Core Team

Vanaja Ramprasad, PhD, the Founding Trustee of GREEN Foundation, tirelessly contributed to the growth of the organisation without expecting monetary benefits except for a small honourarium. Her commitment to the cause was the major force behind what the organisation achieved over the previous fifteen years despite many difficulties. In recognition of her hard and tireless work, Dr. Vanaja Ramprasad was invited to receive the Equator Initiative Award in 2004, was honoured with the “Woman in Vocation Award” by Rotary in 1997, and received the “For the Sake of Honour” award from Rotary in 2004. She was selected as one of the world board members of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements and was invited by the IAASTD to serve as a lead author for a worldwide event to prepare a document on Science, Technology, and Development impacting agriculture. Her enduring legacy is celebrated through the ongoing impact of her work, which has significantly advanced sustainable agricultural practices, empowered rural communities, and promoted environmental conservation, continuing to inspire future generations committed to social change and sustainability.

D. Ashok, MBA: the C.E.O of Gossamer Consultants, this leading industry expert is a graduate of the esteemed Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore where he is a visiting faculty member. An active Rotarian, he is deeply committed to community development at a grassroots level and helps organizations achieve their full potential through expert guidance at a strategic and operational level. With an illustrious career spanning more than 3 decades, he continues to be dedicated to the empowerment of India.

Mr. Ananda Gundurao is a graduate from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Ananda has over three decades of experience in the corporate sector. Retired and settled down in Bangalore, his interest is to bring best organizational practices of corporate sector to social organizations and build necessary managerial capability.

As a social entrepreneur, Raghunathan’s passion is to facilitate sustainable solutions at a scale that eliminate inequities, marginalisation, hunger and poverty. Guided by his 25 years’ experience in the social development sector, he strongly believes that an integrated and people-centric ecosystem is a must, with a strong and sensitive private sector, to bring sustainable change at scale. The DNA for this change and transformation is to create an eco-system that integrates four elements – Capacities of the Communities, Efficiency of the Market, Reach and Vision of the Facilitators, and the Power of the State. Towards this, he strives to design scalable models and approaches, test them, nurture partnerships to reach scale and engage with policy to create enabling space, across multiple domains that affect the lives and livelihoods of the vulnerable and marginalised communities. The models that he initiated have touched over 120,000 farming households, 150,000 communities vulnerable to health issues, 40,000 households affected by water-related issues and over 500 women-owned businesses.

Shiv has over 19 years of experience and accomplishments in social development in India and internationally. Shiv is the Founding Director of Catalysts Group of Institutions. Shiv’s experience spans consulting, research, capacity building and implementation of development initiatives. He brings to board innovative perspectives to address challenges of the development sector, particularly through technology. He has helped countries and organisations successfully raise financial resources and effectively apply them to achieve intended results. He serves in the Board of number of NGOs and business enterprises and in India on several national level task forces and technical resource groups. He has travelled and worked internationally in over 20 countries.

Sandip has 18 years of working experience with NGO, Government and Consulting at national and international level. He has deep interest in epistemology and contemporary world development issues. He has diverse interest in philosophy, politics, history, governance and strategic affairs and their implications for world development. Sandip is a qualitative research expert with sound understanding of quantitative research methodologies and statistics. He has expertise in Results Based Management Systems (RBMS), Logical Framework Approach and Outcome Mapping. He also has strong exposure to Participatory Rural Appraisal Methods. He has designed and implemented monitoring, evaluation and learning systems for several organisations using principles of RBMS and Outcome Mapping. His thematic expertise lies in livelihoods, natural resource management, agriculture, micro-credit, water and sanitation and child rights. In addition, he has experience in the field of waste-land development, micro-credit, medium and small enterprise development, governance and social accountability, disaster risk reduction and education. Sandip is a Masters in Development Studies from University of East Anglia, Norwich, England and is an alumnus of Xavier Institute of Social Services, Ranchi.

Pramel is a sustainable agriculture and natural resource management experienced practitioner. He is working on scalable models around regenerative agriculture, conceptualising a living soil campaign – “Maati maange More” and “one acre eco-farm” model. He has been engaged with various civil societies’ networks and institutions in India on small farm income sustainability. Pramel has experience of working with many sectoral stakeholders such as farmers, producer organisations, government departments, universities, industries, financial institutions, bilateral agencies and public institutions. His model on smallholders’ agricultural income growth won the World Bank marketplace development award in 2013, while working with Vrutti. He is a Post Graduate in Agriculture Economics, and has partnered for 11 years with Vrutti as CEO & Director and around 10 years with IFFDC at grassroots level as a Community Organiser and Field Specialist.

Passionate professional supporting organisations and solutions that address social issues affecting variety of people – children with juvenile diabetes and their caretakers, rural and urban poor households, organic farmers, women micro-entrepreneurs, people affected by disasters and diseases. Leads the Support Group for Juvenile Diabetes in Bangalore, being an interface and support system between and for the children, caretakers, doctors and service providers. Volunteering as the Manager in GREEN Foundation, Subha anchors the work in MIS, resource mobilization and human resources and administration. Subha works on areas to support women entrepreneurs to help their livelihoods, organic products, solar and bio energy and nutrition. Qualified in information technology and a strong base in Mathematics, she brings her expertise and learning in systematic collection of data, analysis, reviews, documentation and ensuring statutory compliance for the organisation and producer institutions. Always available for support, Subha loves to play a facilitator role in everything that can bring social change and smiles to people who are deprived.

Narasimhappa B is a B Com graduate from Bangalore University and pursuing MBA in Finance specialization in Pondicherry University.Having 4 years work experience in accounts and finance department and having passion of learning new things every day. Growing everyday through his skills like commitment towards works and adaptive nature in every situation. He is presently based in Bangalore.

Completed B.Sc Agriculture at Annamalai University , has 5 years experience in agriculture and development sector. He is interested to help the farmers and doing things in an innovative way. He believed that all the practices followed by our ancestors have some importance in it. He wanted to conserve that indegenous practices. He also wanted to utilise the solar energy effectively in all ways. He is interested in regenerating the forests. His mantra is “Save the true Agriculture and farmers.

Siddhi is a learner and learning facilitator. She considers herself a multi potentialist and has dwelt into multiple themes and areas of work. Since her foray into CMS in 2003, she has had the opportunity of working across multiple development themes including health, education, gender, livelihoods, agriculture and allied, disaster risk reduction, poverty, social protection, financial inclusion and governance. Her focus has been in the areas of learning systems design and execution, documentation and communication, knowledge management, and qualitative research. Siddhi has served on the Governing Board of Swasti and Vrutti, holding the position of Secretary in both organisations. Siddhi has a Post-graduate Bachelors Degree in Economics from the Gokhale Institute of Economics and Politics, and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Rural Management from the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA).