Meet our team

Board of Directors

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  Lucille C. Atkin

  Chair, Board of Directors

  A social psychologist whose career has spanned over 50 years in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights in Latin America, Africa and South Asia. She has directed diverse research, clinical and education programmes. Lucille specialises in stakeholder-friendly project evaluation, gender equity promotion and strategic organisational development. She currently consults with diverse international agencies, and holds a PhD in human development from Cornell University.

  Colibri Consulting, Oaxaca, Mexico

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  Paul Divakar Namala

  Secretary, Board of Directors

  A globally recognised advocate for Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent, a founding member of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), and Convenor of the Global Forum of CDWD, connecting and amplifying the voices of Dalit, Roma, Haratine, Quilombola and other marginalised communities across four continents. A leading expert in economic rights and caste-gender intersectionality, he has spent decades engaging at the UN, regional forums and with the Indian government on targeted budgeting and financial accountability for Dalit communities. In 2017, Outlook Magazine named him one of the 50 most influential Dalit leaders in India. As a founding member of NCDHR, Paul was part of the organisation awarded the 2007 Rafto Prize, recognised internationally for its work to advance Dalit rights and expose caste-based discrimination as a serious violation of human rights.

  The Inclusivity Project. Also serves as Executive Director, below.

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  Joel Guyton Lee

  Treasurer, Board of Directors

  Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Williams College, Joel Lee teaches and conducts research on religion, the state and caste in South Asia. His work concerns the strategies and tactics of Dalits to combat structural deprivation, navigate the politics of religious majoritarianism, and contend with the sensory and environmental entailments of sanitation labour in colonial and postcolonial India. His research and teaching interests also include linguistic anthropology, semiotics, popular Hinduism and Islam, and Urdu and Hindi literature. Joel holds a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University.

  Assistant Professor, Williams College, Massachusetts, USA

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  Rose Nierras

  Member, Board of Directors

  As the International Budget Partnership’s Director of Country Strategies, Rose is responsible for leading and directing the implementation of country programmes. She has extensive experience in supporting and building civil society organisations and managing multi-year, multi-country programmes on participatory governance, and has worked extensively with civil society organisations in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Latin America. She has deep knowledge of developing and strengthening organisational systems, especially for monitoring, evaluation and learning. Rose holds an MA in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia in the UK.

  Director of Country Strategies, International Budget Partnership

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  Corey Washington

  Member, Board of Directors

  Corey Washington, PhD, was Director of Analytics in the Office of Research and Innovation at Michigan State University. He was educated at Amherst College and MIT before receiving a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in Neuroscience from Columbia, and held faculty positions at the University of Washington and the University of Maryland. Prior to MSU, Corey worked as a biotech consultant and is the founder of a medical education startup. He is co-host of the podcast Manifold. He has recently left the MSU position to focus more on his family, his medical education venture and writing a book. He also spent months in India in the early 2000s working with Dalit activists and artists to make a documentary on the contemporary anti-caste movement.

  Founder and CEO, Latitude Health Innovations and Heart Origins, USA

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  Robin Chaurasiya

  Member, Board of Directors

  Robin Chaurasiya is the founder of Kranti (“Revolution” in Hindi), an NGO and school in Mumbai that empowers marginalised girls from the city’s red-light area, among them survivors of trafficking and daughters of sex workers, to become agents of social change. She went into teaching after being forced to leave her position as a US Air Force officer because of her sexuality, and helped organise a successful campaign to change US armed forces policy. Her students, the Krantikaries, have led workshops for more than 100,000 people and delivered 11 TEDx talks around the world. Robin was a finalist for the Global Teacher Prize in 2016.