A room of builders.
The leaders, founders, policymakers, and practitioners turning ideas into action
Jayant Rastogi is a globally recognised leader in the social development sector, a seasoned strategist, and a champion of systemic change. As the Global CEO of Magic Bus India Foundation,Jayant has spearheaded transformative initiatives that empower young people from underserved communities to break free from the cycle of poverty. Under his leadership, Magic Bus has grown to impact over 2.75 million young people annually across India, focusing on holistic interventions in life skills education, and employability skilling.
At Magic Bus, Jayant has been instrumental in fostering pivotal partnerships with governments,corporates, and society to drive systemic impact. Jayant's dedication to innovation has elevated Magic Bus’ reputation, making it renowned for its robust automation, strong financial health,cutting-edge technology, and successful acquisition of a Development Impact Bond, all while upholding ethical standards.
Jayant began his career in the corporate sector, holding leadership positions in organisations such as Motorola, where he was the CEO, as well as Godrej, HCL, and Novell. These experiences provided him with deep expertise in business strategy, operations, and team development. His corporate journey shaped his commitment to combining business acumen with social impact, enabling him to transition into the development sector with a vision of creating scalable, sustainable solutions for social change.
Jessica Jensen is Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer at LinkedIn, where she leads the company’s global Marketing & Strategy organization, overseeing brand, corporate strategy, and marketing initiatives worldwide. She brings extensive experience in driving growth and innovation across digital platforms, helping organizations scale their marketing and business strategies globally.
Prior to LinkedIn, Ms. Jensen served as Chief Marketing Officer at Indeed, OpenTable, and Senior Vice President of Marketing for Kayak, all part of Booking Holdings. She has also held leadership roles in B2B marketing and strategy at Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, as well as consumer marketing at Apple for iAd, and was Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo! Shine and Yahoo! Health. Her career reflects a deep expertise in brand strategy, digital marketing, and global business growth.
With an immersive experience across layers of rural development, social entrepreneurship and human rights, John is spearheading the Livelihood Programs at The/Nudge Institute as the Senior Director. As a consultant with Amnesty International, he has worked on two important areas of Violence against Women and Human Rights education with respect to campaigns through digital platforms. While being associated with Frost and Sullivan & GB Research, Health and Pharma has been his prime concern, with a focus on human development.
Birla Institute of Technology and Science and Indian School of Business has been John’s primary educational background, influencing him to move on to a career that has an entrepreneurial approach to social development, in order to meet human challenges keeping digitization as a means of unification.
Johnson Tellis is the Founder and CEO of InUnity LLP, a pioneering organisation empowering youth through community-centric education and innovation. With a background in engineering and research, he has spent over a decade designing and developing ecosystems that equip young people in higher educational institutions to co-create impactful solutions with regional industries and innovators.
At InUnity, Johnson leads initiatives that integrate education, innovation, and social impact, building platforms that foster sustainable development in collaboration with academia, industry, and civil society. His work has engaged students and educators across Karnataka and beyond, promoting a culture of design thinking, systems thinking, and community resilience.
A passionate advocate for experiential learning, Johnson believes that youth-led innovation is key to sustainable development of clusters economy.
Jyoti Sharma is a seasoned development leader with over 25 years’ experience in driving transformative change across diverse sectors.With a Master’s in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, she has developed expertise in areas such as gender equality, child rights, education, health, livelihoods, disaster management, climate change, and regenerative agriculture.
Throughout her career, Jyoti has collaborated with leading global development organizations across India and South Asia, including the European Commission, World Resources Institute, Oxfam, Action Aid, Save the Children, Magic Bus Foundation, and more recently, the Organic Cotton Accelerator (OCA).
Jyoti has been instrumental in shaping the organizations' strategic vision and driving their growth. Over the past decade, she has excelled in building high-performing teams, developing innovative strategies, leading policy advocacy, managing operations, and strengthening organizational capacity.
Her leadership has been pivotal in spearheading successful program development, fundraising efforts, and fostering impactful partnerships that have made a lasting difference both in India and globally. Known for her ability to drive systemic change, Jyoti brings a results-oriented approach to advancing sustainable development goals through collaboration and innovation.
In addition to her executive leadership, Jyoti is deeply committed to mentoring the next generation of development professionals, empowering them to hone their skills and create meaningful contributions to the sector.
Beyond her professional achievements, Jyoti is an avid history enthusiast and a passionate traveler, always eager to explore new cultures and gain diverse global perspectives. Her intellectual curiosity and commitment to personal growth fuel her dedication to driving positive, lasting change in the development sector.
Kalika Bali is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India, where she focuses on AI, NLP, speech, and technology for empowerment, with a strong emphasis on multilingual and low-resource language communities. Over the past two decades, she has advanced human-computer interaction through language technologies and is passionate about creating inclusive technology that serves underrepresented languages and communities. She is part of Project VeLLM (UniVersal Empowerment with Large Language Models), an interdisciplinary initiative developing inclusive applications of large language models across languages and cultures, and her research also explores mitigating gender bias in technology.
Ms. Bali has been recognized globally for her contributions to AI and inclusivity. She was featured on the inaugural TIME100 AI list in 2023 and in Forbes India’s “30 Indian Minds Leading the AI Revolution”. Her work emphasizes responsible AI, fairness, and culturally aware, community-driven evaluation, ensuring technology is ethical and impactful. She is particularly passionate about developing local language technologies, including speech interfaces, to create opportunities for millions of previously underserved individuals.
Kanishka Chatterjee leads the^delta prize, designing and scaling incentive competitions that unlock innovation in livelihoods, agriculture, and climate resilience across India. Before moving into the development sector in 2022, he spent over two decades in marketing analytics and research. His current work focuses on building outcome-driven ecosystems and advancing India’s capacity to solve complex social challenges through market incentives.
Kartik Suri brings over 2 decades of experience spanning Telecom, Media and Entertainment, and Public sectors. Heis a certified Data Scientist, career mentor for students, and has been a visiting faculty member at Symbiosis, Pune.In his current role at IndiaAI, Kartik leads efforts to enhance accessibility to AI education by establishing Data and AI Labs in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. He also drives the IndiaAI Fellowships that foster a culture of research and innovation, resulting in increased student participation from undergraduate to doctoral levels in AI projects.
Previously, he has held leadership roles at Lend A Hand India, Reach 2 Teach, Vodafone, Sony Pictures, and also worked with the State governments of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat in various capacities. Kartik is passionate about music, education, and motivating the next generation of learners.
Kashyap Shah, Partner at The Bridgespan Group heads the Bridgespan Nonprofit Development Program (BNDP) for Asia and Africa. Prior to Bridgespan, Kashyap led Michael & Susan Dell Foundation’s efforts to pioneer systemic education reforms in multiple Indian states. Kashyap has also worked as an Officer on Special Duty with the Andhra Pradesh Government. He has spent close to a decade in for profit business consulting. He is a British Council scholar and has a dual Master’s degree in Public Administration from London School of Economics and National University of Singapore.
Kaushik has spent the last 16 years building social enterprises in rural India. He is the Cofounder and CEO of Kheyti, an organisation helping smallholder farmers through its "Greenhouse-in-a-Box", a low-cost greenhouse bundled with services that doubles farmers incomes, reduces crop losses from climate risks by 60% and helps farmers grow using 1/50th the water and 70% lesser chemicals. Before launching Kheyti, Kaushik was a leadership team member of B-ABLE, a social enterprise that provides high quality training and placement services to rural school dropouts. He is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur and has an MBA from Columbia Business School. Kaushik is a winner of the prestigious EarthShot Prize and the Elevate Prize. He is an Acumen India Fellow and a DRK Foundation Entrepreneur.
Keya is the Director of Operations at the India Climate Collaborative. In her role on the leadership team, she is responsible for operations, organisational growth and strategy, partnerships, donor engagement, and communications. She also launched and oversees Earth Exponential, ICC’s platform to unlock corporate philanthropy. Prior to the ICC, she spent more than 7 years at Twitter India, working across the Asia. Pacific region as a Communications Lead. At Twitter, she established teams and processes,managed public crises, drove content sales and built strategic partnerships. She has also previously worked directly for the CEO and Founder of Acumen, Jacqueline Novogratz, in a Chief of Staff role, where she was responsible for board engagement, special projects, and content strategy.
There’s a lot happening at charcha 2025
Exciting programming in play - marquee speakers, extensive CSR and CSO network participation, thought-provoking panels and workshops, curated networking, and more.