Meghna is earnest about her passion for progressive and humanistic education. She can envision and create learning environments for diverse age groups across communities. A keen observer who specializes in enhancing the quality and scope of curriculums by analyzing rationale, principle and methodology of underlying frameworks, Meghna applies continuous improvement to development of curriculums by assessing learning performance.
Meghna is also the founder of BookNook, a place where children develop an appreciation for art and literature through stories and illustrations of picture books. She has over 10 years of experience in teaching, learning and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Education Leadership.
With an urge to create impact in the world and be an actor for social change, she invited friends to come together to co-found Foster and Forge Foundation.

Arvind Chawla is an alumnus of IMT Ghaziabad & Harvard Business School. Currently heading the Indian sub-continent operations for a leading Russian natural resource Company, that is a global leader in Potash fertilizers. He possesses over 19 years of corporate cross-industry experience in marketing, promotions & Supply chain management having worked in the Middle East, Russia, CIS & South East Asian markets. He has dedicated the last 10 years to the fertilizer & agro commodity industry, being actively involved in promoting the balanced use of fertilizers for sustainable agriculture in the region.
Arvind was positively impacted at a session at Harvard Business School on the need for Non-profit participation of successful commercial managers contributing to society. Seeing a vacuum in the lives of farmers with an absence of the right inputs for skill development & education, he feels quite motivated to contribute his time & resources to make a far-reaching difference. He does so with his regular engagements at farmer meets in his current assignment. Arvind also runs a boutique consulting company AC Solutions that focuses on Agro commodity consulting.

A recent crossover to the social purpose space, Ruchira’s passion lies in unblocking, enabling and maximising people, businesses and causes.

She spent her formative years in Uttar Pradesh and, post her PGDBM from IIM Bangalore, worked in country as well as global roles, leading diverse teams and collaborating with cross functional stakeholders across organisational levels.
Through these ~20 years of work spanning industries and functions, the experiences that impacted her most – driving positive change around menstrual health and hygiene, pioneering a new operating model for a website, building a for-profit model to deliver micronutrient nutrition to bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers, creating effectiveness and efficiency in processes both as an internal as well as an external consultant, risk governance in what is a traditionally seen as a high risk business, supporting a global CXO equivalent on strategy and operating plans, providing a safe environment for employees to raise concerns around misconduct – power her today.

When not paying it forward as an Advisor / Consultant / Mentor / Coach (with interest in Gender Equality and Poverty Alleviation), she can be found leisure hiking along the lush trails in Singapore (where she lives), practicing Krav Maga with her daughter or in the classroom pursuing a master’s degree in Psychotherapy.

Aakanksha is a Director at ACT Grants, where she leads the Education Fund and works across the ACT platform to help catalyse change through collectives that bring together startups, NGOs, and public and private sector organisations.

Before ACT, she led strategy and program design as the Chief Program Officer at Teach For India, which included supporting Fellowship recruitment and alumni impact. Aakanksha has worked at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on projects spanning credit strategy, organizational transformation, pre-merger planning, and strategic planning for various banking sector clients. Before BCG, she worked in New York with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods as an Assistant Vice President, and with Lehman Brothers (later Barclays Capital) as an Analyst on the Securitization and Mortgage Trading Desk.

Aakanksha was an F.C. Austin Scholar at the Kellogg School of Management where she received her MBA and graduated magna cum laude with a double Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Economics from Duke University. She believes that anyone interested in cross-disciplinary and innovative approaches to problem-solving ought to consider working in the social impact sector.

Recognised as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Marketing Leaders in India, Alankrita is a Director at ACT Capital Foundation where she leads the charge on brand & communications for the organisation.

With over 14 years of multidisciplinary domain expertise across orgs like D&B, Bloomberg UTV, Times Television Network, Viacom18, Teach For India & CRY, she has also been a TEDx speaker & is a jury member for the DMA Asia Echo Awards.

If her professional journey has given her anything, it’s a belief in the power of potential; that every individual is capable of changing the world!

Dhruv is a Partner at PSA, a full-service law firm headquartered in New Delhi. He enrolled as an Advocate in 2009 and completed his Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Columbia Law School, New York in 2014.

Dhruv heads PSA’s TMT/Start-up/Venture Capital practice group where he actively advices multiple technology companies, start-ups, venture funds, angel investors, impact investors and family offices across a range of practice areas such as corporate/commercial, M&A, compliance and regulatory, data management and protection, privacy, foreign exchange laws, FCRA, intellectual property, labour and employment, antitrust, tech policy, etc. Additionally, Dhruv also heads the Dispute Resolution practice of the firm where he represents clients before multiple forums across India. He regularly appears in the District Courts, High Courts, Supreme Court, Competition Commission of India, National Company Law Tribunal, National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, etc. as well as represents clients in domestic and international arbitrations.

Dhruv was recently recognized by Asian Legal Business as one of Asia’s top 50 TMT lawyers in 2022, one of the top 20 TMT/Fintech lawyers in India in 2021 and 2022 and as of the 50 Rising Stars in 2021. Under his leadership, the firm’s start-up practice also won the “Best legal advisor to start-up businesses- runners up” award by Idex Legal.

Outside of work, Dhruv volunteers as an “ambassador” with GINSEP (German Indian Startup Exchange Program), an initiative of the German government and takes guest lectures at leading incubators and law schools. He is also an active member of ITech Law and heads the Delhi chapter of Columbia University’s Alumni Association. Having grown up in a family of teachers, he is deeply passionate about education and educational reforms. His mother teaches kindergarten students and his grandmother retired as a Hindi and Sanskrit teacher from a government school.

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Meghna is earnest about her passion for progressive and humanistic education. She can envision and create learning environments for diverse age groups across communities. A keen observer who specializes in enhancing the quality and scope of curriculums by analysing rationale, principle and methodology of underlying frameworks, Meghna applies continuous improvement to development of curriculums by assessing learning performance.
Meghna is also the founder of BookNook, a place where children develop an appreciation for art and literature through stories and illustrations in picture books. She has over 10 years of experience in teaching, and learning and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Education Leadership.
With an urge to create an impact in the world and be an actor for social change, she invited friends to come together to co-found Foster and Forge Foundation.

Sahaana is a software engineer by qualification who joined the education sector out of sheer curiosity and a search for purpose. She started her journey in the sector as a Teach For India fellow teaching english and social sciences in a government school in Delhi.
Her work with her students and other teachers led her to the path of leadership development and coaching. She is passionate about spotting potential in people, systems and maximizing their strengths towards increasing performance and impact. She believes that all complex systems are made of groups of complex people and to create any change in it, one should passionately care about the inherent needs of the people who make up the system.
She currently leads our Program and People verticals.

Ananya is a Mechanical Engineer by training with a Master’s in Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ananya served as Assistant Professor at the Kashi Institute of Technology, Varanasi. She transitioned to the Education sector with a deep belief in equity for all children driven by her volunteering experience working with orphaned children in Ranchi. Ananya is a Teach for India alumna and carries over 7 years of experience in teaching, instructional training and coaching, program management and school leadership. Ananya believes in the power of teachers in transforming the lives of children and imagines an India as envisioned by Dr. Kalam where every child realizes their dream. At FnF, she leads the program as Program Lead across 75 districts in UP.

Sheetal completed her schooling at Delhi government school while growing up in Hindi medium school an aspiration to speak English and drive the car; while working in UP govt schools deeply resonates with these kids. At Foster and Forge, we believe we work for the growth of everyone who connects with us. Growth for her is what makes her “Alive”.

It’s been 6 years now with the foundation. She feels oneness with the vision mission and wants to engage in dialogue with the world for humanistic education.

She says
I am alive I am grown
I will continue my journey
Fulfilling all dreams I own
#reimagineeducation

Shaiza is building the Partnerships vertical at Foster and Forge. In her previous professional experiences, she has worked in various teaching and leadership roles in organisations like Educational Initiatives, Shiv Nadar School and Teach for India. Shaiza grew up in a community where she realised women do not have access to life skills needed to be financially independent and self-sufficient. She strongly believes that equipping young women with the right tools of contextual problem solving, and building self-awareness is the route towards empowering them for leading independent lives. Enthusiastic about people development, she believes that adaptive and collaborative leadership is what will solve for inequities in the sector.

Aishwarya loves to be referred to a lifelong literary artist-educator-learner!
A Psychology-English Literatire-Music graduate, she has been an English teacher for secondary and NIOS learners and a teaching fellow for primary grade learners with Teach For India and a few independently.

A certified freelance IELTS trainer and leisurely story teller, she believes that education is a amalgamation of all she loves and is passionate about.

If we are to envision an excellent education system, it starts with classrooms, yes! But even before it begins with the learning experiences that the teacher has access to and has been exposed to. With this connection and belief, she foresees her lifelong journey to establish excellent Teacher Education and Development learning spaces and institutions at pre and in-service levels.

With Foster and Forge she endeavours to bring that excellence in the Learning and Development journey of the teachers through the channels established through her colleagues and partners in the process.

Every child should experience a joyful classroom!
A history graduate, Roopali enjoys creating with her hands and believes that all children should experience the same.
It is through her years of experience as a primary school teacher that her belier that if children are given an environment that is joyful and connected with nature they learn best, grew stronger.
She envisions classrooms where children can explore and learn through hands-on activities, art & craft. This, she believes, will help them have confidence in themselves and in the world around them.