Geetanjali Misra is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of CREA and has closely worked at the activist, grant-making, and policy levels on issues of sexuality, reproductive health, gender, human rights, and violence against women. She holds Master’s degrees in International Affairs from Columbia University, US, and in Economics from Syracuse University, US.

Previously, she has worked as a Program Officer at Ford Foundation, taught as an adjunct professor on the intersection of LGBT issues, sexual rights and public health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and supported non-governmental organizations in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka working on sexual and reproductive health and rights. She is also a co-founder SAKHI for South Asian Women in 1989, a non-profit organization in New York, committed to ending violence against women of South Asian origin. Formerly, she has been Chair of the Boards of Reproductive Health Matters (UK), a global peer reviewed journal on sexual and reproductive health and rights and Mama Cash (the Netherlands).

She was a Board Member of FHI 360 (USA) and also served as President of the Board of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) where she led a strategic planning and organizational development process leading to changes in leadership roles and structure. In the past, she held several key advisory roles such as being a Member of Cordaid’s Expert Advisory Group (the Netherlands), served as a core member of the Action Plus Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV/AIDS (India), was regional and Global Advisor for Global Fund for Women (USA) among others.

She writes on issues of sexuality, gender, and rights, and has co-edited ‘Sexuality, Gender, and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice in South and Southeast Asia’ from SAGE. She is also author of ‘The Power of Movements’ published by AWID.

Aarushi is a New Delhi based lawyer and legal researcher. In 2017, she graduated with B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from National Law University Delhi, following which she pursued her LL.M. from the University of California Berkeley.

As a Legal Officer for the NGO Lawyers Collective, she has done litigation and research on criminalization and legal recognition of identity, anti-discrimination, and access to legal justice of gender and sexual minorities. At CREA, Aarushi engages with advocacy relating to sexual and gender diversity and sex workers’ rights, and challenging criminalization of expression and identities.

Aarushi is passionate about studying the relationship between a State and its citizens and learning about intersectional gender politics. She loves reading fiction, watching Korean dramas, and exploring new places to eat.

Aditi Gogia provides executive support and works closely with the Executive Director, CREA.

She holds a Masters degree in Commerce, with a specialization in Accountancy.

Prior to joining CREA, Aditi was working an as Executive Assistant to the Team Leader at UNFPA. She has also worked with India’s National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) as an assistant to Team Leader (NACP-III Programme). Aditi loves playing and spending time with her little daughter.

As a Manager, Programs and Innovations, Agnieszka works on Disability and Sexuality Program. Her role is to amplify voices of women, trans and non-binary persons with disabilities. She is working to advance advocacy and leadership by diverse persons with disabilities and attempts to catalyze dialogue between feminist, queer and disability rights perspectives to dismantle ableism and create access. She is also closely involved in Disability, Sexuality and Rights Online Institute.

She is a sociologist, graduated from the Jagiellonian University, Poland. Her academic research focuses on disability, reproductive justice and LGBT+ rights. In 2020 she earned PhD in social sciences researching reproductive autonomy and motherhood experiences of women with disabilities. She has also served on ANED – European academic network strengthening development of public policies in compliance with the UN CRPD. Since 2012, she is a part of feminist and queer disability rights initiatives and collectives fighting to advance rights of women and queer persons with disabilities.

Her published works include –

• Król A., Pustułka P. (2018). Women on strike: Mobilizing against reproductive injustice in Poland, International Journal of Feminist Politics, Vol 20, No 3.
• Król A. (2018), Niepełnosprawność i sprawiedliwość reprodukcyjna. Zarys wybranych zagadnień dotyczących kobiet z niepełnosprawnościami, Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis, Studia de Cultura. [Disability and reproductive justice. Outline of selected issues concerning women with disabilities]
• Król A., (2019), Living independently and being included in the community – on article 19 UN CRPD in Poland. Report for Academic Network of European Disability Experts 
• Mizielińska J., Struzik J., Król A., (2017), Różnym głosem. Rodziny z wyboru w Polsce, PWN, Warszawa. [In different voice. Families of choice in Poland] 
• Król A., Bilnicka A., Godzisz P., Rodzinka M., Makuchowska M. (2018), Intersections between disabilities and sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics: The situation in Poland. (CRPD Alternative Report)

Amit works closely with the Advisor – Programs Operation to assist in day-to-day program operations. They support budgets, work plans, subgrant agreements, and consultancy contracts in coordination with the program team. They have vast experience of 16 years and immense knowledge of finance, accounting, taxation, auditing, preparing budgets for projects, and executing professionals, and individual contracts.

Amit loves to explore new destinations and play cricket.

As Advisor, Programs Operation, Amit works with directors and their teams on planning and implementation of processes in accordance with the organization’s vision, mission, and strategies. He works with CREA team members to support budget tracking and utilization. He also ensures timely submission of work plans and facilitates partner management. Amit has vast experience of 24 years as an Operations professional in both the corporate and development sector.

In his free time, Amit loves to travel with family and friends to hilly areas. He also has a passion for singing and poetry in his free time.

As the Consultant – Women Gaining Ground, Anjaly closely works with the Program Manager – Women Gaining Ground | Feminist Leadership and Mentoring. She supports external relationship management, networking, documentation, communication and represents CREA on different fora.

She has a master’s degree in Promotional Media from Goldsmiths, University of London and bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Lady Shri Ram College for Women. Before joining CREA, she worked with United Nation, Pravah and Manthan Sasthan where they worked closely on gender, youth empowerment and disability projects.

She loves to spend her spare time taking care of plants.

Anu Verma works as an Administrative Coordinator at CREA.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science (Hons.) from University of Delhi and has more than twenty-two years of working experience in the field of logistics arrangement, office administration & procurement.

Previously she worked as an Operations Associate in an international organization as well as for an airlines company for twelve years.

She likes to travel, play badminton and listen to music.

Arkina is a Program Associate – Meri Panchayat, Meri Shakti (India) at CREA, and works closely to assist in feminist leadership and movement building programs in India. They support partnership management, networking, local and state-level advocacy and community mobilization.

Arkina obtained a master’s degree in Gender Studies and previously worked at Jagori Grameen where they worked closely on capacity building of adolescent girls in rural areas of Himachal Pradesh on the thematic issues of gender, menstrual, reproductive health and violence.

Arkina believes in creating inclusive spaces and wants to travel the world.

Anuradha is responsible for contributing to the CREA team’s resource development and donor management efforts through preparation of concept notes, proposals and reports.

Anuradha holds a Ph.D in Biophysics from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Anuradha has a total work experience of 19 years out of which 15 years has been on resource mobilization, donor relations and project management.

Before joining CREA she has worked with the Centre for Science and Environment, Plan International (India), Shastri Indo Canadian Institute and has consulted for CARE (India), UNICEF (India) and CREA.

Anuradha tries to be socially and environmentally responsible and travel, read, listen to good music and have friends around.

Babita works closely on community based programs with the Director, Programs and Innovation.

She holds a Masters in Social Work and diploma in mass communication and journalism.

With an experience of more than 12 years in the development sector, she has previously worked in the State Social Audit Unit of Jharkhand, with Alliance for Immunization and Health as a State Project Coordinator, with Pravah as a Project Coordinator and Program Manager.

Caroline is a feminist and human rights activist with 10 years of experience in program design, management, coordination, M&E, and movement-building working with regional, national and local organizations. Caroline is passionate about mobilizing grassroots organizations to promote community ownership in project implementation that puts rights holders at the centre of programming and has previously designed and developed learning materials, facilitation guides, training manuals, and toolkits in the areas of behaviour change communication, sexual reproductive health, partnership building, organizational development and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Caroline has also facilitated thought processes in the development of innovative programs and projects for women, young people, structurally excluded groups, and indigenous communities.

Diksha heads the Finance and administration team and is responsible for the financial and administrative coordination for the entire organization. Her responsibilities include developing CREA’s annual budget, tracking program expenditures against approved budgets, investments, and implementation of financial policies and managing the annual audits.

Diksha holds a Master’s degree in Commerce and in Business Administration with a specialization in finance. She has previously worked with an international reproductive health NGO, INTRAHealth International Inc. etc.

Dipa works closely with the Organization Management Team for program operations at CREA and supervises the Program Operations team. She supports development, rollout and the functioning of annual work plans and budget. She is an independent consultant with more than three decades of experience of working on issues related to reproductive health and rights, and gender.

Between 2019-2022, Dipa was the Director Programs at the Population Foundation of India, an NGO headquartered in New Delhi, India that works on population and sexual and reproductive health. Previously, she was associated with the MacArthur Foundation for almost two decades, with her last role being Deputy Director at the Foundation’s India office. At the Foundation, she managed various programs and projects with a focus on reproductive and sexual health, maternal health, adolescent and sexual and reproductive health and girls’ secondary education.

She serves on the boards of the NGOs-Centre for Catalyzing Change and the Institute for Health Management Pachod. She has master’s degrees in Public Administration from Syracuse University and a master’s in Political Science from Mumbai University.

Dulal Das, joined CREA in 2008 as the office assistant and has been one of our oldest staff members. Apart from taking care of the entire office, he provides essential logistical and administrative support to various program teams.

Gayathri works closely with Program Director – Gender Based Violence, Well-being and Rights. Her work focuses on creating, planning and directing grant-making activities, carrying out grantee program development, offering technical assistance, supporting initiatives to increase partners’ capacities and providing additional learning opportunities.

She attained her Master’s degree in International Peace Studies from United Nations Mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica, and Master’s degree in Political Science from Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. She has 13 years’ of rich working experience in development sector and worked on women’s rights and conflict transformation in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan for over a decade.

She is passionate about reading and journaling.

Elena researches, documents and narrates the impact of and the learnings that emerged from the work of the organization across programs with a feminist approach.

Elena has a bachelor’s degree in international relations and a master’s degree in human rights law. Elena’s background is grounded in feminist programs, organizing to transform power, feminist popular education, research, and writing, and has been part of different non-profit organizations for the past 10 years.

Elena is the co-founder of the Feminist Hiking Collective.

As the Senior Consultant – MEL Advisor, Harsh Mandlik works closely with Director – Resources, Learning, and Impact to strengthen CREA’s organization-wide MEL system for learning and accountability. He leads MEL activities, including developing effective and feasible methodologies for assessing CREA’s diverse programs, ensuring data relevance and quality, and analyzing and presenting MEL findings to diverse stakeholders and audiences in order to advance CREA’s mission.

Harsh has a post-graduate certificate in Research Methodology from TISS and he brings over 15 years of rich experience in the field of project monitoring and evaluation. His expertise lies in designing project monitoring and evaluation plan, developing and rolling out project monitoring systems, establishing data quality assurance systems, conducting effectiveness studies, monitoring and evaluating research projects, and capacity building.

Harsh likes listening to good music, singing, and playing flute, along with being passionate about exercise and fitness.

Jyoti is a seasoned Human Resources (HR) professional with over a decade of rich experience in the development sector. She has an MBA in HR and is a science graduate from Delhi University. She has worked as HR lead in various international non-governmental organization’s from The Nature Conservancy to Medecins Sans Frontieres to Project Concern International. She has a rich experience of managing different facets of HR – strategic planning, recruitment, on boarding, organizational development, PMS, Payroll, internal and external communication. At a personal level, she is more of a sports person and loves to play badminton.

Lavanya’s role in SAYWLM initiative involves working with 30 partner organizations in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

She holds an MPhil in Sociology from JNU and has over 15 years of work experience in areas of organizational development, understanding organizational systems and structures and is deeply interested in issues of gender equality, masculinities, feminist leadership and feminist mentorship.

Lavanya loves to read and finds it very hard to put down a good Agatha Christie or a P.G. Wodehouse!

Lukas provides support to CREA’s office administration and dissemination of CREA’s publications. He also supports the finance team along with assisting staff on IT related issues.

He is a graduate in bachelor of Arts and has more than 14 years’ of experience.

He is a hardworking, can multi-task and is a keen learner.

Mageda is impassioned by women and girls’ health, in particular sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), development and equality in society. Professionally, she has been able to work with various organizations and individuals from different cultures, countries and various networks (Right here: Right now, Kenya, SHE-ACTs Alliance, Men Engage Alliance, Regional SRHR fund) in Sub-Saharan Africa on movement-building work around sexual and reproductive health and rights. She has been part of developing campaigns with a feminist lens and creating synergy amongst various networks around current and emerging issues.

Mageda has previously provided counselling to survivors of gender-based violence in Kenya through hotline 1195, managed mobile health technology that gives out information on sexual and reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa, helped set up and strengthen hotlines in Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria and Rwanda that ensure girls and women can access unbiased sexual and reproductive health information, and led teams on key communication campaigns in Kenya for advocacy on comprehensive sexual and reproductive rights. She has been involved in national and regional advocacy campaigns at the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, the African SDG forum and using the UN mechanisms through research- based advocacy.

She’s a member of the African Young Women’s Leadership and Advocacy Alliance (AYWLAA) and has served on the Safe Abortion Initiative Global South Engagement (SAIGE) advisory team. She believes that we are more alike than we are different and art and expression are important in all facets of life.

Madhu Malhotra is the Program Director – Fostering Collective Resilience and works closely with Senior Director – Programs and Innovation to strengthen CREA’s organization-wide strategic objective – Fostering Collective Resilience. She leads, oversees, develops and strengthens programs and partnerships under this strategic objective.

Madhu is a social justice advocate, inclusive leader, transformative coach, and facilitator 25+ years standing. Her passion for social justice curated a career path that flowed organically into working in the global south and north on multiple themes. She holds a master’s degree in social sciences. She is a catalyst, strategist and visionary having extensive expertise and experience of working with and leading grassroots, civil society, INGO’s, UN and Government. She has led several independent participatory projects, including an extensive in-country reflective review on the gender responsiveness of a UNICEF WASH Program in Afghanistan. 

Madhu practices permaculture on principles of eco-feminism. She enjoys dancing and co-creating healing circles.

As a Consultant, Nayantara works closely with CREA’s Executive Director to strengthen CREA’s organization-wide documenting processes, commission media articles, coordinate initiatives such as media fellowships, and conduct writing workshops. She also provides support to the Communications, and Resource, Learning and Impact teams for editing, proofreading and writing proposals.

Nayantara has over 25 years’ experience in media and publishing, built after she received degrees in Literature from the University of Delhi and Mount Holyoke College, USA.  Her most recent position was Managing Editor of the literary journal The Indian Quarterly. She has previously been Consulting Editor of Business Standard Weekend and Editor of Outlook Traveller magazine. She has edited several books in the field of culture and the arts.

Nayantara’s interests include books, dogs, plants, music, and food.

Nityanand Bhatt provides support to finance related operations. This involves managing CREA New York accounts – payment to vendors and consultants, settlement of staff advances, program budget/program financial report/expenses statement preparation and review and also maintaining expenses record with proper documentation.

He holds a Masters degree in Finance.

Before joining CREA, Nityanand has worked as an Accountant in both profit based and non-profit organizations.. In his free time, he likes to travel to new places.

As Program Director – Feminist Leadership and Movements, Piyumi works on programs focused on Feminist Leadership and Movements supporting the team delivering on the Women Gaining Ground consortium as well as the programmatic work focused on East Africa. Her role supports CREA as it promotes, protects, and advances human rights and the sexual rights of all people by building leadership capacities of activists, allies and organizations.

Piyumi holds a Master of Science in Politics and Communications from London School of Economics and Political Science and has over 15 years of rich experience in executing innovative community and gender development strategies/programs underpinned by robust rights-based approaches. In her previous organization, she played a critical role in developing strong and resilient relationships with Womankind’s partners based in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Nepal, including through programme co-design, as well as programme and grant management. Most recently she led a team with delivering a FCDO funded land rights centric program in Uganda and authored this leaning paper: Solidarity through Sisterhood: Learning from the eco-feminist project, Participation and Opportunities for Women’s Economic Rights (POWER)

As a Sri Lankan-British feminist, and as someone who has lived, studied, and worked across Asia, the US, and the UK, Piyumi enjoys work that has a global outlook and is connected to women’s rights. Piyumi has a love for the arts and has starred as a lead in “Aksharaya”, a feature-length film that premiered at the San Sebastian film festival in 2005.

Prajesh will work with the Communications team at CREA where he will lead the strategic planning, implementation, and execution of organizational communications. He will work with a team of communications professionals to help amplify programs, events, activism, and voices through effective articulation and storytelling.

Prajesh has worked as a journalist for various newspapers, magazines, and online portals for more than a decade in Nepal. His work has been published in The Kathmandu Post, Republica, M&S VMAG, and Annapurna Express among others. Before joining CREA, he headed the Communications Unit at a local feminist NGO: Women LEAD Nepal. Prajesh is a staunch advocate for capacity-building and has run many workshops and training programs, through and outside his previous organization, to teach professional and technical communications skills. He believes that people need to own all parts of the storytelling process for their voices to be unfiltered and authentic.

An admirer of the arts, Prajesh loves being around and working with artists. He believes art to be one of the purest forms of human expression, which is why he explores worlds, ideas, and expressions through an artistic lens. A multidisciplinary at heart, he works on all forms of media from creative writing to film. Prajesh has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Sharda University.

Purnima Singh is a Communications Associate at CREA. She supports a range of communications activities, including campaigns and advocacy efforts. Previously, Purnima has worked with a feminist, digital media platform, and a digital rights organization.

Purnima has a bachelor’s degree in German language and literature from the University of Delhi. She can mostly be found reading or scrolling Twitter.

Rahul’s work as a Finance Assistant at CREA involves providing active support in managing CREA India Accounts, donor reports, sub-grants, Payroll, Budget, TDS, EPF etc.

He is a commerce graduate and has 12 years of experience as accounts professional in non-profit sector.

He is a dedicated and hard working person, also loves using his expertise in his work. In his spare time, he likes to listen to music and also travel to new places.

Raisa is the Program Manager – Gender Based Violence, Well-Being & Rights with the team that addresses CREA’s Strategic Objective 3 aiming to build responses to gender-based violence, expand and promote well-being, security and rights, and challenge punitive approaches. Her primary areas of engagement is with CREA’s work as a part of the Count Me In! (CMI!) consortium, the challenging the criminalization agenda, and CREA’s initiative on feminist faultiness.

For over 10 years Raisa has been working with rights based interventions on HIV/AIDS, child rights, gender justice and political participation of young people. Her work has included program implementation, policy building, network development, and research. She holds a M.A in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and an M.A in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies.

Before joining CREA, Raisa was working as a research consultant engaged in critically mapping development interventions with girls, for the Rejuvenate project at the Institute of Development Studies. Her specific areas of interest include building strategies to counter gender backlash and violence, re-shaping our understanding around women’s work, and building safe spaces for children and young people to participate in the politics around them. She is a firm believer in building experimental, collaborative and innovative spaces that promote discussion and critical thinking.

She currently co-runs the book club at Young People for Politics  (@yppbookclub on Instagram) as a part of these experiments. In her free time Raisa likes to travel, read, try different kinds of food (she hardly cooks), or just sit.

Rajina supports resource mobilization and Impact and Learning for CREA’s programs and overall organizational strategic plan.

Rajina carries experience in developing young women and girls’ leadership and supporting organizational development for small collectives and non-profit organizations. She is a former board chair of Women LEAD Nepal, an organization for young Nepali women’s leadership development, and co-founder for Women Leaders in Technology where she supported the development of leadership of Women in Tech. She is also involved in participatory grant-making processes as part of the advisory committee for the FREE STEM Fund, and FRIDA The Young Feminist Fund.

Rambishnu is primarily responsible for managing finances, preparing budgets and balance sheets, review expenditures against approved budgets, making reports for donors, and managing taxation-related work, investment, and audits.

Ram holds Masters degrees in Commerce and in Business Administration, with a specialization in Finance. He also holds a Diploma in Financial Accounting System (DFAS). He specializes in financial management in the development sector.

Ram likes listening to music and loves playing Tabla, an Indian musical instrument.

Sakeena is part of CREA’s Communications team and supports a range of communications activities, including public engagement, campaigns, and advocacy efforts. She also works with the Programs and Resource Development teams to best tell the stories of CREA’s work.

Previously, Sakeena worked at a think-tank based in Sri Lanka on socio-legal research and communications. Her work covered topics including human rights, citizenship rights, and transitional justice and reconciliation. She has also worked in media, reporting and writing news stories, feature articles, and videos.

Sakeena has a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of London (International Programmes). She can mostly be found reading or writing and deleting her own drafts away.

Sanjay is primarily involved in Audits, finalization of balance sheet, sub-grant management, monitoring of funds, donor reports, budgets and other finance related operations. He is also involved with compliance related to FCRA, Income Tax Department, Banking. He supervises salary payment, advances, TDS, processing bills etc. He maintains CREA’s Human Recourse Management Software as well.

Sanjay is commerce (honors) graduate and has done post-graduate diploma in Business Administration.

Sanjay has enriching work experience of 21 years as Accounts professional in various capacities with different non-profit-organizations like Care India, International Congress of Immunology, Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth (HRIDAY).
He likes to spend his free time with his family.

Shalini works on strengthening Feminist Leadership at Grassroots level. Her current role also involves leading implementation of Grassroots Feminist Leadership Program “Meri Panchayat Meri Shakti” in three states Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar with 12 partners organizations, work with 30 grassroots organizations for capacity building, conceptualize, design and manages all annual Hindi training programs and institutes which includes Basic training on Gender and Sexuality, Feminist Leadership institute and Sexuality and Gender rights Institute in Hindi.  She is also involved in training with external organizations on Gender, Sexuality and Reproductive health and rights. She has developed training manuals on Gender, Sexuality, VAW and Patriarchy for activists and trainers in Hindi.

She is a trained counsellor, with a background in social science and law. Shalini is part of several Internal complaint committees on Sexual harassment and conduct trainings with ICC members and organizations on Anti Sexual Harassment act, 2013.  Her previous work experience includes counselling, legal case work, training on laws, gender and human rights. She enjoys writing in Hindi.

Shashank works closely with Finance Officers and supports in the day to day finance operations. He supports in TDS return filling, reconciliation of bank statements, payments and provides finance correlated support to workshop/ training in coordination with Program team.

He holds a master’s degree and previously worked with Oxfam India, Room to Read India Trust and CA firm. He has vast experience of seven years and enormous knowledge of finance, accounting, taxation, auditing and administrative protocols.

He is a sports lover and would like to play outdoor and indoor games.

Soumya is an Associate for the Gender and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program at CREA. She has worked with civil societies and non-government organizations such as Jan Vikas Sansthan, and Niramaya Health Foundation to support community-based initiatives and advocacy programs.

Soumya has a master’s in Social Work in Public Health from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and a bachelor’s in English Literature from Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University.

Soumya wishes to travel the world and read as much as possible.

Srilatha Batliwala is a feminist activist-scholar and trainer and currently Senior Advisor, Knowledge Building at CREA. She is also a Senior Associate at Gender at Work, a global network of gender experts supporting organizations to build cultures of equality and inclusion, and Honorary Professor of Practice at SOAS, University of London. Her work focuses on building knowledge from practice, and capacity building of young activists and social justice organizations to advance feminist visions of social justice through feminist movement building and feminist leadership. 

Through the past four decades, Srilatha’s work has spanned grassroots activism, building movements of highly marginalized grassroots women, research and scholarly work, policy advocacy, grant-making, and capacity building of young women activists around the world. Up to the mid-90s, she was involved for over twenty years in grassroots work in India, where she helped build large-scale women’s movements that mobilized and empowered tens of thousands of the most socio-economically marginalized rural and urban women in slum communities in Mumbai (Bombay) and in the backward districts of Karnataka state in South India.

Thereafter, she worked internationally including as Civil Society Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, New York (1997-2000), Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations (2000 – 2007), and from 2008 – 2016 as Scholar Associate at AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development). She has also served on the boards of several International and national women’s rights and development organizations (WEDO, PLAN, AWID, ISTSR, Just Associates, Gender at Work) and currently serves on the International Advisory Board of IHRB (Institute for Human Rights and Business), the Advisory Council of the Population Foundation of India, the Governing Council of the Srishti Institute for Art, Design and Technology, and chairs the Board of IT for Change.

Srilatha has written and published extensively on a range of gender issues, and is best known for her work on women’s empowerment, women’s movements, feminist leadership, and feminist approaches to monitoring and evaluation. Her most recent publications are (i) “Feminist Mentoring for Feminist Futures”, “All About Power” and “All About Movements”, primers for activists; and (ii) “Engaging with Empowerment – An Intellectual and Experiential Journey” (Women Unlimited, 2014, and eBook version 2015), a collection of her writings of the past twenty years.  

Srilatha commutes between homes in Bangalore and the Nilgiri Hills of South India and is an active feminist grandmother to her four grandchildren!  

Favourite quotes: A dream is not something you see in your sleep. It is the thing that does not let you sleep! (APJ Abdul Kalam, former President of India); Only when you stop moving can you see where to go next… (Pico Iyer).

Favourite books: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, The Colour Purple by Alice Walker, and The Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Favourite pastimes: baking, sewing, watching Netflix.

Susana is the Director for Global Programs at CREA and a Fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership (Yale University). Her work focuses on building cross-movement strategies and advocacy to challenge criminalization of sexual and reproductive rights, sexuality, HIV, sex work, sexual orientation, gender identity and drug use.

From 2008-2014, she was the senior gender, HIV and health advisor at UNDP.  Susana has worked in a senior capacity with a wide range of women’s rights, human rights, sexuality-related rights and SRHR organizations, including Open Societies Foundation, ICASO, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Amnesty International, Outright Action International (formerly the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission), International Women’s Health Coalition, Harvard School of Public Health, WHO, and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, among others.

She has spoken and written widely on topics related to gender-based violence, sexuality, health and rights. She is currently Chair of the Athena Initiative Advisory Board and a Board member of the Astraea Lesbian Fund for Justice.

Sushma’s role involves organizing and coordinating conferences, institutes and workshops for CREA.

She holds a diploma in Hotel Management and Food Technology from Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai. She has worked for two years as the Networking and Operations Manager of the South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality based at TARSHI, New Delhi. She has previously also worked with other non-profits, Taj Mansingh, MNCs, etc.

Valleri is a development practitioner and has worked with several rights-based organizations in rural pockets of Bihar, including SEWA Bharat. At SEWA, she led their projects in the State. She got an opportunity to work with women collectives in establishing their Farmer Producer Company and engaged with goat farmers.

Prior to her time at SEWA, she worked at a Delhi-based organization, Manas Foundation. As a Program Manager, she managed the gender sensitization program, during which she worked closely with commercial vehicle drivers and Uber drivers across metros.

Valleri completed her post-graduation in rural development at the Tata Institute of Social Science, Tuljapur. She also has an MPhil in Development Practice from Ambedkar University, an action research-based program anchored by Pradan. Her action research project under her MPhil was, ‘Transforming Spaces for Women-Reflection of Young Women in Budeli Village, Chattisgarh’.

Valleri recognizes mental health as a significantly important feature of everyone’s engaging, busy work life and therefore continues to find ways to maintain a balanced and healthy mind-body engagement. She loves running, practices yoga, and loves reading fiction.

As Program Associate, Vivian works closely with Program Manager – East Africa and supports the implementation of CREA’s advocacy initiatives in East Africa. She also supports in fostering collaborative partnership management, networking, capacity building and community mobilization.

She obtained a master’s degree in Human Rights Law from Central European university, Austria and Gender Studies. She has five years of experience in supporting feminist organizations and social movements to organize at the intersections of technology, sexuality, ending all forms of violence, advancing feminist leadership and documenting feminist knowledge.

She is passionate about reading and creative expression through art.