Core Team - 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.

Himani Chouhan – Manager, Citizen Engagement

Himani is an alumna of the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. With a Masters degree in Public Policy, her core focus of work has been around education and child rights. During her tenure as a Teach For India Fellow, she taught forty elementary school students in a government school in Delhi and worked extensively on community participation in education as well as social and emotional learning of children.Read complete profile

Through her internships with a diverse range of organizations like the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Government of Odisha, KPMG India, and Centre for Civil Society, she learnt the ropes of various facets of policymaking, program designing, and implementation. Having widely explored various forms of theatre, she wishes to combine her love for art and academia to innovate solutions for real world problems.

Isha Mathur – Manager, Growth & Operations

Isha is passionate about systems change and civic engagement, focusing on connecting communities to democratic institutions and enabling thriving public systems. Her work sits at the intersection of research, strategy, fundraising, and program design, with a strong interest in building cross-sectoral collaborations that drive long-term, inclusive change. She has worked across the social impact ecosystem – developing funding strategies, facilitating donor-NPO partnerships, unlocking capital, scaling youth programs, and producing research on education, gender, climate, and governance.Read complete profile

Isha holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of British Columbia, with a focus on feminist and political thought. Outside of work, she loves to read, cook, and spend time with her cats.

Shubhra Jha – Manager, Programs

Shubhra is a social worker by training and has worked with and for children for the past decade. Their journey in the development space began as a volunteer with Make a Difference, and they later worked in the space of intellectual disability with Jai Vakeel Foundation. They were previously associated with Pratham Education Foundation where they supported teams implementing school and community-based learning programs and scaling them through government partnerships.Read complete profile

Creating experiences that allow individuals to connect, reflect and engage as a group is what Shubhra hopes to do more of.

Venika Menon – Manager, Civic Policy & Partnerships

Venika is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where she served as the Senior Class President on the Board of Trustees, and has worked internationally in various capacities. Starting her career in New York at Perry Davis Associates, a fundraising consultancy, she later evaluated a Madhya Pradesh-based project for the World Bank and led donor communications at Challenging Heights, an anti-child trafficking organisation, in Ghana. Most recently, she worked with Teach For India – Mumbai, leading collaborations with the government, TFI alumni, and ecosystem partners.Read complete profile

Through this work, she has developed a versatile skill set in project implementation, account management, research, fundraising, and communications. Her thematic areas of interest are gender, education, inclusion and sustainable cities. You can always come to her to find out about the best restaurants in town.

Suyashi Smridhi – Communications Specialist

Suyashi is a digital storyteller and communications professional trained at the Asian College of Journalism. She has worked on climate communications at CEEW, leading social media and spearheading projects like Sustaina India and the award-winning Faces of Climate Resilience. More recently, she led marketing and communications at the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women. Suyashi is deeply invested in using communications for social good and bridging inequities.Read complete profile

She’s passionate about everything intersectional, be it about complex issues like the climate crisis, gender, caste and other socio-economic inequalities or a niche cultural development. She’s worked with Newslaundry on the first caste and gender analysis of newsrooms, interned with Feminism in India, and served as an Assistant Editor for an art magazine. Outside of work, Suyashi is a voracious reader of both fiction and non-fiction, experiments with creative writing and deeply enjoys going to a bookstore.

Ishita Bagchi – Senior Officer, Programs

A public policy professional by training, Ishita graduated from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2021. Earlier, she was working as a Research Associate at PROAct. She is a Gender Rights Advocate and a published writer with a keen interest in Economics and Literature. She runs a weekly newsletter and blog called “The Wannabe Economist”. The newsletter and blog focus on policy, politics, economics, gender, and academia. Her aim is to simplify and decode complex academic jargon and issues around gender.Read complete profile

Ishita has been a young speaker on multiple platforms including the South Asian Youth Summit organised by Youth Advocacy Nepal and ActionAid Nepal. She is also a NSDC certified community service facilitator.

Zakia Rafiqi – Senior Officer, Programs & Policy Communications

Zakia is a multimedia and communications professional with a Master’s in Mass Communication from AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia, and a background in Political Science. Her work bridges storytelling and social impact, focusing on education, advocacy for children, and marginalized communities. She has extensive experience working with organizations like UNICEF and ICRW, focusing on improving educational access for children with disabilities, mainstreaming education for minority communities, and creating systems to prevent school dropouts.Read complete profile

Zakia has also documented and led creative content development for narratives addressing gender stereotypes. She is an active volunteer with the Nous Network, where she advocates for the rights of marginalized groups in India and raises awareness about systemic oppression. Her passion lies in using media to amplify underrepresented voices and drive meaningful change. Outside of work, she enjoys connecting with people over a cup of chai, indulging in movies, and immersing herself in true crime thrillers.

Anvita Parmar – Officer, Programs

Anvita has a bachelor’s in sociology from Ambedkar University, Delhi. She previously worked as a Program Assistant at CREA, a feminist human rights organization, where she contributed to initiatives focused on gender rights and consent. Before her role at CREA, she worked with EMP Bindi International Association (formerly known as Barefoot College International) in Rajasthan, where she helped launch a health awareness campaign on IVF and developed educational modules for the Banjara community.Read complete profile

She is passionate about social upliftment, with a specific focus on women and children, and her work reflects a strong commitment to health and gender equity. Outside of work, she does jiu-jitsu, kickboxing and enjoys long walks with her dog.

Deepanshu Singh Baghel – Officer, Programs

Deepanshu holds a Master’s degree in Law, Politics and Society from Ambedkar University, Delhi. With a deep-rooted interest in education, development, and youth leadership, he has worked extensively in the social impact space. Through his training and experience, Deepanshu aspires to bring a multidisciplinary lens to the challenges of social impact and education reform. Prior to joining YLAC, he served as Programmes and Projects Coordinator at The Global Education and Leadership Foundation/ Junior Achievement India.Read complete profile

At tGELF/ JA India, he led impactful educational initiatives across the country to promote values-based leadership and entrepreneurial thinking among school students. His role involved facilitating workshops, designing digital content, and producing impact reports to drive student engagement and learning outcomes. A theatre enthusiast, Deepanshu actively integrates performing arts into education as a means of fostering social awareness. He believes in the power of storytelling and creative expression as tools for transformative learning and aspires to design learning experiences that combine critical pedagogy with creative expression.

Katha Ray – Officer, Programs

Katha holds a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University, with a specialisation in Gender, Conflict, and Human Rights, and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Delhi. She is a social impact professional working at the intersection of youth engagement, gender justice, and international peacebuilding. Before joining YLAC, she worked with civil society organisations in India and internationally on programmes focused on democratic participation, conflict-affected contexts, and movement-building.Read complete profile

Katha’s work has included supporting youth-led initiatives, developing knowledge resources for women peacebuilders, and designing participatory programmes that centre inclusion and agency. Across roles, she brings experience in programme coordination, research, facilitation, and partnership management, with a strong interest in how people engage with institutions across different contexts. Outside of work, Katha enjoys reading, films, and writing, and is a travel enthusiast with a penchant for museums and art.

Pranav Rao – Officer, Advocacy & Program Communications

Pranav is a political communication graduate from Cardiff University, UK. He has a keen interest in grassroots governance, political participation and youth representation. Previously, he managed communications for a hyper-local political start-up, engaging with communities to push for better urban governance. His stint as the outreach manager in this organization laid a strong foundation for his work in political management and communication.Read complete profile

Pranav intends to utilise his experience toward reducing the divide between the voice of common people and policymakers. Outside of work, he plays cricket, has an unhealthy obsession with metal, classic rock and Bengaluru FC.

Rishika Arora – Officer, Programs

Rishika is a Political Science and Literature graduate from Ashoka University. In the political and advocacy space, she holds experience in leading research and interventions that make democracy more accessible for young Indians—including voter registrations, authoring youth policies with state governments, heading research on youth and democracy, managing electoral campaigns for independent candidates, and engaging with students across India to increase political sensitisation and knowledge.Read complete profile

Her interests include civic engagement, the ways in which art and political action collide, cultural anthropology, Indian philosophy, education, political theory, active citizenship, democracy, and building platforms for young people’s unfettered political and creative expression.

Sohini Chakrabarti – Officer, Programs

Sohini holds a Master’s in International and Development Studies from the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID), specialising in gender, race and diversity. As the co-founder of Breaking Barriers, India’s first gay-straight alliance/intersectional feminist forum at the school level, she pioneered LGBTQ+ awareness programs from a young age. Her academic journey is enriched by professional roles such as Manager of Partnerships at a Delhi-based ed-tech start-up, and the India Fellow Social Leadership Program working on access to quality child-centric education at the rural grassroots.Read complete profile

Over the last decade, Sohini has acquired experience in sensitisation and advocacy, programmatic planning and implementation, and research, analysis and writing. This includes skills in facilitation, human-centred design and systems thinking. Her Master’s dissertation investigated the dynamic relationship between critical pedagogy and social transformation, and she envisions a world where inclusive dialogue and empowered action lead to sustained change. Sohini holds a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Sri Venkateswara College (Delhi University).

Srishti – Officer, Programs

Srishti is a social worker and researcher trained in women-centred practice at TISS Mumbai. Her work explores the intersections of gender, religion, and youth, with experience in field research, facilitation, and program design. She has led gender-sensitive initiatives at organisations like Vacha and ComMutiny, supported grassroots efforts through the RCVAW network, and conducted in-depth research on adolescent girls in religious education spaces like gurukuls in Varanasi.Read complete profile

Drawn to the subtle workings of social systems, Srishti brings together critical analysis and a love for storytelling in her approach. When not working, you’ll find her either curled up with a children’s book or crocheting flowers.

Divya Yadav – Associate, Programs

Divya graduated with a degree in Political Science from the University of Delhi and has previously worked at Aawaaz, where she led the development and implementation of social sensitization curricula across government and private schools. Her work at the intersection of education and inclusion has spanned both classrooms and research labs. She is deeply interested in civic learning, equity in education, and building safe, responsive systems for young learners.Read complete profile

Previously, Divya has collaborated with faculty from Columbia University and UC San Diego on a pilot project using peer network data to help teachers create more inclusive spaces, and co-authored research on AI in education that was presented at the 2025 CIES conference in Chicago. After hours, she takes her side hustle as a coffee connoisseur very seriously.

P Nupur – Associate, Programs

Nupur is a Philosophy graduate from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, with a strong interest in the social impact sector. Passionate about holistic education and gender equity, she was selected as one of 23 fellows for the American India Foundation’s Banyan Impact Fellowship, wherein she worked on-ground in Bharuch, Gujarat, with a grassroots organization serving tribal and migrant communities. Her contributions spanned grassroots mobilization, creating communication collaterals, and building sustainable, participatory communication systems.Read complete profile

Nupur, an introvert at heart, expresses herself through art, whether in theatre, film, painting, or spontaneous creation.

Palak Jain – Associate, Programs

Palak has a bachelor’s and master’s in History from Delhi University, with a specialisation in Modern History. At CREA, she supported communications, handled the Storytelling Initiative and contributed to Radio Jamia. As a part of the Meri Panchayat Meri Shakti Program, she worked with women in Panchayat, and, capacitated young community leaders from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, on the issues of climate change and gender based violence.Read complete profile

She has conducted research on climate change education in India and the Philippines with Education International Asia-Pacific. As an intern at WeUnlearn, Ekank and a NetMission Asia Ambassador, she worked on issues of gender based stereotypes among young people, storytelling, and internet governance issues. She has engaged with organisations like PEN America, Chayn, DemEd Global Cambridge, UNESCO-MGIEP, and Point of View in various capacities. Palak is passionate about gender, disability rights, climate change, and feminist tech. She likes reading, crafting, and watching animated movies.

Karishma Kapoor – Admin & Accounts Lead

Karishma is a B.Com. graduate from Delhi University. Prior to joining YLAC, she was associated with Fareportal India Pvt. Ltd. as a Team Lead in their Finance-Payroll department. Over the last few years, she has worked with various companies and managed their payroll processing, statutory compliance, settlements, validation of investment proofs and other activities related to TDS and payments. Read complete profile

At YLAC, her focus areas include establishing and maintaining finance and administrative systems. She also looks after logistics for program implementation.

Francis Lal – Admin & Accounts Manager

Francis is a finance professional with an MBA in Finance and Human Resources from Swami Vivekananda Subharti University, a Bachelor of Commerce from Kalinga University, and postgraduate credentials in Sociology. Based in Noida, he previously served as Assistant Finance Manager at the Christian Foundation Charitable Trust, where he oversaw financial operations, budgeting, donor reporting, and statutory compliance.Read complete profile

He is recognized for his analytical approach, integrity, and managing NGO financial systems and compliance frameworks.