Our Team

Mohan H.L is a social scientist with three decades of experience as a Senior Technical Advisor for programmes, communications and community interventions. Presently, as the Managing Trustee of KHPT, he leads and provides overall direction to management of programmes, communications and community mobilisation systems and activities. He has played a key role in strengthening KHPT’s partnership with both state and national governments in India.

A firm believer in community centric planning and decentralisation, he has been responsible for design and implementation of innovations in areas of MNCH and HIV/AIDS. His area of interest include institution building and leveraging information and communications technology for empowering grassroots communities.

Prior to joining KHPT, he has spent more than two decades in government and non-government organisations, working specifically in the areas of education, health, decentralisation and adolescent education. He has worked as an advisor and consultant in several development projects of UNFPA, UNESCO and UNICEF, within the country as well as outside.

He has a Master’s degree in Rural and Urban Community Development from the School of Social Work, Mangalore. He has several peer reviewed publications and abstracts to his credit.

Mallika Tharakan is a social scientist working in the development sector for the last 14 years. She has a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the TATA Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. She currently plays the role of the Results Delivery Officer and Lead, Knowledge Management at KHPT. She was a journalist with the New Indian Express before she found her call and crossed streams.

Her expertise is in designing community centred program models, Social behaviour change strategies, and strengthening grassroots community institutions. She leads strategic communications, branding and knowledge translation at the organisation level. She also liaisons with the Board and thematic teams to ensure delivery of organisational priorities for impact. She has led the design of several community-based tools and processes that have been scaled at national and global levels.

She has been a resource person with UNDP and BMGF to design and implement community mobilization strategies in Tanzania and North-Eastern India. She has several publications and abstracts to her credit. Mallika is passionate about creating an equitable society for the most vulnerable and socially excluded populations in India. She has dedicated her professional career to do exactly that!

Dr Sukriti Chauhan, an INLAKS scholar, is a trained lawyer with a Masters in International Development Law and Human Rights from the Warwick University, UK. She has close to a decade of advocacy and communications expertise in public health and human rights. She started her career with PATH, India, working closely on HIV/AIDS, sexual reproductive health, cervical cancer prevention and maternal and child health.

As a Director at Global Health Strategies, Sukriti led the Tuberculosis Control and Prevention Project, resulting in national-level policy changes and campaigns, as well as set up the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative in India. Sukriti worked closely with the Indian Council of Medical Research to set up a Communications Unit to build the capacity of scientists to effectively and credibly relay scientific evidence to the public and key decision-makers. She also spearheaded the implementation of a champions-based strategy to create an enabling environment for the uptake of family planning services with a focus on spacing and access to the basket of contraceptive choices, with a rights-based perspective in six states in India.

Most recently she led a consortium of ten Indian partners at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) focused on adolescent health, nutrition and child protection and also drafted a five-year strategy for India Health Fund- set up by Tata Trusts focused on tuberculosis and malaria.

Sukriti has recently been awarded her PhD titled ‘Legal and Social Impact of HIV/AIDS on Abandoned Housewives in Kolkata and Delhi’ from the Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has presented and published her work at the global and national level. She started her first NGO for abandoned HIV positive women in the year 2000, is a trained Indian classical singer and an avid animal rights activist.

Dr P. L. Nataraj, former Director, Health and Family Welfare, Government of Karnataka, has served in the Karnataka State Government for thirty-five years, starting as a medical officer. He holds an MBBS and a Diploma in Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery (DOMS) from the prestigious Bangalore Medical College & Minto Regional Institute of Ophthalmology, Bangalore.

Dr Nataraj has successfully implemented various eye health projects at the national and international level. As a Director, he motivated private entrepreneurs and NGOs to join hands with the Government to provide quality Health Services to the public- especially the rural poor. He wants to dedicate his future to the service of the community for ophthalmic and charity services.

Dr R Balasubramaniam has spent the last 31 years of his life in the service of the rural and tribal poor in the forests of India. He is a founder of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SPYM) and has built this non-profit organization into India’s leading development NGO, that runs the Vivekananda Memorial Hospitals at Saragur and Kenchanahalli; the Viveka Tribal Center for Learning – a tribal residential school at Hosahalli; the Viveka School of Excellence – a rural school at Saragur; the Vivekananda Teacher Training & Research Center at Hosahalli; the Vivekananda Institute for Leadership Development, the Vivekananda Institute of Indian Studies and the Grassroots Research & Advocacy Movement at Mysore.

SVYM also runs more than 50 projects reaching out to nearly two million people across the state of Karnataka and has centres in the USA and UK. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement. Dr R Balasubramaniam is also the recipient of numerous other State and National Awards. Many International, National, and State Committees have counted upon his immense experience in planning and executing rural development programs.

He is also an Advisory member of various organizations working in the fields of social sector development in the country. He is also a consultant to various National and International Agencies including the World Bank in the Health, Education, Social, and the Development sectors. He is a Tata Scholar, a Mason Fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Hauser Center for Non-profits, Harvard University. He is also an adjunct faculty at IIT-Delhi and IIM-Bangalore. He has authored 5 books and he also writes extensively about Swami Vivekananda and on Development Issues in local Kannada and English newspapers.

Ms. Tasqeen has substantial experience in development work spanning over 25 years evident in the range of portfolios handled and organisations worked with, namely, grassroots organisations, international NGOs and multi-lateral organisations. The thrust of the work has been conceptualising and facilitating participatory and sustainable development at the grassroots, policy research and advocacy work, assessing potential partners, project design and evaluation, strategic direction, building vision and capacities of communities and organisations as well as resource mobilisation. Thematic areas worked on have provided valuable insights and experience in gender and development, women’s empowerment, education and child labour, health and HIV/AIDS, migration and livelihoods in the informal economy.

She is a board member of Sutradhar, an educational resource centre since 2002 and also, a member of Anti-Sexual Harassment Committee, WIPRO since 2004.