Our Team

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!

Vrinda Manocha handles communication and knowledge transfer activities for the TB, Maternal and Child Health and COVID-19 thematic areas of KHPT, while also supporting organizational communication efforts. She has been with KHPT since 2017, working on knowledge product development, communication strategies, branding, and documentation. She has co-authored two award-winning case studies on KHPT’s TB interventions, helped develop communication materials for the Central TB Division, and documented Karnataka state’s efforts to contain COVID-19 in 2020. Vrinda is particularly interested in converting intervention findings and stories from the ground into impactful easy-to-understand formats and layouts tailored for different audiences. She finds editing a meditative and therapeutic activity.

Vrinda previously worked as a Business Correspondent with the Thomson Reuters news agency in Bengaluru, covering healthcare companies in the United States. She holds a Master’s Degree in Development from Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and a BA in Journalism and Communication Studies from Manipal University.

With an M.Phil and MA in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Ms. Majumder has fourteen years of work experience in the development sector. A major part of her professional career has been at the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR), in various capacities from being a Research Associate to Sr. Programme Manager.

Over the years she has successfully implemented and managed projects around a range of issues- food security, violence against women, mother and child health, adolescent health, etc. with a specific focus on menstrual hygiene management, and water, sanitation, and hygiene. The issue of gender and social inclusion has been the core of all projects she has been associated with and implemented.

Ms. Majumder has worked on various projects supported by leading grantmakers like the Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF), Ford Foundation, BMGF (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), DFAT-WfW (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Australia- Water for Women, Sesame Workshop India and J-PAL (Abdul Jamal Poverty Action Lab). She has also been responsible for the creation of content and designed newsletters, posters, leaflets, and other IEC/BCC materials, in association with the designated designers across projects.

During her stint, she had had the opportunity to work in various parts of the country including New Delhi, Kochi (Kerala), Bengaluru (Karnataka), Pune (Maharashtra), Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Jaipur (Rajasthan), and Kolkata (West Bengal).