Leadership - Young Leaders for Active Citizenship

Rohit Kumar – Co-founder

Rohit co-founded YLAC in 2016, and its sister concern TQH Consulting in 2017, to strengthen the governance ecosystem in India through public policy research, advocacy and citizen engagement. Rohit’s work in policy cuts across sectors, including regulation of new business models, emerging issues in tech policy, digital public infrastructure and payments. An alumnus of Harvard Kennedy School of Government and IIT Bombay, he previously served as the Head of Policy and Research at the office of Mr. Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda, Member of Parliament (MP) in Lok Sabha.Read complete profile

Before working with Mr. Panda, Rohit spent several years at PRS Legislative Research, the Indian think-tank that supports MPs across party lines with research on legislative and policy issues. At PRS, he also developed ‘MP Track’, the tool that is widely used by the media and civil society to track engagement of MPs in Parliament. Previously, Rohit was a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) at their Mumbai office. He is a 2013 IPRYLI (India-Pakistan Regional Young Leaders Initiative) fellow with the Asia Society.

Aparajita Bharti – Co-founder

Aparajita co-founded YLAC in 2016. She is also the Founding Partner at TQH – a public policy research and communications consulting firm that was set up in 2017. Before starting these two organisations, Aparajita was Manager, Corporate Affairs and Communications at Snapdeal where she was responsible for managing media messaging while engaging with policy and legislative issues that affect the digital commerce sector. Aparajita holds a MPP degree from Oxford University and her work cuts across the domains of gender, tech policy and integrity of India’s democratic institutions.Read complete profile

Aparajita started her career in public policy as a Legislative Assistant to Mr. N.K. Singh, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) and was one of the four Indians selected for the Faiths Act Fellowship by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in 2011. In her undergraduate years at the College of Business Studies, Delhi University, Aparajita was instrumental in starting ‘Manthan’ – an annual congregation of street theatre societies to spread social awareness. Manthan has now expanded to several towns and cities across India. She is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper from the New Delhi hub.

Shipra Baduni – Chief Executive Officer

Shipra is a social impact professional with experience across civic engagement, digital safety, gender inclusion, climate justice, and youth leadership. Before joining YLAC, she worked extensively at the grassroots, leading initiatives that strengthened young people’s engagement with local democratic processes and built safe, aspirational spaces for them. An alumna of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, her expertise spans program design, stakeholder management, and team development – grounded in empathy, rigour, and a deep commitment to youth-centred leadership.Read complete profile

At TISS, Shipra specialised in women-centred practices as part of her Master’s in Social Work, and she completed her undergraduate degree in English Honours from Motilal Nehru College, Delhi University. Outside of work, she enjoys writing poetry and exploring new forms of dance.

Nipun Malhotra – Director, Policy & Programs | Lead, Disability Rights & Inclusion

Nipun leads the inclusion vertical at YLAC. He is also the Co-Founder and CEO of the Nipman Foundation, a leading organization advocating for the rights and inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (PwDs). Through his advocacy, he has spearheaded initiatives such as wheelchair accessibility filters on Zomato and audits of public infrastructure for accessibility. He successfully challenged the Delhi government in the Supreme Court, securing a landmark judgment on accessible public transport. His petition also led to historic guidelines on the portrayal of PwDs in visual media.Read complete profile

As the founder of Wheels for Life, a crowdsourcing platform connecting wheelchair donors with recipients across 25 states, he has transformed thousands of lives. Nipun is also the Founder Chair of the FICCI D&I Working Group on Empowering PwDs. An alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi School of Economics, and the Indian School of Business, Nipun is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and has been recognized with the Indian Red Cross Society’s Social Entrepreneur Award. His writings on disability rights have appeared in leading publications like The Hindu, Indian Express, and The Print. Born with Arthrogryposis, Nipun is a passionate advocate for inclusion and accessibility in India.

Arun Sudarsan – Associate Director, Public Policy

Arun is an Economics graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and the National University of Singapore. At NITI Aayog, he played a key role in operationalising the Aspirational Districts Programme’s data collection and ranking systems. Later, at CivicDataLab, he led the expansion of the Open Budgets India platform, the largest repository of public finance information in India.Read complete profile

Arun’s key interests include, but not limited to, Indian public finance, social sector schemes, and development policy. He is a keen observer of the developments in India’s political economy, with interest across a wide gamut of areas such as law and justice, technology, and electoral politics. He’s also a passionate educator, a part-time amateur singer, and loves cooking. His favourite quote: “no man-made system is immune to human deceit”.

Sonakshi Chaudhry – Associate Director, Policy & Partnerships | Chief of Staff

Sonakshi is a communications and gender policy specialist with over 8 years of experience building partnerships and working across the spectrum of think tanks, NGOs, publications, and government. As a Chevening scholar, Sonakshi pursued an MA in Gender, Violence and Conflict at the University of Sussex, and she also holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St. Stephen’s College.Read complete profile

With a particular focus on women’s economic empowerment through her work, Sonakshi has advised several organisations on issues such as preventing sexual harassment and encouraging gender equity in workplaces. She was previously Research and Editorial Lead for ‘Women in Labour’ —a podcast examining India’s declining female labour force participation rate, and a Consultant in the Economic Adviser’s Bureau at the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development where she worked on the implementation of a national scheme for women in distress. Sonakshi is also a Trustee at the Woman of the Elements Trust, which provides free legal aid to women and child victims of domestic violence. She has previously been a Global Shaper with the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Hub New Delhi and a delegate at the 2020 edition of the Australia India Youth Dialogue— a leading track II dialogue.