Dr. Kalpana Sankar co-founded Hand in Hand India over 20 years ago with Dr. Percy Barnevik aiming to eradicate poverty in Tamil Nadu. She holds a double doctorate – in Nuclear Sciences and in Women’s Studies and Self-Help Groups. She has been involved in the self-help group movement for nearly three decades. As the Managing Director of Belstar Microfinance, she created a stellar model combining lending and social impact. She co-founded several organisations - a Section 8 company for waste management, Hand in Hand Academy for Social Entrepreneurship and a company focusing on secured lending.

Dr. Kalpana Sankar has handled several international missions in countries such as South Africa, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Myanmar and Brazil, to mention a few. As a consultant to the Government, she has supported efforts aimed at poverty reduction and job creation and microfinance programmes in India and abroad. She has been a consultant with IFAD, UNOPS, UNDP and Christian Aid and Wetlands International, besides functioning as the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for the Tamil Nadu Women’s Development Corporation. She has authored publications on child labour, microfinance and self-help groups, and published her autobiography, The Scientist Entrepreneur, in 2022.

She holds an Executive MBA from TRIUM, where she was the first recipient of a scholarship. Dr. Kalpana Sankar is the recipient of the inaugural Princess Sabeeka Bint Ibrahim AI- Khalifa Global Award for Women Empowerment under the Individuals Champions category in 2019. She received the Government of India’s Nari Shakti Puraskar-2016 for her contribution to the empowerment of vulnerable and marginalised women. Under her leadership, Hand in Hand India won the Pradhan Mantri Bal Kalyan Puraskar for its dedicated work towards child welfare and education.

N. Krishnan is a marketing and sales professional with over 27 years of experience in sales, marketing and project management functions in blue chip FMCG organisations, including Cadbury’s, Henkel India, Saregama (HMV) and National Detergent Company of Oman. He has served in senior management positions in India and foreign countries, providing leadership and strategic inputs for programme design and implementation, monitoring deliverables, programme management and financial reporting, and fostering relationships with partners and other stakeholders, including the Government of India. In the development sector, he has managed impactful programmes in maternal and child health and HIV reduction. He has led a multi-disciplinary team in creating a franchise network for the treatment of patients with sexually transmitted infections in Madagascar. He has presented successful social marketing cases at international conferences and has co-authored articles and research papers for peerreviewed publications. An alumnus of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), he was a visiting faculty at Bharathidasan School of Management (Trichy) teaching sales and marketing, and at the Oman branch of Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU), teaching consumer behaviour and organisational development in Muscat.

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M.S. Sundararajan is a banking consultant and an economist. He was previously the head of the Indian Bank. His core expertise is in investment banking, project finance, corporate restructuring and capital markets. He won the Golden Peacock Award on behalf of the Indian Bank in October 2009. He has been part of several key strategic initiatives at the Indian Bank, including the initial IPO launch, introduction of Biometric ATMs, and introduction of touch screen kiosks across various Indian bank branches. On 31 May, 2010, Sundararajan was appointed as a member to look into customer service for banks by the Reserve Bank of India.

Dr. Mangala Ayre is an educationist with over 30 years of experience as a teacher, specialising in kindergarten and preschool teaching. In 1988, Ms. Mangala Ayre established the Inner Harmony Holistic Learning Centre for children in the 2-5 age group. She is a frequent lecturer and counsellor for teachers & parents and has developed various alternative teaching methods using music, storytelling and dance. She travels to the US, where she is an invited faculty at local primary schools, sharing the Indian experience and bringing home the learning from abroad. As a Trustee and Adviser of the MGET, she has added value to the academic growth and the smooth running of the schools.

K.N. Krishnamurthy is a former General Manager and Special Director at the automotive major Ashok Leyland. With over 38 years of experience in the manufacturing industry, Mr. Krishnamurthy has also served with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in various capacities. He won the Mother Teresa Award for outstanding contribution to society by the Institute of Economic Progress.

P. Kottaisamy is an Electrical Engineering graduate and a Business Administration postgraduate specialising in Finance. He has over 15 years of experience in development work, financial services and business consulting. He is currently working as a process consultant in HCL Technologies Ltd. As part of this role, he has supported various global financial services firms in the US, the United Kingdom and Singapore in their transformation journey as part of their enterprise transformation and change management programmes. He has specialised in process transformation, business architecture, offerings development and governance of not-for-profit development programmes. Earlier, he worked in various capacities with DHAN Foundation, Axis Bank, Aviva Life insurance India and Ramco Systems. During his association with the DHAN Foundation, he was instrumental in promoting Kurinji Vattara Kalanjiam, a federation of Women Self Help Groups. P. Kottaisamy currently leads various business and digital transformation engagements, including cloud and DevSecOps transformation programmes in Europe and the United Kingdom. During initial years, he worked in India to promote microfinance in villages. Even today, he actively promotes and supports microfinance, poverty reduction and education activities through notfor-profit organisations in India.

Dr. Percy Barnevik is a Swedish business executive with more than 40 years of experience in some of the world’s largest national and multinational companies. He was on the Boards of American companies Du Pont and General Motors and held several honorary positions in leading international institutions and organisations. He was also a well-known management guru and had received numerous international management awards.

In 2000, Dr. Barnevik decided to focus his philanthropic work on poverty alleviation in Tamil Nadu, after having witnessed the devastating impact of child labour. His vision was to reduce poverty through job creation for adults. By creating new jobs for parents, families would be able to pay for essential goods and services, allowing children to go to school, he reasoned. That was the beginning of Hand in Hand India.

Dr. Barnevik, in his note to Hand in Hand India, says “The Hand in Hand project is my most important undertaking”. 

N. Srinivasan is a former Chief General Manager of NABARD. He is an expert in microfinance and livelihood development. He has worked with World Bank, IFAD and UNOPS on various projects. He is the founder-member of the Alliance for Fair Microfinance and chief author of the State of the Sector Report 2008 on microfinance.

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A Fellow Member of the Certified Accountants Body (FCA) in India, Raghunathan has over 40 years of corporate experience. Starting with commercial management at Unilever, he shifted to IT Consulting. He has been heading global marketing, brand building and solution selling of enterprise applications at the senior management level. He has put a pure-play domestic IT company on the international map and secured global awards and recognitions for the company. An excellent communicator in English, Raghunathan has a passion for teaching. He is a visiting faculty in many management institutions and colleges. He is also a Trustee in a large non-government organisation dedicated to charity and women empowerment. He promotes a charitable-intent organisation called Knowledge Capital Investment Group (KCIG) to help bridge the Industry-Academy gap.

Dr. Kalpana Sankar holds a double doctorate – in Nuclear Sciences and in Women’s Studies and Self-Help Groups, and an Executive MBA from TRIUM. She has been involved in the self-help group movement for nearly three decades. As the Managing Director of Belstar Microfinance, she created a stellar model combining lending and social impact. 

Dr. Kalpana Sankar has handled several international missions on job creation and microfinance in countries such as South Africa, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Myanmar and Brazil, to mention a few. She has been a consultant with IFAD, UNOPS, UNDP and Christian Aid and Wetlands International, and as the Monitoring & Evaluation Officer for the Tamil Nadu Women’s Development Corporation. She has authored publications on child labour, microfinance & self-help groups, and published her autobiography, The Scientist Entrepreneur, in 2022.

Dr. Kalpana Sankar is the recipient of Princess Sabeeka Bint Ibrahim AI- Khalifa Global Award for Women Empowerment under the Individuals Champions category in 2019. She received Govt. of India’s Nari Shakti Puraskar award-2016. Under her leadership, Hand in Hand India won the Pradhan Mantri Bal Kalyan Puraskar for its dedicated work towards child welfare & education.

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