BOARD OF DIRECTORS

BOARD OF DIRECTORS - New Delhi, India

Bishakha Datta
Bishakha Datta is a writer and documentary filmmaker with an abiding interest in women's rights, sexuality, and marginal points of view. Her book And Who Will Make the Chapatis, focuses on rural women entering politics and has been translated into Marathi. She has recently completed a documentary film, In The Flesh, which explores the lives of two women and a man in prostitution - from their own perspectives. Bishakha is also the program director of Point of View, a Mumbai-based not for profit organization that aims to promote the points of view of women through creative and sustained use of media, arts and culture.

Geetanjali Misra
Geetanjali Misra: Co-founder and Executive Director of CREA, India/USA. Geetanjali has worked at the activist, grant making and policy levels on issues of human rights, gender, sexuality and reproductive health and violence against women. Before joining CREA, she was the Sexuality and Reproductive Health Program Officer at the Ford Foundation. She is the co-founder of SAKHI for South Asian women in New York, a non-profit organization committed to ending violence against women of South Asian origin. She is on the Board of Directors of Reproductive Health Matters, Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice, Women's Dignity Project and Mama Cash, and was President of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) from 2006 – 2008. She has co-edited Sexuality, Gender and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice in South and South East Asia (2005).

Sabeena Gadihoke
Sabeena Gadihoke, is a Associate Professor, Video and TV Production at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi. She is also an independent documentary filmmaker and cameraperson and works on the history and culture of Indian Photography. Her film "Three Women and a Camera" was awarded prizes at Film South Asia in Kathmandu (1999) and at the Mumbai International Film Festival (2000). Her book Camera Chronicles (Mapin, India) on the life and work of India's first woman photojournalist, Homai Vyarawalla was released in 2006.

Sashwati Bannerjee
Sashwati Banerjee, is the Executive Director of Sesame Workshop India, the Indian subsidiary of the US based non-profit famous for the children’s educational television program Sesame Street. With a career spanning two decades, Sashwati specializes in Project Management and Behavior change communication. Prior to joining Sesame Workshop she was the Program Director and Communications Advisor to PSP-One Project of Abt Associates Inc., where she was responsible for designing, managing and implementing behavior change communications for reproductive health and child survival programs.

Sohini Bhattacharya
Sohini Bhattacharya is Director for Partnerships, with the Ashoka Innovators for the Public, South Asia, a global not for profit organization pioneering and promoting the concept of social entrepreneurship. Sohini directs institution building, marketing and development for Ashoka in South Asia. Sohini has worked in the field of economic development with special focus on women for 10 years prior to joining Ashoka in 2000. Past career experience include working with Child In Need Institute (CINI), working as a program officer at Dastkar, and helping in the launch of Sanhita, a Gender Rights Centre, in Calcutta. 

Sohini joined Ashoka in March 2000 to help expand the Venture program in West India. As the western India Regional Representative she brought together a diverse group of Fellows and ramped up the program in the area. Later as a Director for Venture in India, she built systems and created awareness and resources for Ashoka India.

Shohini Ghosh
Shohini Ghosh is Dr. Zakir Hussain Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia (Central University), New Delhi and teaches Video and Television Production. She has taught courses on Gender, Sexuality and the Media (1992-1996) at the Department of Communication Cornell University. She currently teaches at the Summer Institute on Sexuality, Culture and Society, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Shohini co-founded Mediastorm Collective, India’s first all women documentary production collective. Her first independent feature-length documentary, Tales of the Night Fairies (2002), is about the struggle for sex workers’ rights in Calcutta. A media scholar, she researches and writes extensively on popular culture, particularly films and queer sexuality in academic journals and the popular press.

Shilpa Phadke
Shilpa Phadke, is Assitant Professor at the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social sciences, Mumbai. She conceptualized and led the Gender & Space Project at PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) from September 2003 to September 2006. She is currently writing a book based on the Gender and Space project along with Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade to be published by Penguin India. She has been educated at the Xavier's College, Mumbai, SNDT University and the University of Cambridge, UK. She has taught undergraduate sociology and anthropology at St Xavier's College, Mumbai. As a pedagogue, she has designed and coordinated several discussion groups, a lecture series and workshops. Shilpa Phadke has published both academically as well as in newspapers and popular magazines. Her areas of concern include, gender and the politics of space, the middle classes, sexuality and the body, feminist politics among young women, reproductive subjectivities and pedagogic practices.