Women Create for Change: Stories of Empowerment

Anindita Ghose is a writer and journalist based in Mumbai. She was previously the Editor of the Saturday magazine Mint Lounge and the Features Director of Vogue India. She is a graduate of Columbia's Journalism school and was a Hawthornden Writing Fellow in 2019. The Illuminated is her first novel.

Myna Mukherjee is a cultural producer, curator, and the founder/Director of Engendered, a New York/New Delhi based Transnational Arts and Human rights organisation with a focus on the intersections of gender and marginalities in South Asia. She is interested in art curation as a feminist practice, an instigation/investigation and reflection of aesthetics and visual spectacle, as means towards subversion of a hegemonic culture. A management strategy consultant by training, Myna left a successful career on Wall Street, to produce and curate the best in contemporary South Asian art, cinema and performance festivals in New York. She has curated internationally at the Lincoln Center, Asia Society, Tribeca Film Center, Queens Museum, and others. For the India Chapter of Engendered, she initiated Delhi’s first and only alternative art space that served as one of the first gallery and artist residency dedicated to incubating a space for cultural production around issues of gender, sexuality and rights for marginalities for over 5 years. She has curated some of India's most prolific touring visual arts exhibitions, and brought to Delhi North America's largest South Asian Human Rights film festival, I View World in 2016. In 2019 Life Style Asia magazine listed her as one of the top 5 curators revolutionising the Indian art scene. In 2020 she was invited to co-curate Hub India, a survey program representing the contemporary art and eco-system of India for Artissima, one of Italy's most pivotal art fairs. Rescheduled to 2021, the Artissima Fair, expanded and she has been invited (for the first time ever) by Fondiazione Torino Musei to co-curate shows at four different locations, including World Unesco heritage site La Venaria Reale (Royal Palace of Venaria) considered to be one of the most important centres for art and culture in Italy, Museum of Eastern Art (MAO) that contains one of the major collections of Asian art in Italy, Accademia Albertina, one of the oldest and most renowned universities in Italy and the Artissima Art Fair.

Avanti Nagral is on a mission to create songs, stories and conversations that challenge societal norms. Avanti’s coming-of-age empowerment pop draws inspiration from her background in Indian Classical, Broadway, and Gospel music. She was the first in the world to pursue a dual degree at both Harvard University and Berklee College of Music, changing the narrative of a creative’s educational experience. Having performed at the United Nations and TEDx conferences, Avanti’s passion for social impact intersects with her love for performing. Avanti has amassed a strong and engaged community, The “Avantribe,” 400k+ and growing, with 50M+ views across verticals. Her content takes a community-first approach and she works toward building opportunities for and with her audience.

Nishtha Satyam was appointed as the Head of Office for Timor-Leste in UN Women, the entity of the United Nations that is dedicated to working towards Gender Equality and Woman's Empowerment in September 2021. She was the former Deputy Country Representative for UN Women in India and served as the Officer in Charge starting January 2018. As the youngest woman to head a country office for UN Women amongst 193 countries, Nishtha Satyam is an unapologetic feminist, a trained economist with a keen interest in applied macroeconomic and fiscal policy. In her long-standing career in the United Nations, she has managed the UN Women Office for a geo-politically diverse group of countries including India, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka. Nishtha has also served as the Private Sector Partnerships Specialist with the Office of the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations and UNDP. Prior to her career with the UN, Nishtha worked with leading firms such as KPMG and American Express as an Economist. As a futurist and feminist, she is a loud advocate of the urgency to mainstream women across the marketplace, workplace and community. Nishtha serves on several national and international committees including the national committee to review CEDAW, the advisory board on programming on Artificial Intelligence of Global Policy Insights, the national committee to review Gender Budgeting, amongst many others. As a policy expert to Goverments, Nishtha’ s interest lies in the intersection of policy, politics and people to foster lasting change for the most marginalized. She is well known columnist with leading dailies in India and is currently working on a book that captures the 25 landmark judgements that changed the course of gender equality in India. Nishtha holds a Master's Degree in International Business from the University of Nottingham, UK and a Bachelors in Economics from Delhi University.

Quasar Thakore Padamsee is a theatre-holic and lover of all things theatrical. Since 1999, he has directed and produced over 25 plays with QTP, including Every Brilliant Thing, A Peasant of El Salvador, Project S.T.R.I.P., So Many Socks, Minorities and many others about contemporary social concerns. Internationally, he has worked on Tim Supple’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the aerial drama Mind Walking. He is a founding member of Thespo - a youth theatre initiative that trains and promotes emerging artists in India. And at present, he is also serving on the festival committee of Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai International LitFest.