Andhra Pradesh: Sunita Burra

Sunita Burra is the State Head for Andhra Pradesh, India. She has done Masters of Philosophy in Human Development. Since 1991 she has been associated with projects related to children. She worked with different NGOs in various states before becoming a member of Pratham in 2004. Since then she moved to Hyderabad to start the Andhra Pradesh chapter of Pratham.     



Assam: Abhijit Chakraborty

Abhijit joined Pratham, in 2006 and was a part of implementing the first program in the state. He now heads the state chapter in Assam and is responsible for the overall planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all programs conducted in the state. Abhijit has over 9 years experience in community mobilization. He comes to Pratham after having worked as a HIV/AIDS education officer in several NGOs.



Bihar: Sanjay Singh

After completing his Masters degree from the Department of Labour and Social Welfare of Patna University in 1999, he joined Pratham. While with Pratham, he had the opportunity to study Education Technology at the University of Twente in Holland. Sanjay has been part of the core team that has taken Pratham from being a small urban program to a large scale statewide partnership with the government in elementary education. He has headed Pratham's work in Bihar since 2005. He has extensive field experience both in program implementation as well as content development, curriculum design and training.

Chattisgarh: Gaurav Sharma

Gaurav has been working with Pratham since 2005 and heads the program in Chattisgarh. He is a Masters in Commerce.





Delhi: Shailendra Sharma

A Masters in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Shailendra joined Pratham in 2002 and served in programme support unit during the initial years. Currently, he heads Pratham Delhi and is responsible for planning and execution of Pratham’s community based education programme for children in 3-14 years age group in about 300 underprivileged communities and 850 municipal schools of Delhi. He also coordinated Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) activities in the state of Jammu and Kashmir between 2005-07.

Gujarat: Renu Seth

Renu  has been  a student of Sociology Honours from the University of Mumbai. Renu joined Pratham in 2005, and has since then worked in the Direct /Urban programme and Read India programme in Gujarat. With her team, Renu now looks after Pratham programmes in Gujarat. Her experience before Pratham includes programmes with adolescents for Reproductive and Sexual Health.



Himachal Pradesh: Ranjeet Kumar

Ranjeet completed his Masters in Social Work from the Jamia Millia University in Delhi in 2007. He joined Pratham in June 2007 and is now heading the program in Himachal Pradesh. He is responsible for program planning and implementation of the  Learning Enhancement Program with  the SSA HP in all the 12 district of Himachal Pradesh. He also liaisons with Govt. departments mainly with officials of SSA at State and district level and is also responsible for the monitoring and evaluation of the program in the state.


Jammu and Kashmir: Syed Faisal

Syed is a Masters in Sociology. He has been with Pratham since 2006, when he was co-ordinating the program activities in Lucknow. Currently he heads the program in Jammu Kashmir where he is responsible for the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the activities. Prior to joining Pratham, Syed worked with Hindustan Lever. His intense desire to work for the education of children led him to join the development sector.



Jharkhand: Kumar Katyani

Kumar has been associated with Pratham since 2003. At present he is responsible for Pratham’s  programme  activities in Jharkhand.  He  started work in Pratham, Patna as a Coordinator of Capacity building and Pratham Education Center (PEC).  He has also conducted the ASER Campaign of Bihar and Jharkhand for 3 years.

He is a Post Graduate in Labour and Social Welfare from Magadh University and also a Post Graduate in Rural Management and Development from Patna University. At present he is  pursuing his Ph.D. in Rural Management and Development from Patna University.

Karnataka: Kanchan Banerjee

Kanchan is the Managing Trustee of Akshara Foundation the Karantaka arm of Pratham.  She is a sociologist and is trained in communications and teaching children with learning disabilities. She has been associated with the planning and execution of several of Akhsara Foundation’s programmes since 2000.




Madhya Pradesh: Sajjan Singh Shekhawat 

Sajjan has been working with Pratham since 2002 and heads the organization’s operations in Madhya Pradesh. A Masters in Social Work, Sajjan’s positive attitude enables him to handle his responsibilities in the highest pressure work situation.




Maharashtra: Sarika Raut

Sarika began her journey with Pratham in 2003 as a volunteer in the Sindhudurg District in Maharashtra. She holds a BA degree in Sociology and is also pursuing a Diploma course in Electronics and Telecommunication. She has worked with organisations like Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan and Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs in the past.

Nagaland: Kevi Z. Savino

Kavi joined Pratham in 2006 to help implement a pilot, and then stayed on to set up the program in the state. In her last three years, she has been involved in implementing some very important programmes in the state, such as setting up and running 913 community based libraries and an English Basics Reading Programme in 1306 government schools across the state. “The great thing about working with Pratham”, Kevi says, “ is the diversity of roles I have been given the opportunity to function in - from content development to logistics and budget planning; from training to monitoring programmes and interacting with people - in the Government, in the community”. Prior to joining Pratham, Kevi worked as a features writer with India Today’s Travel Plus.

Orissa: Puspanjali Parida

Puspanjali Parida is the State Head for Odisha, India. She has done Bachelor Degree in Education and continuing her PGDRD (Diploma in Rural Development) in Revenshaw University.  Since 2001 she has been associated with projects related to Adult. She worked with different NGOs before becoming a member of Pratham in 2004.

Punjab: Avneet Kaur Malhi

Avneet Kaur Malhi is the State Coordinator for Pratham Punjab. A Post graduate from Mumbai University, she worked as a Compliance Auditor for 6 years and was actively involved in the CSR activities undertaken for the education and welfare of children of factory workers. She joined Pratham in 2008 and is  responsible for the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Parrho Punjab - a Learning Excellence Program in 20 districts of the state, undertaken in partnership with Sarv Siksha Abhiyaan. She also manages and coordinates the Block Excellence Program in 38 blocks across 20 districts & a small direct program for children of factory workers at the HMEL Refinery in Bathinda. 

Rajasthan: Rishi Rajvanshi

Rishi has a PG Diploma in Management (specialization – Rural Management) from IRM, Jaipur. Joined Pratham as a student in 2004 and was part of the first ASER in 2005 before joining Pratham full time in 2006. Since then he has worked in various assignments in Jodhpur in 2006, as ASER State Manager in 2007 and part of Read India team in 2008. He became the State Head in 2009 and currently leads various programs on Education, Research studies and Skilling independently in Rajasthan including Read Rajasthan which is a three year partnership between Government of Rajasthan and Pratham for improving the status of education in close to 3000 schools in rural Rajasthan.

Tamil Nadu: Balaji Samapth

Balaji Sampath completed his B.Tech in Electronics from IIT Madras in 1994 and then obtained a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. After completing his doctorate, in 1997 Balaji returned to India to work full-time on education and health issues in villages. He and a team of likeminded people started AID INDIA, a well known non-profit that works on education and health issues. From 1997 to 2000, Balaji worked on community health programs and from 2001 he has been actively involved in addressing issues in school education. From 2003, AID INDIA has been working closely as a network partner of Pratham and Balaji has been playing an active role in coordinating Pratham programs in Tamilnadu. For his education activities, Balaji and his team was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship, Lemelson Inventor Certificate, MIT Indus Technovator's Award 2005.

Uttarakhand: Shyam Dayal

Shyam has done MBA in Rural Management from Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar (XIMB). He has got a unique opportunity to work with different organisations from both Corporate and Development Sector. This provides him a broader perspective with respect to different issues related to civil society, and he hopes to contribute in providing a better framework and solution for them. He has worked   on the child centred community development projects with a right based holistic approach. His area of work involves different domains of community development such as Education, Child Rights and Livelihood. Presently Shyam Dayal is State Coordinator of Uttarakhand.

Uttar Pradesh: Ajit Solanki

Masters & M.Phil. in Social Work from University of Lucknow, Ajit B Solanki’s has an exposure to Human Resource section of various industries, he moved to Jaunpur to join Pratham on a JPAL-Pratham joint Research Projectt on Information campaign and Community Mobilization.Now he heads the State of UP-monitoring the Read India & Urban Program in the various districts of UP. He has witnessed the scale up of Read India in form of Pratham’s Partnership with Government since 2006 & Pratham’s reach to every village of UP in 2008. In 2009 he has taken responsibility of Urban Program to work with out of school children of slum areas of 5 cities of UP. He believes that there is still a long way to go, and a lot more has to be done for underprivileged section of the society.