The Team

What our team is like

Apni Shala team is formed by individuals coming together from diverse backgrounds, experiences, expertise and identities such as gender, sexuality, religion, caste, mental health diversity, neurodiversity, and economic background. Our team strives towards diverse representation and voices at all levels of the organization. Apni Shala’s HR processes are informed by Mindfulness, Narrative Ideas, Diversity & Inclusion and Constructivism and are periodically reviewed and updated by all members of the organization.

School Social Emotional Learning

We're work with schools to provide experiential learning methods like art, drama, games and community projects, that help children nurture better social and emotional skills.

The Outer Circle​

Amrita Nair 
Director - Human Resources, and Co-founder
Mayuri Golambde
Govt. Partnerships, Advocacy and Human Resources Lead
Pankaj Khatik 
Operations & Strategy Lead, SEL Programmes
Rohit Kumar
CEO
Sangeeta Zombade
Director, Khoj

The Connecting Circle 

Abhijeet Dhurve
​​Programme Lead​, SEL Programmes
Hitanshi Sharma
Programme Lead, SEL Programmes
Pranali Patil
Curriculum Lead, SEL Programmes
​Priyanka Kale 
Programme Lead, SEL Programmes
​Priyanka Shrivastav
Teacher Leader, ​Khoj
Saesha Pillai
Curriculum Lead, ​Khoj
Sandhya Singh
Teacher Leader, Khoj
Shahbaan Shah
Programme Lead, SEL Programmes

 The Inner Circle

Aniket Magar
Teaching Intern, Khoj
​Antara Umate
Primary Teacher, Khoj
Daya Chavan 
​Teaching Intern, Khoj ​
Heta Dwivedi
Curriculum Associate, SEL Programmes ​​
Lalita Satarkar
Language Teacher, Khoj
Lekha Menon
Founding Social Worker,
​​Khoj
Mala Naidu
Founding Helper, Khoj
Parul Mishra
Teaching Intern, Khoj
Pooja Badekar
Primary Teacher, ​Khoj
Pooja Gate
Programme Coordinator,
​SEL Programmes
Prasad Teli
​Human Resources Associate, Central Team​
Priyanka Tiwari
Teaching Intern, Khoj 
Radhika Kanojia
Teaching Intern, Khoj
Raj Talekar
Physical Education Teacher, Khoj
Rashmi Shinde
Pre-Primary Teacher, Khoj
Riddhi Nikam
​Primary Teacher, Khoj 
​Sadhna Giri
Teaching Intern, Khoj
Sadiah Shaikh
Primary Teacher, Khoj
Safeer Idrisi
Art Teacher, Khoj
Shital Palve
​Programme Coordinator,
​SEL Programmes
Siddhesh Bhosale
Admin Associate and Social Work Support, Khoj
​Sita Deshmukh
Founding Helper, Khoj
Vanisha Shetty
Pre-Primary Teacher, Khoj
Vivek Zombade
Admin Associate, Central Team

2023 Apni Shala Fellows, SEL Programmes

Ajmeruddin Shaikh
Ami Momaya
Drushti Shirsekar
Manasvi Awate
Meghna Banjan
Mukta Kapre
Puja Surve
Sakshi Kamble
Salonee Kumar
Sana Shah
Shubham Rolaniya
Trushal Dongre

Board of Trustees

Chetna Duggal is an Associate Professor at the School of Human Ecology, Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She is a practising psychotherapist with over 15 years of experience. She is project director for the School Initiative for Mental Health Advocacy (SIMHA), an initiative that endeavours to promote well-being of young people in schools through advocacy, research and capacity building. She also heads Rahbar, an initiative to promote training, supervision and professional development for mental health practitioners in India.
Dr. Disha Devi Prasad Nawani is the Dean and Professor, School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She is also a member of Drafting Committee of India Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (2020), a member of Development of Handbook of Textual material, NCERT (2020) and the Managing Editor, Contemporary Education Dialogue, SAGE. Her research interests lie particularly around,  curricular, pedagogic and assessment-related issues, teaching-learning resources, teacher education, analysis of educational policies and programmes etc.
Rishabh Lalani is an independent fundraising strategist with ~11 years of experience in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. In the last 7 years, he has consulted with family offices, corporate foundations, business incubators, and civil society groups to raise close to USD 6 million for philanthropic funding for a variety of causes. Most recently, he volunteered to raise funds for 54 causes across India for Covid-19 relief raising nearly USD 720k in a short span of 6 months. He holds a masters degree from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.

Advisory Council

Anand Nair is an Advisor for Apni Shala’s Branding and Communications. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at 4AM Worldwide - a multidisciplinary creative communications firm with a presence in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and New Delhi.
Anukriti Goyal is a co-founder of Apni Shala. Her work in the past decade has cut across thematic areas of grassroots development. She believes in the power of connections and analogies across sectors. You will often find her connecting dots, resources, and people. Anukriti has a bachelor's degree in Polymer Sciences and a master's degree in Social Entrepreneurship.
Fiona Reyonolds is the Deputy Head of School at the American School of Bombay. Prior to this, she was an administrator in both the American School of Bombay and Graded School in Sao Paulo and has been an international educator for 23 years, working in Brazil, India, the Ivory Coast, Mexico, and Poland. Her current focus is strategic planning, implementation, and leveraging the expertise of teachers to develop small- and large-scale change. Fiona has presented at a variety of conferences on organizing schools for change, creating developmentally appropriate middle schools, using learning spaces/environment to support learning, professional growth and evaluation, the future landscape for children and why schools have to change, differentiation, and setting a vision and strategic planning.
Kavita Anand is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Adhyayan. Through her work, she is catalysing a committed learning community of educators across India, to transform the learning of students. For more than three decades as an educator, researcher, funder, school and system leader, and now edupreneur, she has worked towards ensuring ‘a good school for every child’. She was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship in 2015 for her social entrepreneurship and single-minded focus on bringing quality to schools through leadership development. Over her career spanning 30 years, she has worked in organizations such as Aga Khan Education Services and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. She has provided long-term consultancy services programmes of the Open University, UK and the National College of Teaching and Leadership, UK.
Rahul Gupta is the Founder of Rajalka Consulting. He has worked as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) with The Akanksha Foundation. He has specialised in Ed. Leadership, Program Strategy, People Development and school transformation initiatives. As a Consulting School Coach for Khoj, he advises the leadership on school leadership, results framework and student learning outcome.
Sucharita Palepu has over 30 years of professional experience in the area of Human Resources and Financial services, having worked in several global organizations in senior leadership roles. She is an Independent Director and a Strategic Advisor specialising in Organization & HR Transformation initiatives. Her passion includes contributing to the culture building and governance mechanisms in Organizations to be truly inclusive , vibrant and progressive workplaces.
Swetha Ranganathan is a co-founder of Apni Shala. Over the past decade she has worked in the space of education, mental health, theatre, and the arts in India and Canada. She enjoys putting together organizational processes and structures to support the complex community engagement programming that non-profits do. Swetha has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and a master’s degree in Social Entrepreneurship and is a trained Theatre of the Oppressed facilitator.