Dr Urvashi Sahni is a social entrepreneur, women’s rights activist, and educationist who has been a pioneering activist in the field for more than three decades. She is an Ashoka Fellow (since 2010) and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Universal Education at The Brookings Institution, USA (since 2013). She is also a 2024 Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) Fellow at Harvard University. She has done her Masters and PhD in Education from University of California, Berkeley, USA. Dr Sahni was awarded the HAAS International Award in 2001 (awarded to one international alumni in the whole University for significant work in their home country). In 2017, she won the Social Entrepreneur of the Year India award conferred by the Schwab-Jubilant Bhartiya Foundation. In 2020 she co-created Catalyst 2030, a global network of over 1800 social entrepreneurs. She is also a former member of the Rajasthan’s Chief Minister’s advisory council, heading the education sub-group. The Uttar Pradesh Government has nominated her to serve on the Steering Committee for the implementation of the National Education Policy of India 2020 and by the National Institute of Open Schooling, to serve on their committee for the revision of their Gender Policy.
Combining her activism with research, Dr Sahni has several publications to her credit. In 2017, Brookings Institution Press published Dr Sahni’s first book: Reaching for the Sky: Empowering Girls through Education. She has published several research papers and chapters in books; the latest paper was published in 2023 by the Nordic Journal of Art & Research - Trembling: The winds and I. Her latest book chapter was published in 2022 by Springer International Publishing - A life knowledge approach to life skills: Empowering boys with new conceptions of masculinity. (2022). In J. DeJaeghere & E. Murphy-Graham (Eds.), Life Skills Education for Youth: Critical Perspectives. Her upcoming chapter - Educating students to think, feel and behave democratically: Study Hall Educational Foundation (SHEF): A magical space of possibility – will feature in Harvard University’s book - Designing Schools and Democratic Learning Environments : A Global Perspective - and will be published by Springer Nature.
Dr Sahni is a leading expert in curriculum design and reform, teacher training and education governance with a special focus on girls’ education and gender equality. She founded Suraksha (a women’s rights organisation) in 1983, DiDi's (a social enterprise for sustainable livelihoods for women) in 2008, and the Study Hall Educational Foundation (SHEF) in 1986. Currently, she is the president and CEO of SHEF. Over the last 38 years, Dr Sahni’s work, through SHEF, has impacted over 100,000 teachers and 50,00,000 children, most of whom are girls from disadvantaged communities.