Sakhi’s recently inaugurated Emeritus Board consists of former Board Members who serve as a panel of strategic advisors to the organization. They act as champions on behalf of the organization and raise the profile and visibility of our work in New York City.
Dr. Margaret Abraham
Dr. Margaret Abraham (Maggie) is a sociologist and has been involved with Sakhi for South Asian Survivors since 1990. She is the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Harry H. Wachtel Distinguished Professor at Hofstra University. She was elected as President of the International Sociological Association, (ISA 2014-2018). At Hofstra, she also served as the Special Advisor to the Provost for Diversity Initiatives, Chair of the Department of Sociology and as Director of the Women Studies Program. Her teaching and research interests include domestic violence, gender and intersectionality, social justice, immigration, globalization, and suicide. Margaret is the author of the award-winning book Speaking the Unspeakable: Marital Violence Among South Asian Immigrants in the United States (Rutgers University Press 2000), the first book on domestic violence within the South Asian Diaspora in the US. She has several publications and her co-edited books and special volumes include, Contours of Citizenship: Women, Diversity and the Practices of Citizenship (Ashgate 2010); Making a Difference: Linking Research and Action (Current Sociology, Monograph Series, April 2012), Interrogating Gender, Violence, and the State in National and Transnational Contexts (Current Sociology, July 2016); Sociology and Social Justice (SAGE, 2019).
Margaret has been involved in research and activism in addressing domestic violence and social justice issues for over 25 years. She has given talks in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, North and South America. She serves on the boards of community organizations, journals, and has been an advisory board member and consultant on national projects addressing violence against women. Margaret has been honored for her community action research and quoted in the media.
Meeta Anand
Meeta served as Sakhi’s Board Chair from 2017 to 2019, during which time she worked to create Sakhi’s advisory board. She is now New York Immigration Coalition’s Census 2020 Senior Fellow, spearheading the organization’s efforts to ensure a complete and accurate count of New Yorkers in the 2020 Census.
Meeta’s previous experience includes more than a decade working at the law firm White & Case, where she was an associate in the project and asset finance group and headed business development for the same group. Prior to that, she clerked at the Court of International Trade, interned at the Division of Appeals and Opinions at the New York State Office of the Attorney General, worked as a commercial banker at Banco Santander, interned at the Bureau of Human Rights at the State Department, and assisted research in economics at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. She received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.A from the The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a B.A. from Tufts University in Political Science and Economics. Meeta is a proud native of Queens, where she was raised by her Haitian mother and her Indian father. She roots for the Mets and tries to teach her Minnesotan husband to say “stand on line.”
Santushi Kuruppu
Santushi has been in the nonprofit sector for over 15 years working with organizations in all aspects of board governance, organizational management and process development. She has worked with organizations in diverse areas including gender justice, conservation and neurodiversity. Santushi’s experience includes working with board members and executive directors on leadership development, identifying areas of organizational growth and operational efficiencies, and improving board effectiveness.
Santushi was a former board chair of Sakhi for South Asian Survivors. Other organizations she has worked with include On York Mark, Prerak Trust and I-ASC. Santushi holds a BA in Political Science from Bard College and a MS from Boston University in International Public Relations.
Manisha Mehrotra
Manisha Mehrotra has an expansive track record in Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), Communications and Organisational Change. Currently Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Bloomberg LP, she brings innovation and tenacity to designing and delivering wide-ranging strategic D&I solutions that drive organisational change.
Prior to joining Bloomberg, Manisha worked at New York Life for 10 years. There, her career spanned Communications, Operations, Management, and Corporate Diversity & Inclusion, where she actively managed strategies to build and retain a diverse and inclusive workforce.
Manisha is a mentor and coach to students and professionals, through a variety of programs and initiatives. She earned a Diversity Management Certificate from Cornell University, a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing and Communications from the University of Connecticut, and a Master of Business Administration from Cornell University.
Deepti Mittal
Deepti Mittal, brings a substantial interest, commitment, and experience with non-profit organizations. These organizations include the Friends of St. Catherine’s Park, located on the Upper East Side, Brown University President’s Council and Pollyanna. In fact, she sits on Board of each of these three institutions. She has used her expertise to expand the membership of these organizations, help strategize Board structure and development, helping organize very successful fund raising campaigns. Previously she has been on the Board of the Dalton School and involved in other organizations like Sakhi for South Asian Survivors, Sanskriti for South Asian Woman, Play Area Association of New York Presbyterian Hospital.Deepti received a BA in Psychology from the Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi, India. She subsequently completed a MBA in Marketing and International Trade Relations. She currently works as a real estate broker for Douglas Elliman in New York City. She lives with her husband Suneet and has two daughters, Sonia and Priya. Sonia works in marketing and Priya is a freshman in College.
Nandini Mongia
Nandini Mongia is senior vice president and Treasurer at Prudential Financial, responsible for the company’s policies and management of global capital and liquidity, capital structure strategy including capital requirements, capital costing and external and affiliate borrowing, treasury operations and stakeholder management including regulators, rating agencies, fixed income investors, banks and reinsurers. Mongia has also been integrally involved in the company’s strategic transformation by enabling its growth agenda through innovative initiatives.
Previously, Mongia was the chief financial officer of Prudential Retirement. She led all financial functions across Prudential Retirement and its Full Service and Institutional & Pension Solutions businesses. Mongia has over 15 years of experience providing strategic advisory and investment banking services to insurance industry clients in the U.S.
Prior to joining Prudential in 2017, she worked in investment banking at Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers, in business planning at Goldman Sachs and as a strategy management consultant at Gemini Consulting. Mongia has been recognized by Treasury Today as a Highly Commended Winner of Women of the Year and by NJBIZ as a Leader in Finance. She’s a frequent speaker at conferences on topics ranging from how Treasury can improve company outcomes to the importance of the talent agenda and inclusion and diversity being a strategic differentiator.
Mongia earned a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Delhi and an MBA from the University of Michigan.
Nandini Nathani
Nandini Nathani is a seasoned and astute entrepreneur, with specific skills in the real estate arena. Her deep personal experience in real estate investment and renovation has enabled Nandini throughout her career to guide many clients (both local and global) in navigating complex decisions regarding primary homes and investment properties alike.
Soft-spoken yet commercially savvy, and with sharp business acumen gained via her prior experience in the jewelry industry—coupled with degrees in Finance and Gemology (GIA) from India—Nandini is an effective, dynamic negotiator who works tirelessly to develop and maintain trusting relationships with her clients and customers. Nandini recognizes the complexities inherent to decision-making with long-term consequences and to that end focuses on helping the individuals and families with whom she works in achieving outcomes that are desirable, realistic and always consistent with their goals and values.
Nandini is a long-time resident of New York City with a deep and extensive network across a wide range of industries and sectors. Actively involved in a number of community organizations, Nandini previously served on Sakhi’s board and has supported the organization in a variety of capacities for many decades.
Dr. Subadra Panchanadeswaran
Dr. Subadra Panchanadeswaran (Sumi) is a trained social worker and is currently a Professor at the Adelphi University School of Social Work. She teaches Human Behavior Theory and Social Work Research, and Quantitative Research Methodology to graduate and doctoral social work students. Her research examines the intersections of gender-based violence, HIV/AIDS, and substance use both in India and the U.S. among sex workers, substance-using populations, and immigrant women. Her most recent work explored the impact of mobile phone technology on cis women sex workers’ lives in India and she is currently studying the effect of aging on livelihood among this population. She credits her action research projects to her alliances with not-for-profit groups on the ground. Subadra’s work uses an interdisciplinary lens focused on deep connections with grassroots partners with an explicit focus on social justice. She has published and presented extensively in regional, national, and international conferences and journals. She is a Fulbright Scholar and also the recipient of the Faculty Excellence Award for Scholarship/Creative Works at Adelphi University. Subadra has been involved with Sakhi since 2006. She began as a volunteer and subsquently served as a Board member. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of not for profits groups in India and has served as a consultant on projects that focused on researching issues around women’s experiences of domestic violence in India.
Chandni Prasad
Chandni Prasad was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand and now calls New York City her home. Chandni is married to Dr. Mukesh Prasad, an ENT surgeon at Weill Cornell Medical College and they have two children, Arjun and Arya. Chandni has a BA in Economics and International Relations from Boston University, a Masters’ in International Affairs from Columbia University (SIPA) and an MA in Applied Anthropology from Teachers’ College. Chandni worked at the Synergos Institute in New York City, helping to build their foundation-building program in Asia. Over the past decade, Chandni has continued to devote her time to the Dalton School where she served as PA President from 2011 to 2013 and sat on the Board of Trustees from 2014 to 2020. Chandni also serves on the Advisory Council of the Harvard University Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asian Institute. Chandni previously sat on the Board of Sakhi for South Asian Women (2013 to 2019), a New York-based non-profit dedicated to providing services for survivors of domestic violence. A life-long student of Ayurveda, Chandni co-founded and runs The Dancing Elephant, an ayurvedic food start-up in New York City.
Vidya Satchit, Immediate Past Chair
Vidya brings to Sakhi a long-standing commitment to social and gender justice work across both the public and private sectors. She served as Sakhi’s board treasurer from 2018-19 and its board chair from 2019-22. She is currently Managing Director and Global Health Strategy Lead at Edelman, where she helps her clients to evolve, promote and protect their brands and reputations in the context of a rapidly-changing world. Prior to joining Edelman, Vidya was the Senior Director of International Strategy & Policy for Pfizer’s Upjohn business and led emerging markets strategy efforts for Pfizer Essential Health—partnering with stakeholders across the company’s commercial footprint and on a range of public health initiatives designed to overcome healthcare access and affordability barriers globally. Earlier in her career, Vidya was a strategic advisor to industry-leading finance and tech clients and also spent time both in government, at India’s Planning Commission, and in the non-profit sector. She began her career as a Goldman Sachs sovereign investment banker, based in Hong Kong.
Vidya holds an AB (summa cum laude) from Princeton University, a JD from the Yale Law School and an MBA with Honors from The Wharton School, where she was a Joseph Wharton Fellow and a Morgenthau Fellow in Public Policy. She speaks Mandarin and is an accomplished classical violinist, a black belt in Taekwondo and a certified yoga instructor.
Originally from Philadelphia, Vidya now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two boys.
Tamseela Tayyabkhan
Tamseela Tayyabkhan brings a passion for social justice and individual investment in Sakhi for South Asian Women’s work to transform communities and prevent violence against women. She has been a volunteer at Sakhi since 1993 when, as an advocate, she helped to develop the literacy program by providing basic skills of learning English as a Second Language to prepare survivors for employment. The Literacy Program at Sakhi grew into the current Economic Empowerment Program where survivors access economic opportunities through skills-enhancement trainings. She has served on the Swarna Chalasani Scholarship Fund Committee since it was established in 2002 in memory of a beloved volunteer who passed away on 9/11. Tamseela has been active from the earliest stages of fundraising at Sakhi through initiating and executing individual donor events such as film screenings and annual benefits. In 2002 and 2005, she co-chaired Sakhi’s annual galas. From 2007 to 2011, she served as Sakhi’s Board Chair when she also stepped in as Interim Executive Director during a period of organizational transition. She has studied Comparative Literature at Fordham University and previously taught English at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She also serves on the Governance Committee of the Board of Trustees at Hindu Samaj Mandir in Mahwah, NJ.
Krupa Sharma
Bio pending.
Romita Shetty
Romita Shetty is a principal at DA Management, a global investment management company. Her area of focus is special situations and private investing in debt and equity.
In 2007-2008 she ran the Global Special Opportunities group at Lehman Brothers which invested proprietary capital across the capital structure. Prior to that she co-ran North American structured equity and credit markets and the Global Alternative Investment product businesses at RBS from 2004 – 2006. Previously she worked at JP Morgan from 1997 – 2004 where she ran their Global Structured Credit Derivatives as well as Financial Institutions Solutions and CDO businesses. She started her career at Standard & Poor’s in 1990 where she worked on a wide variety of credit ratings including municipal bonds, financial institutions and asset-backed securities and managed a large part of their ABS ratings business.
Ms. Shetty has a long-standing involvement involved with women’s rights and human rights organizations. She was a co-founder of Sakhi for South Asian Women; a New York based non-profit organization committed to ending violence against women of South Asian origin that celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2019. She is currently on the board of the Student Leadership Network; a New York City based organization that supports two life-changing programs that empower students to break the cycle of poverty through education. She is also on the Advisory Board of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and on Columbia University’s Advisory Council for the Committee on Global Thought.
Ms. Shetty has a Master’s degree in International Affairs with a specialization in international finance from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in History from St. Stephens College, Delhi. She lives in New York with her husband and two sons.
Neeta Rastogi Singh
Bio pending.
Lakshmi Rao Sankar
Lakshmi Rao Sankar is the Executive Director and cofounder of CrimsonRise. An organization cofounded by neurodivergent and neurotypical allies. She is a member of the Leadership Cadre of I-ASC, a nonprofit organization that builds infrastructure to promote communication access for nonspeaking (nonverbal) autistics. Lakshmi is a partner and cofounder of Teamqore, where she consults with nonprofits in the areas of governance, strategic planning and development. She has also served, in leadership capacities, on the boards of Sakhi For South Asian Women, The Eden II Programs, Foundation for the Advancement of Autistic Persons and On Your Mark.
Lakshmi has a career that spans:
- Establishing, authoring and teaching the evolution, and standards and practice of Spelling to Communicate, as a registered S2C practitioner, and in leadership at CrimsonRise and I-ASC.
- Stewardship of critical initiatives undertaken by the board and executive teams of nonprofit organizations.
- Advocacy and thought leadership for organizations that serve neurodiverse individuals.
- Management of organizational development and human resources.