Steering Committee - Pune
Anjali Bapat
Anjali Bapat worked in the "Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal" for two years as the Accounts Officer. She has been doing Voluntary work for the Swadhar Institute of Development-women and children - since 1997. She has looked after the activities of Project Akshardeep since then.
Anjali has a Bachelor's degree in Commerce (Honors)
Bhavana Kulkarni
Bhavana has about 17 years of professional experience working in the IT Industry. She has worked for C-DAC, Patni Computers, Frontier, Veritas, Persistent Systems Pvt. Limited and Wipro. She also has about 2.5 years experience working in Research at the TIFR, Mumbai. Besides work she enjoys trekking, photography and reading.
Bhavana has a Masters degree in Science.
Bina Joshi
Bina Worked as the Executive Director at Door Step School from 1993 untill 2000. Since 2001 she has been Section Manager at the Department of Social Initiatives, Forbes Marshall.
Apart from being a member of the Executive Committee at Door Step, she is a Trustee of Identity Foundation, Pune. She is presently a member of a campaign which is working to address the issue of punishments in school.
Bina has a post-graduate degree in Development Planning and an M.Phil in Education (Interdisciplinary), both from Poona University.
Jhumkee Iyengar
Jhumkee has worked in US corporations and in India for several years, in various technical, consulting, research and project leadership roles in the area of Human Factors Engineering. The essential emphasis of her work has been to identify and meet the needs of the user through the analysis and design of products and services. Her work experience has covered several leading edge corporations globally. She has also been involved in Human Factors related training. An independent consultant today, she has helped initiate and is currently heading the Usability Engineering service at Persistent.
Jhumkee's corporate global experiences along with her interest in children led her to the conviction that excellence in Indian academic education ought to be supplemented with communication skills enrichment in the early years in order to generate confident creative communicators for the global world of tomorrow. With that vision and along with her experiences as a working mother, she founded and launched an Educational Enrichment Centre and a Day Care for children in Pune, in 2001 to incorporate the best of India and the west.
Jhumkee holds a Masters degree in Human Factors Engineering from Tufts University, USA, a Masters degree in Design from IIT Mumbai and a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from the College of Engineering Pune.
Malti Kelkar
Mrs. Kelkar's professional experience includes teaching Life science to grades 10, 11 and 12 in various schools in Delhi and Mumbai for 25 years. Her last appointment was in the Nepal International School where she also worked as the Principal and Co-Principal. She has written Science text books for the CBSE syllabus and has also worked as a Science consultant from the Indian subcontinent for the Young Scientist Encyclopedia of the World Book series. She has set up science labs in various schools and has even established a Science and Math lab of her own in Pune.
She has a Masters degree in Science and a Bachelor's degree in Education.
Ranjit Gadgil
After graduating from IIT Kanpur in 1993, Ranjit went to the U.S to pursue a PhD in Astrophysics at Cornell University. Later he worked as an IT consultant for over 6 years, before returning to India.
Since his return, he has dedicated himself to social causes and civic issues. His interests range from Traffic and Transportation, Solid Waste Management and the role of citizens in Urban Local Government.
Ranjit currently works as Programme Director of Janwani, a forum for such issues, started by the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce.
Sanjay Jagtap
Shashi Sharma
Shashi has more than 30 years of experience working with various organizations in private, public and voluntary sector. His experience also covers teaching, training, and consulting particularly in the areas of Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility. Shashi has written extensively on topics covering Management and Socio-economic development. He has designed and conducted a one-day workshop on Ethics for a variety of audiences. Currently Shashi is working as "Head - Corporate Social Responsibility" with Sterlite Optical Technologies Ltd., Pune.
He completed his undergraduate degree at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and his M.S. degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge USA.
Vibha Bakshi Gokhale
Vibha Bakshi Gokhale has been trained as a teacher of German language and literature. She obtained her Ph.D. in German from Michigan State University, US in 1992. She has taught German for 11 years in the US and in India at the university and college level. It is while working on a book on a German woman writer that Vibha started volunteering for the US committee for UNICEF in Boston, Massachusetts. During her six months as a volunteer with the US committee for UNICEF in Boston, Vibha became aware of UNICEF's contribution to children's issues in the developing countries and the role played by the developed countries in raising funds for UNICEF's causes. She was soon offered a job as a fundraiser for one of UNICEF's educational programs in the Northeast region of US. In her four years tenure as a fundraiser Vibha managed to increase by 400% the funds received by the North east office from educational programs.
After moving back from the US to Pune, Vibha got involved in several non-profit organizations in Pune. Door Step School has been one organization that has kept her faith in the idea that sincere effort of selfless individuals in the service of others does yield positive results.
Currently Vibha teaches German at the Mercedes-Benz International School in Pune, India. She is also coordinating the community service program for the 11 and 12 grade students of MBIS. She sincerely believes that it is each individual's responsibility to make their community a better place. Children from privileged backgrounds can make a difference in the lives of their less fortunate peers by involving themselves in service projects. It is in this spirit that Vibha combines her training as a German teacher with her interest in community service in her school.
Vinay Awasthi
