Meet the team
- Archana Dwivedi, Director
Archana has more than 18 years of work experience in the areas of gender and education. In Nirantar, along with steering the organisational projects, her major involvement has been in researching and writing on issues of women’s empowerment and young people’s education and empowerment from a feminist perspective. Her engagement on these issues has further been strengthened by the work at the field level with women and girls belonging to marginalised communities. She believes in making research accessible to grass roots organisations and thus transcreates these researches into training and learning material for facilitators, field-based activists and organisations.
- Sosamma Mathai, Sr. Team Member
- Sosamma has undergone secretariat Training & Management Course in a Commercial Institute run by Indian Chambers of Commerce in Bombay, after clearing her SSLC Examination in the year 1972. She was with Nirantar for 18 years as an Accountant and retired from regular service in the year 2014. Currently, she is working on a consultant basis for Nirantar in the Accounts section and looking after its several operations.
- Ajay Singh, Team Leader (Accounts)
- Ajay handles overall accounts in the organization since last 11 years as Accounts Coordinator. He monitors and maintains the project budgets, books of accounts, audit preparations, legal compliances, and field accounts.
- Prasanna V.T., Team Leader (Administration)
- Prasanna has been working with Nirantar last 15 years as Administration Co-ordinator. She mainly regularizes and maintains all systems related to staff functioning and maintenance of office procedures, publications, and important documents. She also works closely with all the teams in coordinating all administrative work and logistics for trainings and events.
- Anil Hasda, Team Member
- Anil has been working with Nirantar last 20 years, and mainly handles field work, publication dissemination, maintaining stationary, Hindi typing, and overall office maintenance.
- Sandeep Kumar, Team Member
Sandeep Kumar is a Commerce Graduate and has a working experience of 5 years in accounts assistance, voucher making and entry, bank reconciliation, TDS return, and admin support.
- Nishi Khandelwal, Team Leader
Nishi did her post-graduation in Biological Science, PG diploma in Guidance and Counselling from NCERT (New Delhi), and MBA with specialization in Human Resource Management. Overall, she has around 13 years of professional experience in working with women empowerment, education, and health. She heads the Women’s Literacy, Education, and Empowerment work in Nirantar, under which she plays a crucial role in planning the project operations, conducts trainings of the project staff and teachers of partner organizations, and is involved in the other organisational trainings conducted by Nirantar.
- Anita Singh, Team Member
- Anita has been a part of Nirantar since 2011, prior to which she was working with UNDP- Partner organization for CWWA under adult women's functional literacy project. She has done her Masters in Social Work, Rural Development. She is involved in the programme trainings including planning and logistic support. She also conducts the follow up field visits and documentation as part of the team's work with their partner organisation in various parts of the country.
- Fathayya Khan, Team Member
Fathayya is a Post Graduate in Economics and has over five years of experience in research (education and health). In Nirantar, she is part of the women's literacy programme as an MIS Coordinator. She maintains and analyses the data generated by the programme partners and Sahajani Shiksha Kendra (Lalitpur) which helps the organizations in reflecting on their action plan and improve their quality of work.
- Kalyani Mathur, Team Member
- Kalyani has completed her B.A, M.A in Political Science and Post Graduate Diploma in Conflict Transformation and Peace Building from Delhi University. She has two years of work experience in areas of coordination, research and material development on issues of Women's Rights and Gender based Violence in Northeast of India. At Nirantar, she is part of the Women's Literacy, Education and Empowerment Program where she is involved in organizing training, conducting research, follow up field visits and documentation work for the digital literacy program.
- Prarthana Thakur, Team Leader
Prarthana completed her M.S.W from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. After working for more than 4 years in the field education and literacy, she is currently coordinating the Delhi-based learning centres for adolescent girls, working closely with CBOs and teachers involved. She manages various types of centre activities like historical walks, theatre sessions and thematic workshops for girls. She is also actively involved in developing learning resource materials and booklets for young learners. Along with this, she is a part of organisational capacity building team and conducts trainings/workshops for teachers and facilitators on gender, education and innovative teaching–learning methods.
- Huma Khan, Team Member
Huma has a Ph.D. from JNU on ‘Feminist Identity in Urdu Short Stories’. She joined Nirantar as the team member for PACE project, in which she oversees program activities like regular centre visits, program planning with teachers, demo sessions, community contact, parents’ meeting, and raising the issues of the girls and the community. She also facilitates the theatre sessions at the centre, along with documentation of project activities and preparing the thematic broadsheets with the teachers and girls. Another aspect of her work involves development of the curriculum for the centre and coordination with external resource members.
- Disha Sethi, Team Leader
Disha completed her masters in Gender Studies, from Ambedkar University in Delhi in 2017. Her thesis, focussed on articulating a feminist understanding of Child Sexuality without Freud. Disha started her work with Nirantar in June 2017, and leads the Sexuality and Gender work in Nirantar. Her main area of focus, looks at research, making training modules and formats, conducting trainings with trainers, field workers and organization heads and reporting, with the focus of insuring participatory dissemination of our material. Disha is also involved in conducting trainings on Sexuality and Gender, with other teams and programes in Nirantar.
- Sadia Saeed, Team Leader
Sadia is a Post Graduate in Library and Information Science and joined Nirantar as a Librarian. She gradually started handling and overseeing the organisational publication work and material creation. Now, she heads the Publications and Communication work, working closely with all the programme teams, and does writing, editing, translation, proofreading and designing for Nirantar publications, social media, and organisational documents.
- Shweta Radhakrishnan, Team Leader
Shweta completed her Masters' in Media and Cultural Studies from TISS, Mumbai and has previously worked on setting up a community radio station in Uttarakhand. At Nirantar, she is leading the TransLiteracy Project, an adult literacy programme for transwomen, and is overseeing its research, material creation and documentation. Along with this, Shweta is part of the Nirantar's interventions on understanding the linkages between Gender-based Violence and Sexuality, through material creation and advocacy.
- Chitrakshi Vashisht, Team Member
- With an M.Sc. in Gender and Development Studies from Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, MA and BA in Social Work from New-Delhi, Chitrakshi has over seven years of work experience in India and Bangladesh in areas of research, coordination, monitoring and evaluation, program implementation and documentation of projects related to gender, health, education and disaster management. As a part of the TransLiteracy project, she is primarily engaged in curriculum development, research, coordination and working towards initiating trans-literacy centres in Delhi.
