programs & campaigns by aligning partners’ vision, feminist leadership, creative ideas and strategies for impact-oriented work to end violence against women and girls, and promote active citizenship. She has conducted capacity-building programs globally and published more than 80 guides and toolkits.

Dr. Lakshmi Lingam is a distinguished social scientist and a prominent figure in gender studies, serving as a Professor at the School of Media and Cultural Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. As Deputy Director at TISS Hyderabad from 2011 to 2016, she established key academic programs, recruited faculty, and fostered connections with various governmental, non-governmental, and civil society organizations.

A recognized scholar, Dr. Lingam has been on the International Visitors Leadership program of the USIA and has received numerous prestigious fellowships  including the Fulbright New Century Scholar in 2004-05, Nehru-Fulbright Fellow in 2015, and Indo-Shastri Visiting Scholar at the University of Montreal in 2011. She was also a visiting fellow in the Gender, Sexuality, and Law program at Keele University in the UK in 2007.

Her leadership extends to serving on the Curriculum Advisory Boards, Executive Committees, and Academic Councils of several Indian universities in addition to being a member of Technical and Ethical Advisory Boards and Internal Complaints Committees of several academic, government organisations and NGOs.

Dr. Lingam has contributed immensely to gender equity in government initiatives across various states in India, as General Secretary of the Indian Association for Women Studies from 2000 to 2002 and as a member of the National Resource Group of the Government of India, Mahila Samakhya program for women’s empowerment.

Throughout her career, she has actively engaged in national and international research projects and has contributed significantly to  literature on gender and social sciences. Dr. Lingam’s work continues to inspire scholars, researchers, and policymakers in the fields of gender studies, social justice, and women’s empowerment.