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.
- Ekta Oza, Team Leader
Ekta completed her Masters in Psychology from Ambedkar University. She was heading the PACE team in Nirantar previously and is now leading the Mainstream Education team. She is managing two projects currently with her team member; a feminist qualitative research to understand the relationship between conflict, education and self for the youth in a resettlement colony of South Delhi, and a study to analyse the SCERT school textbooks in Odisha from a feminist lens.
- Sonam Grover, Team Member
- Sonam is a post graduate in Education and Sociology. At present, she is involved in a qualitative research to unearth the intricacies of the lives of youth (age group of 15-25 years) residing in a resettlement colony of South Delhi. She is also a part of a study which uses a feminist lens to analyse the SCERT school textbooks in Odisha.
- 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.
- Apeksha Vora, Team Leader
Apeksha has a Masters’ degree in Development Studies from Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and was part of the team at Nirantar which conducted a landscape analysis of early and child marriage in India. She since has been involved in connecting issues of gender and sexuality to the discourse and interventions around early and child marriage. She is currently leading an action research project that uses theatre as a methodology to understand issues most relevant to diverse youth collectives and organisations working with young people to enable empowering spaces. Her work involves conducting workshops with grassroots organisations working with youth, using theatre as a tool for feminist consciousness building. She is also involved with advocacy at various national and international forums to highlight issues relating to gender - sexuality in discourses around early and child marriage.
- Aiman Khan, Team Member
Before joining Nirantar, Aiman did her post-graduation in Women's Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Her master's thesis was ‘A Gendered Study on Access to Public Toilets in Mumbai’. She is a part of the action research team, wherein theatre is being explored as a methodology for research in the context of youth. Her work here includes planning theatre sessions with the team, documentation, and coordination with partner organisations for the research.
- 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.
- Annie Singhal, Team Member
Annie is an English Literature graduate from Delhi University and has more than three years of experience in the field of Communication, Content Writing, and SMO. As a team member, she is part of the planning and facilitating the training and workshops in the project on gender, sexuality, and gender based violence from a feminist perspective. In addition, she is involved in the research, reporting, dissemination of material, advocacy, and other project related tasks.
- 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.
