A catalytic growth experience from which I emerged transformed. Offers timeless learnings for purpose-driven leaders, which continue to serve as a north star guiding me twelve years on. Huge credit to the Yale World Fellows program for the positive impact I have been able to make in the world.
2010
Subhashini Chandran
Vice President, Social Impact, Asia Pacific
Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth
As Vice President, Social Impact, Asia Pacific (AP) at the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth (CFIG), Subhashini Chandran is responsible for overseeing, executing, and scaling the Center’s strategy in Asia Pacific, contributing to global and regional objectives. In her role, she drives all regional CFIG activity covering programs, data and insights, strategic engagement, and partnerships.
Subhashini has 25+ years of experience spanning the private and development sectors. She began her professional journey as an entrepreneur, growing her family’s tea farm in South India, to be one of India’s largest privately owned tea companies, employing ~7000 women. More recently, she has focused on the inclusion of small businesses and women-led enterprises in global value chains, sustainable livelihood solutions, business models to promote shared prosperity and catalyzing multi-stakeholder partnerships. Her areas of expertise include implementing market systems approaches with strong potential for generating jobs and income earning opportunities, and commercial and impact investments in frontier markets. She has worked closely with national and sub-national governments, a broad range of public and private sector actors, industry bodies and trade unions.
Prior to joining Mastercard, Subhashini led social impact at Yara International across Africa and Asia markets. She set-up Yara’s first social impact vertical, crafted a five-year strategy and mobilized teams across both regions. Earlier, she was EVP India at Xynteo and Director of Vikaasa - a business-led coalition of nine global companies including Unilever, Aditya Birla, Shell, State Bank of India and WPP, convened to accelerate India's progress on the UN SDGs. Subhashini has broad social impact experience from her previous work as Principal Adviser for Private Sector & Agribusiness Development leading CONNECT, the economic development component of UK Aid’s flagship infrastructure project, Rural Access Programme 3 in Nepal, and as a Senior Adviser to AgDevCo, a UK-based social venture capital fund investing in agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. She has also served as an Adjunct Professor at XLRI Jamshedpur, one of India's premier business schools. She read Economics at the London School of Economics, Law at City University UK, and is a Member of the Bar Council of India. Subhashini is a graduate of the Chevening Gurukul Fellowship for Leadership and Excellence, and an alum of the Young Global Leaders program of the World Economic Forum.
