Urvashi Sahni

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 has a Masters and PhD in Education from University of California, Berkeley, USA. In 2017, she won the Social Entrepreneur of the Year India award conferred by the Schwab-Jubilant Bhartiya Foundation. She is a fellow at Harvard University in their Advanced Leadership Initiative of 2024. In 2020 she co-created Catalyst 2030, a global network of over 800 social entrepreneurs. Dr Sahni is an Ashoka Fellow and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Universal Education at The Brookings Institution, USA. 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.

She 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), DiDi's (a social enterprise for sustainable livelihoods for women), and the Study Hall Educational Foundation (SHEF). 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.

About Study Hall Educational Foundation (SHEF)
SHEF is a non-profit social enterprise that runs four pre-K to 12 schools, a college and 132 community based learning centers. It also partners with over 800 schools to train the teachers in the use of our curriculum on gender equality. Since 1986, SHEF has impacted 5 million students, most of them girls from extremely marginalized communities, 100,000 teachers and 20 million members of the community. Our vision is to educate everyone for gender equality, social justice, personal flourishing and active democratic citizenship.