Meet our Chevening Gurukul Fellows 2023-2024

This flagship fellowship addresses issues faced by leaders in all fields and explores changing ideas and practices of leadership, looking at the implications of globalisation for Indian leaders. It attracts young high-flyers and mid-career professional leaders from diverse backgrounds.

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Himadri Gangwar

Assistant Vice President, DSP Asset Managers Private Limited

Himadri is a management professional with 11+ years of experience across consulting and industry, specialising in enterprise risk management, project management, and stakeholder management. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Indore.

Dhananjay Singh

Under Secretary to the Government of India, Ministry of Finance

Dr Dhananjay Singh is a mid-career civil servant at the Indian Revenue Service of the Government of India. He is passionate about the unification of customs across geographies through a unified customs document that can be seamlessly transferred electronically across nations to bring down the cost of trade.

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Swagat Ranveerchand Bhandari

Managing Director, Kerala Water Authority, Government of India

Swagat has been an Indian Administrative Services Officer since 2010, across fields such as infrastructure, industries and planning. An electronics engineer with an MBA from Ross School of Business, she works towards improving processes in government and uplifting the underprivileged.

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Shantanu Gupta

Author

Shantanu Gupta is founder of The Ramayana School, Indian author, TEDx Speaker and TV panelist. He is the biographer of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, with books titled ‘The Monk Who Became Chief Minister’, 'The Monk Who Transformed Uttar Pradesh' & 'Ajay to Yogi Adityanath'.

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Krupakar Basapuram Jayanna

Deputy Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India

Krupakar Jayanna is a career civil servant with 9 years of experience in public administration and policy-making. He is currently the Deputy Secretary for Policy Planning at the Indian Foreign Ministry. Krupakar has served as Project Lead for several Track 1.5 public diplomacy initiatives and strategic planning.

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Ritu Sharma

Commissioner of Income Tax, Ministry of Finance, Government of India

Ritu is an Indian Revenue Service Officer with 18 years of experience in tax investigation, policy and administration. She has worked as Director of National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and is an author of fiction.

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Prachi Garg

Market Access, Policy & Communications Lead, Organon & Co.

Prachi is a public health and policy professional with over 20 years of experience. She is a Fulbright Fellow and Chevening Scholar. She studied Public Health Policy and Management at Emory University, Atlanta. She leads market access, public policy, pricing, and corporate communications for Organon.

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Apoorva Bapna

Chief Culture Officer, WPP

Currently the CCO for WPP in India working in DEI, sustainability and thought leadership. Passionate on issues of representation, gender, culture integration, change management, people development.

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Veenu Bansal

Inspector General of Police, Government of India

Indian Police Services Officer and IIT Kharagpur Alumnus, Veenu excels in metro policing. His diverse roles encompassed child abuse prevention, traffic management, cybercrime, and anti-narcotics. 'Nirbheek', his child abuse prevention program, earned him the National Smart Policing Award for innovation and impact.

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Radhika Choudary

Co-Founder & Director, Freyr Energy Services Pvt Ltd

Radhika is the co-founder of Freyr Energy, a leading tech-enabled rooftop solar company in India, that is making solar energy accessible and affordable. She has over 17 years of experience in the renewables sector in both the US and India. She studied MS in Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University.

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Samina Bano

Founder & CEO, Rightwalk Foundation

Samina Bano, a social entrepreneur, founded RightWalk to address educational, livelihood, and health inequalities through targeted public policy interventions. She has degrees in Computer Science and an MBA from IIM Bangalore. An Ashoka Fellow, she has been awarded Women Transforming India by Govt. of India & UN.

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Hamsa Vijayaraghavan

Chief Operating Officer, Migration and Asylum Project

Hamsa is the Chief Operating Officer at Migration and Asylum Project, India’s only dedicated centre for the study of forced migration, which advances safe migration in the region by making Rule of Law central to securing opportunities for rehabilitation for displaced populations.

Chevening Gurukul Fellowship

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