Our Advisors
Madhav Chavan
Co-founder & former CEO, Pratham
Madhav is co-founder and former CEO of Pratham, one of India's largest, and most impactful nonprofits. Madhav is the 2012 recipient of the WISE Prize for Education, the most coveted recognition in education. He also received the 2011 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Madhav has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Ohio State University.
Ram Mahidhara
International Infrastructure and Emerging Markets Executive
Ram Mahidhara is an independent international executive with significant experience in infrastructure and emerging markets. Until May 2019, Ram was a Chief Investment Officer, Infrastructure & Natural Resources at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), where he spent 22 years. Ram has over 25 years of infrastructure and emerging markets experience in 32 countries and has lived and worked in 3 continents. His regional specialization includes Latin America (5 years), sub-Saharan Africa (nearly 9 years), and Asia (2.5 years). His sectoral specialization includes power, transport, water, oil, gas, mining and telecom. Ram has a PhD in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin.
Poonam Bir Kasturi
CEO Daily Dump
Poonam Bir Kasturi trained as an industrial designer graduated in 1985. Her current project called Daily Dump – Compost at Home began in 2006 April. So she spends her time figuring out which is the best way to get everyone to compost at home, make friends with maggots and understand that having a clean city starts from how you throw daily. The word “Sustainable” in her head is all about understanding the patterns of interconnectedness. Her previous work in the small scale industry, crafts, design education all inform her current project. She enjoys the mundane and knows there are lots of things she does not understand, especially the idea of the imaginary number.
Pawan Sachdeva
Director - Water Management International Pte. Limited
Pawan is the director of Water Management International Pte Limited (WMPIL), a business and management consulting firm focused on Asian Urban Water Utilities. After spending 20 years in public market investing, Pawan took a decisive break from the field of finance and started focusing on the urban water sector (2015 onwards). Since then he has been advising on Strategic, Financial and Policy aspects of Urban Water Utilities and in benchmarking global water utilities. Pawan has a Masters in Public Administration, Public Policy from Lee Luan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B).
Pallavi Pant
Staff Scientist at Health Effects Institute, Boston
Dr. Pant is a Staff Scientist at Health Effects Institute, based in Boston, MA. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Health from the University of Birmingham, UK where she studied urban air pollution. She completed her postdoctoral research training in exposure science at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts- Amherst. Her research has focused on characterization and assessment of urban air pollution, particularly in India, and she has written a variety of peer-reviewed and popular media articles on air pollution.