MADHAV CHAVAN
Co-Founder, Trustee & Director- Programme, PRATHAM

Madhav taught Chemistry at University of Houston and University of Mumbai before getting involved with adult literacy in the National Literacy Mission in the slums of Mumbai, in 1989. He was instrumental in building the concept of a "societal mission" for universal primary education through Pratham. Pratham was set up as an initiative led by UNICEF in 1994. As CEO of the Pratham Education Foundation (the central body of Pratham) he remains central to the functioning of the Pratham network, which covers most of India and has chapters in the US, and UK among other countries.

In 2004, Madhav was invited to become a member of the now dissolved National Advisory Council of the Prime Minister, which was Chaired by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, to help with the implementation and monitoring of the National Common Minimum Program of the UPA Government (2004-2008). He is also a member of the Governing Council of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Mission (SSA) of the Government of India and has been a member of four half-yearly Joint Review Missions of SSA over the past two years

FARIDA LAMBAY
Co- Founder, Trustee and Executive Secretary- Pratham Mumbai Education Initiative
Programme Director - Mumbai & Pratham Council for Vulnerable Children

Farida has 25 years of experience in Mumbai as an educationist and social worker. She co-founded Pratham and is responsible for the programs in Mumbai and Gujarat as well as the Pratham Council for Vulnerable Children nationally. In addition to her work at Pratham, she is the Vice Principal, Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work in Mumbai.

She serves on the Government of India Committee on Child Labour and on research in education. She has recently been nominated as a member of the National Advisory Committee, under the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation act 1986.

She is on the national level grant in aid committee for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) as well as the state committee for education for SSA. She is a member of the Sachar Committee to decide policy issues regarding the minority Muslim community and the inspection and monitoring panel of Mumbai Urban Transport Project (under MMRDA) to assess rehabilitation processes for project affected persons. She has recently been awarded “Woman Achiever” by Times India Foundation and Hindustan Times, Professional Social Worker by Society for Social Justice for work on eradication of child labour in Mumbai. She has been invited to University of Sierre, Switzerland to hold a workshop for international students regarding issues related to children in the Indian context.

RUKMINI BANERJI
Programme Director
Programme Head- U.P., Bihar, Jharkand, Assam, Meghalaya, Head- ASER Centre

Initially trained as an economist in India, Rukmini was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and completed her PhD at the University of Chicago. She did her post doctoral work at the Population Research Centre at the University of Chicago and later worked as a program officer at the Spencer Foundation before returning to India in 1996. Currently, Rukmini is responsible for Pratham’s work in several major states in north India. She is also a lead member of the team that conducts ASER (Annual Status of Education Report). ASER is the largest annual study ever done by Indian citizens to monitor the status of elementary education in the country. In 2008, this citizen’s audit reached over 7,04,000 children in 16,198 villages of India. In the four years since it was initiated, the ASER effort has been widely recognized for its innovative use of citizens’ participation in understanding and improving the delivery of basic services.

USHA RANE
Programme Director, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh (M.P.),
Chattisgarh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) and Content

Usha is an activist earlier involved with Yuva Shakti Pratishthan (YSP) and has been with Pratham since 1996. Apart from the 5 state programs she is overseeing, she heads the content development group. She has been instrumental in the large scale and exemplary work done in M.P. and Maharashtra which is one of Pratham’s oldest programs.

MEERA TENDOLKAR
Programme Director- Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh (M.P.), Content

Meera has been working with Pratham since 1997 and has handled various responsibilities in these years. She is currently responsible for setting up the District Resource Centers in various states of India, and is also working on building the capacities of the Pratham national team. She loves developing teaching material for children and innovative teaching modules.

DEEPAK DOGRA
Programme Director – Gujrat

Deepak has a Post Graduate Diploma in Rural Management from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). He completed his Bachelors in Science (B.Sc) and Bachelors in Education (B.Ed) from Himachal Pradesh. Prior to PGDRM, Deepak worked as a development journalist with Unnati features in New Delhi.

Deepak joined Pratham in 2004 as a Programme Leader and has worked in various projects of teacher training, Block Catalytic program and donor management. Deepak now heads Gujarat as the State Programme Manager.

BALAJI SAMPATH
Programme Director- Tamil Nadu

Balaji Sampath completed his B.Tech in Electronics from IIT Madras in 1994 and then obtained a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. After completing his doctorate, in 1997 Balaji returned to India to work full-time on education and health issues in villages. He and a team of likeminded people started AID INDIA, a well known non-profit that works on education and health issues. From 1997 to 2000, Balaji worked on community health programs and from 2001 he has been actively involved in addressing issues in school education. From 2003, AID INDIA has been working closely as a network partner of Pratham and Balaji has been playing an active role in coordinating Pratham programs in Tamilnadu. For his education activities, Balaji and his team was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship, Lemelson Inventor Certificate, MIT Indus Technovator's Award 2005.

SHAILENDRA SHARMA
Programme Director- Pratham Delhi

A Masters in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Shailendra joined Pratham in 2002 and served in programme support unit during the initial years. Currently, he heads Pratham Delhi and is responsible for planning and execution of Pratham’s community based education programme for children in 3-14 years age group in about 300 underprivileged communities and 850 municipal schools of Delhi. He also coordinated Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) activities in the state of Jammu and Kashmir between 2005-07.


SMITIN BRID
Programme Director- Uttar Pradesh; Convenor, Pratham Urban Cell

A Masters in Public Administration, Smitin has been working for the universalisation of Primary Education since 1996. He began working for disadvantaged children of the Mumbai slums and has a long experience in community mobilization for primary schools. During the last twelve years, he has been working with government school teachers for improving the minimum learning level among children in schools. Currently he is handling Pratham’s Uttar Pradesh unit and leading projects on primary education in six cities of UP. He is also working for agenda building on education in urban areas. Recently, Pratham has created an “Urban Cell” to co-ordinate its activities in urban areas across the country. Smitin is the Convenor and Co-ordinator of this Urban Cell.

KANCHAN BANERJEE
Managing Trustee, Akshara Foundation

Kanchan is the managing Trustee of Akshara Foundation. The foundation is a member of the Pratham network and works in Karnataka. She is a sociologist and is trained in communications and teaching children with learning disabilities. She has been associated with the planning and execution of several of Akhsara Foundation’s programmes since 2000.

SANJAY SINGH
Programme Director- Bihar

After completing his Masters degree from the Department of Labour and Social Welfare of Patna University in 1999, he joined Pratham. While with Pratham, he had the opportunity to study Education Technology at the University of Twente in Holland. Sanjay has been part of the core team that has taken Pratham from being a small urban program to a large scale statewide partnership with the government in elementary education. He has headed Pratham's work in Bihar since 2005. He has extensive field experience both in program implementation as well as content development, curriculum design and training. He is a member of Pratham's national Management Committee.

SUHAS VAIDYA
Chief Financial Officer

Suhas Vaidya joined Pratham Mumbai Education Initiative in January 2004. Before that, he worked with Walchand Nagar Group Company for 15 years. He joined Pratham in 2004 and heads the Finance and Accounts department. He is responsible for budgets, taxation, MIS and compliance, among other matters.

MALLIKA SINGH
Director, Programme Management

Mallika comes to Pratham with more than 8 years experience in corporate and investment banking. She leads the national team for Program Review and Management and is responsible for donor and other stakeholder management. She also works closely with the programme teams for planning and review and also looks into budget, financial planning and MIS.

Mallika is a Masters in Economics and has completed her MBAin finance from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

BALVINDER SINGH
Chief Financial Officer

Balvinder Singh joined Pratham Mumbai Education Initiative in January 2002. Before that, he worked with a chartered accountant firm. He is currently managing finance in Pratham. He graduated in commerce from Ramjas College, University of Delhi.

LEONA CHRISTY
Programme Director, Pratham USA
Leona Christy joined Pratham USA in August 2007. She manages all day-to-day operations for the organization and oversees its fundraising efforts. Previously, she worked as a manager in sales and marketing at Hindustan Lever Ltd. (the Indian subsidiary of Unilever) for five years. In one of her roles as Key Account Manager, Leona was responsible for conceptualizing and setting up a new distribution channel targeted at large self-service stores. Leona has done her Masters in Public Policy and International Development from Duke University and has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. Her undergraduate degree in economics is from St.Stephen’s College, Delhi University.