Board of Advisors
Sumant Batra
Sumant Batra is a corporate and policy lawyer of global eminence, and equally a philanthropist, author, poet, museum curator and columnist. Rated India’s No. 1 insolvency lawyer by Legal 500, he is widely regarded as a principal architect of India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy regime and an influential global voice in the field. As a senior international consultant to the IMF, the World Bank Group and the OECD, he has advised on policy and legal reform across Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, and coined the call to “Look Global, Think Local” for how the Global South approaches reform.
He is the founder of the Insolvency Law Academy, an independent think tank, and has held leadership positions in prestigious multilateral, global and national organisations. His honours include recognition for an outstanding career in insolvency and selection as the only Indian International Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. A sought-after speaker and opinion maker, he is also a prolific writer across law, fiction, biography and poetry.
A believer in the power of creativity, Sumant has founded a literary festival, a film festival and other cultural initiatives dedicated to preserving India’s heritage, and his philanthropy centres on empowering young people as the leaders of tomorrow. More about him can be found on www.sumantbatra.com
Ayesha Mago
Ayesha Mago is a feminist researcher, writer, trainer and mediator who has worked for over two decades on the rights of women, children and adolescents. Her focus spans discrimination, sexual and reproductive health and rights, HIV and AIDS, and access to justice, and her research has examined the legal frameworks around trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, and the laws that either protect or entrench discrimination against marginalised communities across South and Southeast Asia and Southern Africa.
She currently serves as Global Advocacy Director at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), the world’s largest network dedicated to research on violence against women and children, where she also works on feminist funding and movement building. She has deep experience of the non-governmental sector and of international bodies such as the UN Human Rights Council and SAARCLAW, and has served as a facilitator on international meetings and missions.
Alongside her research, Ayesha is an experienced trainer who has led programmes for NGOs and the corporate sector on gender, sexuality, discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University in New York and is a mediator accredited by the Bar Council of England and the Law Society.
Gayatree Sehgal
Gayatree Sehgal is an entrepreneur, coach, actor and wellness aficionado. She is the Founder and Director of The Image 360, an image consulting firm offering image and grooming solutions to individuals and organisations across diverse fields. She has been featured as a grooming expert in leading publications including the Hindustan Times, The Times of India, The Asian Age and Exotica.
Gayatree is an alumna of Indiana University in the United States, where she earned her MBA, and of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in India. Before founding The Image 360 in 2011, she spent around eight years in substantial marketing roles at companies including Whirlpool, Philips and Avon across India and the USA.
Passionate about life and committed to making the most of every moment, Gayatree pursues everything from the heart. She is also an actor (screen name Gina Ramone), known for her short films Purge and The Story of Love.
Vedant Batra
Vedant Batra is an investment banker at Citi in New York, passionate about the intersection of social impact and finance. He holds a dual MBA and MA in international studies from the Wharton School and the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and a double degree in finance and economics from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.
Impact investing runs through his career. At the Impact Investors Council in India he led projects in financial inclusion and blended finance, and at Wharton he served as Co-President of Wharton Impact Investing Partners, sourcing and executing deals that align financial returns with social and environmental goals. He has also been a fellow on UNAIDS’s Health Innovation Exchange in Geneva and an investor at Grey Matters Capital in Atlanta, where he supported the coLABS fund, which backs startups that improve the lives of women worldwide, with earlier experience at The Abraaj Group’s clean energy fund in Dubai, EY and the Centre for Civil Society in Delhi.
He looks forward to leveraging the power of technology and novel funding models to make it easier for healthcare and social innovators to access the capital they need.