Region: South and Central Asia
Srikumar Misra
Srikumar Misra is an entrepreneur who founded Milk Mantra, a responsible new age dairy foods business in India that is redefining how systems thinking and technology can transform the agri-foods value chain and also impact the lives of millions via ethical sourcing. Milk Mantra has received several global awards for its path breaking work in innovation & impactful capitalism, and Srikumar’s work has been consistently covered in several case studies in global business schools and has also featured extensively in media – Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Economic Times, and Financial Times. His work has significantly influenced the narrative of conscious business, especially building purposeful startups in India that…
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Thynn Thynn Hlaing
Thynn Thynn Hlaing is a development professional who has been working in humanitarian and long-term development programs for more than 15 years. Her primary focus is on women’s rights and women’s empowerment issues. Currently Thynn Thynn serves as Country Manager for Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) for their program in Papua New Guinea. She is leading the team and all the elements of CHAI's operations in Papua New Guinea for successful footprint to support PNG's government on their improvement of health financing and its outcomes for the most vulnerable. She previously worked as the Country Director of Oxfam International in Sierra Leone over 4 years from 2013 to 2018. She…
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Mohammad “Musa” Mahmodi
Mohammad “Musa” Mahmodi is a human rights lawyer and defender based in Kabul, Afghanistan. He served as Executive Director of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission for ten years, providing strategic direction for programs and activities to monitor, protect, and promote human rights in a conflict-affected country. As part of his work, he focused on transitional justice, women rights, children rights, human rights education, and investigations of human rights violations and abuses by all parties to the conflict. Musa also advocated for reviews of laws and policies of Afghanistan to comply with the international human rights instruments. He previously worked with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, whereby he…
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Amit Wanchoo
Amit Wanchoo is Managing Director of Eaton Laboratories, the first pharmaceutical manufacturing unit of Kashmir actively involved in low cost healthcare. He is also the CEO of Space Communications, 1st Events, Sports and Film shoot Management Company of Jammu and Kashmir. He blends health and entertainment in healing, supporting, and providing employment to the people of Kashmir. Born and raised there, Amit has been actively engaged in social activism, entrepreneurship development, reviving art, culture, heritage, and tourism in the region. Amit was the President and Founder of the Rotary Club of Kashmir, which has contributed to various health and literacy initiatives. Amit also runs a documentary film company which has…
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Chetna Gala Sinha
Chetna Gala Sinha is an activist, farmer, and banker. In the early 1980s, while still a student in Mumbai, she joined the Jayaprakash Narayan movement and travelled through the country championing land rights and other social issues. In 1996, Chetna founded the Mann Deshi Foundation in Mhaswad, a drought-stricken area of Maharashtra, with the aim of economically and socially empowering rural women. In 1997, she set up the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank – India’s first bank for and by rural women. Today, the Mann Deshi Bank has over 100,000 account holders, has loaned over $50 million, and regularly creates new financial products to support the needs of female micro-entrepreneurs….
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Rozina Mistry
Rozina Mistry works as an independent health consultant and as a visiting faculty and course director at Ziauddin Medical University and APPNA Institute Of Public Health in Karachi. She has also served as the temporary advisor on the World Health Organization's Global Vaccine Action Program. Rozina's areas of expertise include global health, population health, maternal and child health and nutrition, immunization and monitoring and evaluation. As the former Director for Community Health and Health Promotion for the Aga Khan Health Service in Pakistan, she was responsible for technical oversight of more than 127 health care facilities. Trained as a doctor in Pakistan, she first worked as an obstetrics clinician…
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Azeem Ibrahim
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College and a Director at the Centre for Global Policy in Washington DC. Over the years, Azeem has advised numerous world leaders on strategy and policy development with his most recent role being the Strategic Policy Advisor to the Chairman of Pakistan’s PTI party, Prime Minister Imran Khan. Azeem is also the author of the seminal books, Rohingya: Inside Myanmar’s Genocide (Hurst: 2016) Radical Origins: Why we are losing the battle against Islamic extremism (Pegasus: 2017). Outside academia, Azeem has been a reservist in the IV Battalion Parachute Regiment (UK’s elite airborne infantry reserve) and…
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Paromita Goswami
Paromita Goswami seeks to empower some of India’s poorest and most marginalized citizens: the residents of the Chandrapur and Gadchiroli districts of the state of Maharashtra. To protect their rights and help them access justice, she has created several non-profit organizations including Elgar Pratishthan, which concentrates on the economic and educational development of rural communities, and Shramik Elgar, a 10,000-member union of rural workers. Trained as a lawyer, Paromita has brought legal challenges on behalf of these members to India’s Supreme Court. Regarded as one of the top labor organizers in the region, she built a training center for rural community organizers. She is also involved in strengthening elected representatives…
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Anuradha Das Mathur
Anuradha Das Mathur is the founding dean of The Vedica Scholars Programme for Women, an 18-month residential program in management practice for young women. She is committed to bringing more women into the workplace and ensuring their dignity through financial independence. Anuradha is also a senior advisor to the Albright Stonebridge Group, where she works at the intersection of government, business and civil society to help international organizations with their India strategies. She is a founder director at 9.9 Media, India’s fastest growing niche media company, where she leads a number of professional communities including CFOs and entrepreneurs; the research, advisory and custom services; as well as India’s first Speaker…
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Ayush Chauhan
Ayush Chauhan heads up a multi-disciplinary design and innovation consultancy firm, Quicksand, working at the intersection of business, development, and culture. He promotes design for social development by connecting the best practices of design, technology and behavior science with development programs to address the pressing and complex issues of social equity, public health, and education. In this capacity, he has worked with organizations such as Unilever, Google, World Bank, UNICEF, CIFF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, amongst many more, to design products and services that promote sustainability and quality of life for low-income communities. An entrepreneur, educator, and mentor, Ayush is also the co-founder of UnBox, the first…
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