People

Our team comprises professionals from a wide range of backgrounds committed to public health.

Trustees

Dr. Armida Fernandez

Mary Patricia Soans

Dr. Sindhu Shanbhag

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Dr. Jayshree Mondkar

Dr. Ruchi Nanavati

R. Sriram

Rakesh Singh

Pradeep Mukerjee

Nitin Nayar

Dr. Armida Fernandez

Dr. Fernandez is the founder trustee of SNEHA. She was Professor and Head of Neonatology at Lokmanaya Tilak Municipal General Hospital (LTMGH) and Medical College for over 25 years and Dean of the hospital for 3 years. She was honoured as an Ashoka Fellow in 2004 and is the past president of the National Neonatology Forum.

Mary Patricia Soans

Mary Patricia Soans is joint founder trustee of SNEHA along with Dr. Fernandez. Patricia is a social worker and has been active in social welfare services in the church. She is an active member of the H / W Municipal Ward federation.

Dr. Sindhu Shanbhag

Dr. Shanbhag has worked in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and retired as a Medical Officer (Administration) at K. B. Bhabha Hospital, Bandra. She was also OSD at the Integrated Centre for Women and Children at Urban Health Centre (UHC), Dharavi.

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Dr. Jayshree Mondkar

Dr. JayshreeMondkar is currently the Dean and Professor LokmanyaTilak Municipal Medical College and General Hospital, Sion, Mumbai. She was earlier the Head of Department of Neonatology.

Dr. Ruchi Nanavati

Dr. Nanavati is Professor and Head of Neonatology at King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital. She is a member of the Governing Body of National Neonatology Forum and Principal Investigator and Key Trainer for Kangaroo Mother Care.

Luis Miranda

Luis is active in the non-profit sector and is Chairman, Board of Advisors, Centre for Civil Society. Luis has been involved in setting up two companies. He was Chairman, IDFC Private Equity and was a key member of the start - up team at HDFC Bank. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Sampathkumar Sudarshan

SudarshanSampathkumar is a partner with The Bridgespan Group, a global nonprofit organization that collaborates with mission-driven leaders, organizations, philanthropists, and investors to break cycles of poverty and dramatically improve the quality of life for those in need. Prior to Bridgespan, he was a Partner at Bain & Company from 2009 to 2019, Partner at Accenture from 1986 – 2006 and Managing Director with India Equity Partners from 2007 – 2009. He has deep cross industry experience in India and abroad and has led strategy as well as performance improvement projects across a wide spectrum of sectors. In addition, he is widely published across Indian business magazines and newspapers.

R. Sriram

Sriram is the co-founder of the iconic Crossword chain of bookstores. He is the Managing Trustee of the non-profit Pratham Books and serves on the boards and advisory boards of several nonprofit and for-profit organisations. He was an advisor to the early stage venture fund Seedfund andto many of its investee companies, and was the President of TiE Mumbai. He currently works with a range of enterprises, across sectors and stages, to help them create, deliver and capture value. He is a visiting faculty at IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Lucknow and brings to SNEHA his experience in helping build strong and innovative organizations.

Rakesh Singh

Rakesh Singh has had a very successful career spanning over 27 years in the world of banking and is currently the Group Head of Investment Banking, Private Banking, Capital Markets and Financial Institutions at HDFC Bank Ltd. He has in the past worked with well-known companies such as Rothschild, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Standard Chartered Bank.

Pradeep Mukerjee

PradeepMukerjee runs Confluence Coaching and Consulting, which he established in 2007 as the Founding Director. He is also an independent member of the Board of Directors of Timex Group India Ltd.Prior to his entrepreneurial journey, Mr. Mukerjee, over a span of more than 19 years, held a number of leadership roles in India and overseas at Citigroup. His last assignment with Citigroup was as Human Resources Director and Vice President, Citigroup, South Asia. He has been Country Head and Chief Executive Officer for India for Mercer Consulting.

Nitin Nayar

Nitin Nayar is the Founder and Managing Partner of Filter Capital India Advisors LLP. Filter Capital evaluates growth investments in technology and tech-enabled businesses in India. Prior to launching Filter Capital, Mr. Nayar worked with the India affiliate of Warburg Pincus LLC for 14 years, including six as a Managing Director (2012-2017), where he led the company’s investment advisory efforts in the technology sector in India. Mr. Nayar graduated from Harvard College in 1998 and Harvard Business School in 2003.

Advisory Board

Sonalini Mirchandani

Neera Nundy

Harish Shah

Luis Miranda

Sampathkumar Sudarshan

Sonalini Mirchandani

SonaliniMirchandani has more than 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. She started her career as a civil servant in the Indian Foreign Service. Moving on to work in the private sector, she was Vice- President 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 India for JHU (2004-07), Sonalini led the design and implementation of a USAID- supported HIV/AIDS communication programme. Today she heads The Communication Hub, an organization founded by her in 2007.

Sonalini's work has included major health communication initiatives that have won international recognition such as the Dabbawalla Campaign. Her work on stigma reduction was featured as a best practice at the Vienna AIDS Conference. She is a member of several communication advisory bodies including the Technical Resource Group for the Department of AIDS Control, the Steering Committee of the global Stigma Action Network, Review Panel member for the Echoing Green Fellowships for Social Entrepreneurship, and UNICEF's International Polio Communications Review Team. She is a Member of the Advisory Council of Population Foundation of India and serves on the Advisory Boards of SNEHA, CCDT, and the Mariwala Health Initiative.

Pradeep Mukerjee

Neera Nundy

NeeraNundy is the co-founder of Dasra, a strategic philanthropy foundation that for 20 years has supported non-profits to achieve scale and impact lives. She leads Dasra’s field-building initiatives in the areas of adolescents, urban sanitation and democracy and governance. She is responsible for initiating the Dasra Social Impact Leadership Program with Harvard Business Publishing, a first-of-its-kind executive education program for social sector leaders in India. She also launched the $50 MM Dasra Adolescent Collaborative, a high-impact collaborative funding platform that unites funders, technical experts, government stakeholders and social organizations to focus on key outcomes for adolescent empowerment.

She has been critical to establishing partnerships with global leaders that include Harvard University, Stanford University, USAID, Omidyar Network and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She is on global board of The Hunger Project, SNEHA and DishaSeema Centre; strategic and investment committees of Mann Deshi, Educate Girls and the Education Alliance.

She holds a Master’s in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, is an Indian Leadership Initiative Fellow with Aspen Institute. She is a recipient of the Canadian Governor General's Medallion for her dedication to addressing India’s critical development challenges, and has been awarded the Forbes Philanthropy Award in the Crossover Leaders category for 2014. She lives in Mumbai and is married to Dasra cofounder DevalSanghavi with three boys Ayush, Laxman and Akbar.

Harish Shah

Harish Shah is Managing Director at Signet Chemical Corporation, a specialty chemicals company supplying raw materials to the pharmaceutical industry. He is also Director of the Harish and Bina Shah Foundation, which supports development efforts across agriculture and environment, education, gender equity, governance, health, human rights, livelihoods and media and culture in India.

Leadership Team

Vanessa D'Souza

Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Shanti Pantvaidya

Executive Director

Dr. Nayreen Daruwalla

Programme Director,
Prevention of Violence against Women & Children

Sushma Shende

Programme Director,
Child Health and Nutrition

Dr. Rama Shyam

Programme Director,
Empowerment, Health & Sexuality of Adolescents (EHSAS)

Archana Bagra

Director,
Finance

Dr. Anuja Jayaraman

Director,
Research

Dr. Harvinder Palaha

Programme Director,
Maternal and Newborn Health

Naveen Shah

Director, Human Resources, Administration, Strategy and Partnership

Vanessa D'Souza

CEO

Vanessa D’Souza has served as CEO of SNEHA since March 2013, after a volunteering stint with SNEHA. Prior to that, she worked with Citibank India in various positions, her last role being: Director, Citigroup Private Bank. During her tenure with Citibank she worked across various divisions including Non-Resident Indian Business, Corporate Bank, Project Re-engineering and eventually with the Private Bank. She won the coveted Citicorp Chairman’s Service Excellence Award in 1989 for exemplary performance. She holds a Bachelors (Honours) degree in Economics and a postgraduate degree in Management with a specialization in Marketing. Vanessa pursued the Management Executive Development Programme at Stanford University, USA sponsored by Citibank. She also holds a postgraduate Diploma in Public Health Nutrition. She was a Dasra Social Impact Fellow in 2015 and attended their Leadership Programme for non-profit executives. Recently, Vanessa has been a recipient of the Mother Teresa Social Leadership Scholarship, to attend the Strategic Perspectives in Non-Profit Management Programme at Harvard Business School in 2017.

Dr. Shanti Pantvaidya

Executive Director

Dr. Shanti Pantvaidya, Executive Director, was a medical teacher for 35 years and Professor/Head of Anesthesiology Services for 20 years at Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital (LTMGH), Mumbai’s largest public hospital. At LTMGH, she was instrumental in establishing the Emergency Medical Services. Dr. Shanti leads the project on maternal and newborn referral systems in public hospitals for SNEHA, in partnership with the ICICI Centre for Child Health and Nutrition, PATH India and DFID. She leads the standardizing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the referral system. She was also the Lead Researcher in the WHO-funded Implementation Research Programme, which documented the maternal referral tool. Dr. Shanti oversees research and programme implementation across SNEHA.

Dr. Nayreen Daruwalla

Programme Director

Prevention of Violence against Women & Children

Dr. Nayreen Daruwalla heads SNEHA’s Prevention of Violence against Women and Children programme. She holds a doctoral degree in Social Psychology and has over two decades of experience in working towards the prevention of gender-based violence, particularly through mental health counselling and crisis intervention for survivors of violence, community mobilisation, and public engagement through art and research. Her expertise is in building models to prevent gender violence in low-income contexts and has developed SNEHA’s convergence model, which includes capacity building and training to support institutional responses (of health, law enforcement and the legal system) to gender-based violence, as well as advocacy. Nayreen’s research, programme designs and scholarship have contributed to the gender-based violence discourse in South Asia. She has also collaborated with agencies such as UNDP, UNFPA, USAID and The Wellcome Trust to deliver and evaluate programs of scale in the region. Nayreen is embarking on a new five-year research project: 'Community interventions for primary and secondary prevention of violence against women and girls: a cluster randomised controlled trial in urban India'.

Sushma Shende

Programme Director

Child Health and Nutrition

Sushma heads SNEHA’s Child Health and Nutrition programs. She is an anthropologist by training and has over 20 years of experience in public health projects across tribal, rural and urban settings. Sushma has expertise in working with health systems and developing and implementing private-public partnerships. Before heading the CHN programs, Sushma was Programme Director of SNEHA’s Maternal and Newborn Health programs, working with several marquee donors such as WHO, CRY and IDFC Foundation to deliver programs and research studies across the MMRDA region. In 2013, she was a mentor for the Maternal Health Young Champions Programme, a fellowship run by the Institute of International Education and Harvard School of Public Health. Sushma has also published her research in leading public health international and national journals.

Dr. Rama Shyam

Programme Director

Empowerment, Health & Sexuality of Adolescents (EHSAS)

Rama Shyam is the Director of SNEHA’s Adolescent Health and Sexuality Education programme. She holds a doctoral degree in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and has over 15 years of experience in both grassroots’ and international organisations, working in the development sector. In her most recent stint, she headed the Education and Citizenship programme with Apnalaya, Mumbai, working on developing a high-impact community engagement programme. Earlier, Rama co-founded SAHER (Society for Awareness, Harmony and Equal Rights), a youth-led organization, working on peace-education, sexual and reproductive rights, leadership and citizenship in Mumbai. She has implemented programs to scale in partnership with organisations such as USAID, United Nations Alliance of Civilisations, Tata Trusts, Magic Bus, US Consulate and many others. Prior to her engagement with SAHER, Rama had stints in academia and in training and capacity building and community development across themes such as peace-education, primary education, governance and youth development. She was awarded the Martii Ahistari Peacebuilder Award in 2012, for her peace-education activities in Mumbai, the Dasra Social Impact Village Capital Award in 2010, the Youth Action Net Fellowship in 2007 and Ashoka’s Changelooms Award in 2017.

Anuja Jayaraman

Director

Research

Dr. Anuja is a development economist and demographer with a doctoral degree from Penn State University, USA and a master’s degree in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics. Anuja has a strong statistical background with over a decade of experience in international development programs. She has an established track record of policy-oriented research in the areas of poverty and non-income dimensions of well-being, including maternal and child health outcomes in South Asia and Africa. She has proven ability in training surveyors and monitoring and coordinating large household surveys, as well as monitoring and evaluation of public health programs. Anuja’s scholarship has been published in national and international journals of repute. At SNEHA, she leads the research, M&E and information management functions.

Dr. Archana Bagra

Director

Finance

Archana Bagra is a qualified chartered accountant by training and has been with SNEHA since 2010. She has over 18 years of experience in accounting, internal audit, taxation, bank audit and NGO audits. She has previously worked with development sector organisations such as Akanksha Foundation and Teach for India. Archana oversees all finance processes and reporting at SNEHA. She was a Dasra Social Impact Fellow in 2017 and attended their Leadership Programme for non-profit executives.

Anuja Jayaraman

Director

Research

Dr Harvinder Palaha

Programme Director

Maternal and Newborn Health

Dr Harvinder Palaha is the Program Director of the Maternal & Newborn Health Program. She is a senior Pediatrician and Neonatologist with 30 years of clinical experience. Dr. Harvinder completed MBBS and Master’s in paediatrics in Rajasthan University, obtaining the first rank in college and eighth in the university. She joined the Army Medical Corps and served in the Indian Armed Forces as Classified Specialist Pediatrician for a decade. She has completed a Fellowship in Neonatology at Wadia Children’s Hospital in Mumbai and since, has worked in Jaslok Hospital, Somaiya Medical College and Hospital and Wadia Hospital as a paediatrician and neonatologist. In 2015, Dr. Harvinder was invited by Aga Khan Foundation to head the Pediatrics Department of Aga Khan Hospital, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. She was the only practicing Neonatologist in that area and single-handedly set up the Neonatal Intensive Care services in Aga Khan Hospital, Dar-es-Salaam.

Dr. Harvinder is an astute clinician, researcher, academician and has presented papers in National and International Conferences apart from publishing papers in renowned Pediatrics Journals.

Associate Programme Directors

Sushmita Das

Associate Programme Director,
Monitoring and Evaluation

Shreya Manjrekar

Associate Programme Director,
Healthy Cities Programme

Neeta Karandikar

Associate Programme Director,
Empowerment, Health and Sexuality of Adolescents (EHSAS)

Anagha Waingankar

Associate Programme Director,
Child Health and Nutrition

Sonali Patil

Associate Programme Director,
SNEHA Centres

Sarita Patil

Associate Programme Director,
Maternal and Newborn Health

Sweety Pathak

Associate Programme Director,
Maternal and Newborn Health

Pouruchisti Wadia

Associate Programme Director,
Romila Palliative Care

Unnati Machchhar

Associate Program Director,
Prevention of Violence against Women and Children

Shilpa Adelkar

Associate Program Director

Sushmita Das

Associate Programme Director

Monitoring and Evaluation

Sushmita is a monitoring & evaluation specialist with over 15 years of rich and varied experience in the development sector, with a focus on evaluating the impact of cluster randomised control trials. She holds a Master’s degree in Psychology from Patna University and postgraduate diploma in Epidemiology from Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi. Sushmita has vast experience in developing and managing monitoring & evaluation for implementation projects related to health and nutrition of women and children. She is an expert in processes related to data collection, analysis, utilization and dissemination and is well-versed with using digital platforms for data collection. Sushmita headed the large cluster randomised control trial in the M-East Ward for SNEHA and was responsible for the entire evaluative component of the trial. She has a tidy publication record to her credit, having presented in various national and international conferences.

Shreya Manjrekar

Associate Programme Director

Healthy Cities Programme

Shreya is Associate Programme Director of the Healthy Cities Programme in Malvani, an informal settlement in Malad, Mumbai and is responsible for the operations and donor reporting of the programme. In her previous role at SNEHA, Shreya served as Programme Coordinator of the SNEHA Centres initiative. Shreya has a strong background in implementation of field-level interventions in child nutrition. Her passion for healthy cooking and recipe development, combined with her proficiency in community processes and mobilization, has led to her conceptualizing events that promote healthy cooking and eating in vulnerable communities. She has over a decade of experience in programme implementation and documentation in public health projects with brief stints in organisations such as Institute of Health Management, Pachod (IHMP) and Catalyst for Social Action. She secured gold and silver medals while pursuing her Master’s degree in Social Work from M. S. University in Baroda. She also holds a postgraduate diploma in Health Management from the University.

Neeta Karandikar

Associate Programme Director

Empowerment, Health and Sexuality of Adolescents (EHSAS)

Neeta is Associate Programme Director of SNEHA’s Adolescent Health and Sexuality programme. She manages the operations of the intervention across the three sites in and around Mumbai. She holds a postgraduate degree in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Science, Mumbai and was awarded a scholarship by Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, for the same. Neeta earlier worked with SNEHA’s Maternal and Newborn Health programme and has a total of over a decade of experience with non-profits such as YUVA, Family Service Centre and Childline India Foundation, working with youth and children from vulnerable contexts.

Anagha Waingankar

Associate Programme Director

Child Health and Nutrition

Anagha is Associate Programme Director of SNEHA’s Child Health and Nutrition Programme in Dharavi and Wadala. With a master’s degree in Social Work from Nirmala Niketan College, Mumbai and postgraduate diplomas in Communication & Journalism and Counselling, Anagha is also responsible for managing SNEHA’s partnership with SETCO Foundation to implement a community-based project in an urban settlement in Panchmahal district in Gujarat. She has 12 years of experience in implementing public health programs for grassroots organisations such as Committed Communities for Development and SNEHA, in sectors such as HIV/ AIDS, immunization and child nutrition. Anagha is also passionate about mHealth and has written and presented papers relating to its role in improving nutrition status among vulnerable children.

Sonali Patil

Associate Programme Director

SNEHA Centres

Sonali is Associate Programme Director of SNEHA Centres, an integrated health and services intervention for women and children living in vulnerable slum settlements in the Eastern suburbs of Mumbai. Sonali has expertise in programme management and capacity building. With 15 years of experience in the development sector, she has managed national level health interventions and has trained NGOs and universities on several projects on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, women’s empowerment and community development. Her previous work experience include stints in national and international NGOs such as Tata Institute of Social Science, Population Services International (PSI), Catholic Health Association of India (CHAI). Project Concern International (PCI), CHF International. Sonali has master’s degrees in Human Resource Development and Social Work from Pune University.

Sarita Patil

Associate Programme Director, Maternal and Newborn Health

Sarita is Associate Programme Director of the Maternal and Newborn Health programme and manages the day-to-day operations of the referral system and in the formation of Health Committees. With 12 years of experience, Sarita has fulfilled a number of roles at SNEHA. She managed the ‘Arogya Sarita’ Programme and focused on increasing uptake of primary healthcare services among communities in vulnerable pockets of Kandivali. Prior to this, she worked on the community mobilization component of the City Initiative for Newborn Health, a randomised control trial. Sarita has presented papers on mobilization and community engagement in health strategies in international conferences in Bangladesh, Kenya and the United States. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work and Law and a master’s degree in Social Work from Nirmala Niketan School of Social Work.

Sweety Pathak

Associate Programme Director

Maternal and Newborn Health

Sweety Pathak is Associate Programme Director of the Maternal and Newborn Health programme and is responsible for the operations of the referral network, as well as the programme’s engagement with systems. She holds a master’s degree in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, for which she received the Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarship in 2011. She has also pursued her Master’s degree in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Sweety has about 15 years of experience in non-profit organisations working with women and children. In her previous role in SNEHA, she designed and implemented an organization-wide management information system, and conducted an in-depth analysis of the information system for building a requirement for SNEHA’s Business Intelligence system. Sweety has also worked with the Maternal and Newborn Health programme as a Programme Coordinator. She worked with health systems to improve access to primary health care and emergency obstetric care services, and was a site lead for a WHO-funded Implementation Research project.

Avsharan Kaur

Associate Programme Director

Prevention of Violence against Women & Children

Avsharan Kaur is Associate Programme Director of NUHM Initiatives and oversees operations of the MAS Partnership. She was previously Associate Programme Director of the Maternal & Newborn Health initiative. Avsharan holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Mumbai University. Prior to this, she has 14 years of experience in HIV-AIDS projects, including stints at Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society, Maharashtra District AIDS Control Society, TNS Research and J. J. Group of Hospitals. Avsharan presented a paper in the International AIDS Conference held in Melbourne, Australia in July 2014. Apart from programme management of large health initiatives, she has also been involved in documenting best practices and standard operating procedures of public health programmes.

Pouruchisti Wadia

Associate Programme Director

Romila Palliative Care

Pouruchisti is Associate Programme Director of Romila Palliative Care, an initiative to support patients with life-threatening diseases with pain relief and psycho-social care through a patient-centric approach. She is responsible for running the operations of the initiative. Pouru has over 20 years of experience in the social sector. In her previous role at SNEHA, she was Associate Programme Director of the Prevention of Violence against Women and Children (PVWC) initiative and supported the programme director in implementing, monitoring and evaluating strategic plans. She has previously worked in roles across law, human rights and women’s rights with non-profit organisations in Mumbai. Pouru has a bachelor’s degree in Law and a master’s degree in Social Work from Mumbai University and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, respectively.

Unnati Machchhar

Associate Program Director

Prevention of Violence against Women and Children

Unnati is Associate Program Director for the Intervention in TARA Trial, under the Prevention of Violence against Women and Children (PVWC) program. She is responsible for Community Intervention in four phases of the three year-Trial. She holds a Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology and has over ten years of experience in the field of Public Health, particularly, in HIV/AIDS prevention and addresal. She has extensive experience in Training and Capacity Building of professionals working in program planning and operations. She has also been on a panel of reviewers for a module prepared by National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).

Shilpa Adelkar

Associate Program Director

Shilpa is the Associate Programme Director in the TARA trial under the Prevention of Violence against Women and Children programme in Kurla. She holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from Nirmala Niketan College, Mumbai and has a Diploma in Counselling from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). She has 16 years of experience in the development field, majorly implementing programmes. She was part of the Linnaeus Palme student exchange programme with the Social Work Department, Stockholm, where she represented the College of Social Work, Nirmala Niketan. She has also worked as a visiting faculty for the undergraduate students of Social Work at Nirmala Niketan. She is passionate to work on issues of gender, adolescents, community and HIV/AIDS. She believes in partnership with communities and stakeholders to achieve sustained outcomes. Along with programme implementation, she enjoys imparting training and interacting with various groups.

Domains

Jaya Nuty

Consultant,
Capability Building & Learning Development

Sangeetha Vadanan

Associate Director, Fundraising & Donor Partnerships

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Jaya Nuty

Manager

Capacity Building and Learning & Development

Jaya leads SNEHA’s Learning & Development initiatives. She is responsible for providing on-job coaching to SNEHA staff across all levels and is the in-house expert in ‘Appreciative Inquiry’, a model used in organizational development, to engage stakeholders in self-determined change. Jaya is also a keen proponent of Gallup’s Strengths-based workplace and has been working with external consultants to bring about a strengths-based culture at SNEHA. Jaya has almost two decades of experience in working in training and development, including brief stints in organisations such as Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Vikram Sarabhai Centre for Development Interaction (VIKSAT). She has master’s degrees from Ranchi University, Free University (Brussels) and Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), Delhi.

Sangeetha Vadanan

Associate Director, Fundraising & Donor Partnerships

Sangeetha Vadanan leads Fundraising and Donor Partnerships at SNEHA. She has been with SNEHA for the last 2 years. Prior to this, she has 16 years of experience with corporates and her entrepreneurial venture in the children's space, running a bookstore and storytelling festival for children. Her corporate work experience includes stints with Cadbury in Sales and Key Account Management and with Accenture in Business Consulting. She holds a postgraduate diploma from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

Naveen Shah

Director, Human Resources, Administration, Strategy and Partnership

Naveen heads Human Resources, Administration, Strategy and Partnership at SNEHA. Naveen joined SNEHA in October 2020. Prior to joining SNEHA, she has been working with various organisations focussed on international education, concentrated towards Experiential Education, International Internship programmes, Human Resources/Capital Management and Organisational Management in cross-cultural domains. Naveen’s passion to work with students, both inbound and outbound, helped her to be a part of NGOs focussed on education and to promote rural education and youth development educational programs in India. She holds a postgraduate degree in Arts with majors in Sociology and Anthropology from Friends World Program of Long Island University, Southampton campus, USA.

Hamsini Ravi

Manager

Communications

Hamsini leads Communications initiatives at SNEHA, including brand custodianship, storytelling, media relations and website management. She has over five years of experience in working in editorial and non-profit communications roles, for both donors and NGOs, including stints at Tata Trusts, Resource Group for Education and Advocacy of Community Health (REACH), Chennai and SaciWATERS, Hyderabad. Hamsini has a master’s degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex in the UK and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Stella Maris College, Chennai. She is also a trained journalist. She was awarded a Fellowship by the Dutch Ministry to study a short course at the Radio Netherlands Training Centre in Hilversum, Netherlands in October 2017.

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Joychan Varghese

Manager

Finance

Joychan is a postgraduate in commerce with over 18 years of experience in the field of finance management. He is a USAID certified accountant with expertise incorporate and financial planning in non-profit organisations. He is also well-versed in finance, auditing & taxation, MIS and procurement management. He has had stints with organisations such as Equal Community Foundation and World Vision India.

Leena Pai

Manager

Finance Information Management

Leena is responsible for evaluating and restructuring the finance domain through IT Systems. She is also responsible for the roll-out and implementation of systems related to finance through internal initiatives and external outsourcing, and works on institutionalizing best practices within domains to improve operational efficiency. Leena has a bachelor’s in Commerce and has completed the intermediate level of Chartered Accountancy. In her previous role at SNEHA, Leena was responsible for statutory compliances and financial reporting. In all, she has over five years of experience in finance for non-profit and for-profit organisations with various audit firms.