RACHIT Sharma
Rachit is a poet, a facilitator, and an obsessive napper. For the past five years, he worked within the full scope of operations at Youth Alliance, currently, he leads Gramya Manthan, organizational Communications, and Team Development Processes. He curates his life experiences along the lines of 'if you keep searching for beauty in the world, you will eventually become it." Rachit spent his early years working with tribal communities and grassroots organizations in remote regions of Mizoram and Chhattisgarh. As a research fellow at the Dignity in Difference Project, he's building the capacity to identify factors, causes, and consequences of hate speech in the South Asian context. His poetry has found a home in several Indian and international literary platforms. When not enamored by poetry, music, and arts you can find him taking a purposeless nap by anything remotely tree-like.
SHASHANK KALRA
Shashank has reverence for nature and the spirit that pervades all. In the past decade, he has grown from a participant in Youth Alliance's first leadership program in 2012 to a volunteer, to a skilled facilitator, and now the CEO. He leads fund-raising, strategy-building, compliances, and ecosystem networking. His theatrics, playfulness, and keen inquiries awaken possibilities in people and collectives. Shashank is an Acumen Fellow, a Bhoomi Senior Fellow, and a Youth Visionary Awardee of the Global Peace Initiative of Women. He holds the gifts of being grounded and articulate on one hand and innocent, child-like on the other. He enjoys curious conversations with people and ideas, apart from enjoying napping when it gets too much to handle. Right now, living in Rudrapur he is rooting himself in local work and also building foundations for a nationwide movement.
Vibhuti
Vibhuti is a campaigner of the wisdom of playfulness. The journey of Youth Alliance and her own started almost at the same time when she was a student at Lady Shri Ram College. Her questions about the current development paradigms inspired her to co-create Earth-Shastra, a program that she currently leads, along with unconditional support to alumni, team development, and ecosystem work. Vibhuti is a former Teach for India fellow, who continued her commitment to education through her work at Sri Ram Ashram, Haridwar, and Shikshantar, Udaipur. She brings the perspective of body wisdom and uses various arts-based modalities in facilitation through her training in Interplay and Clowning. A trained leader at Interplay, she facilities various editions of Yes! Jams, Learning Societies unConference among others. After more than a decade of her work in social change, she has recently shifted to a small city in Uttarakhand to dedicate her time and skills to bringing about a change at a local level.
SUNIDHI SINHA
Sunidhi is a facilitator, Expressive Arts Therapy Practioner and art lover. She has worked with various communities using art as a medium for inner transformation through group therapy. Her experience ranges from program design, management and implementation. She is passionate towards creating safe spaces that encourage people to tap into their braveness and become agents of change for their community. She's currently working as a Program Lead with Youth Alliance, where she gets the opportunity to bring her passion and experience on the same page. Apart from this, she prefers to spend her time soaking the sun, looking at flowers and finding opportunities to play and enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
Saloni
Saloni, a curious learner at heart, identifies as an intersectional feminist. Since 2018, she has invested in several programs and processes at Youth Alliance. Currently, she leads Gramya Manthan and The Ecology of Self, along with volunteering and fundraising processes. Having graduated from the University of Delhi in Economics discipline, she has been inclined toward a service-oriented life from the very beginning. Saloni likes to call herself a 'work-in-progress facilitator' who builds spaces rooted in wholeness, with a tinge of playfulness. She is known for her self-amusing humor and dramatic story-telling. On a journey to embody deep listening, she has been part of mindful and presence trainings by Emory University and Just Being Centre. She builds deep relationships with people and loves to bond over books, cycling, trauma and good food.
Shipra
Shipra's drive for change in the 'business-as-usual' state of the world started with her engagements in Robin Hood Armyand Fridays For Future-Delhi. She finds value in the 'alternative'- in thought and practice, that something different from the conventional way exists, and hopes to engage with it more intentionally. A postgraduate from Azim Premji University, her interests range from facilitating and co-creating inclusive spaces of wholeness to thoughtfully working at the intersection of food security and climate change. While she has explored a bit of the latter through her field engagements in Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Odisha, she is exploring the former by being the Program Associate at Youth Alliance. Shipra likes to productively procrastinate by cooking large meals, loves to trek & make travel itineraries for friends, gets excited at moonrises & lies down anywhere and everywhere to stargaze.
AArti Jain
Aarti's conviction in alternatives over mainstream brought her to Youth Alliance. She currently is the engagement lead in the organization. Aarti's curiosity lies in unraveling the gifts and conflicts of collective leadership. A former Teach For India fellow, she worked as an assistant school leader and later as a program manager at Nalanda Project to bring systemic change in the realm of education. Aarti is a committed team player who wings quick ideas on her feet. She values the feminine form of leadership and intends to preserve it. Aarti is someone who doesn't shy away from expressing an opposing opinion in the sea of homogeneity. A true-blue Indori at heart, Aarti carries/finds her Indori poha (and none other) and a glass of kadak chai wherever she goes.
ADITI BHATIA
Aditi goes through life aww-ing over almost everything, be it a kid, a dog, the moon, or a cute unexpected gift from a friend. After spending some time auditing private equity accounts, she joined Youth Alliance in the capacity of a Program Associate, to ground herself more in the art of empathetic listening and holding spaces for her fellow beings. She is quite fascinated by how "change" comes into picture, and almost always remains in for deep digging into human behavior and the mystery of existence. Grateful to discover the power of and her love for dancing, she goes gaga over free self expression, nature, poetry, hugs, music, books- anything that brings her closer to feeling alive. Lately, she seems to drown in seas of various kinds, trying to stay afloat while wholeheartedly believing in "Dum Spiro Spero". She adores a cup of chai, appropriate jokes and some restfulness..
OM
Om loves to see the world with a different lens, one that is attached in front of his camera. The unpredictability of life encourages him to say Yes to things that are borderline reckless but very fulfilling. The new perspective that he brings into the world has allowed him to venture out to various places and connect to different people in a way he finds very fulfilling.
While organizing and documenting strikes with Fridays For Future, he found his strong interest in journalism as a means to create an impact. It led him to pursue his Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and Mass Communication.
A cohort member of the 13th Edition of Gramya Manthan, he currently takes up the role of Communications Associate at Youth Alliance. With a never-ending love for cinema, long walks and his bike, the only hope he carries is to touch lives through his presence, words and his visual arts.
BALKRISHNA
Balkrishna hails from Madhubani, Bihar. A keen observer and a quiet presence in any room, Balkrishna has been managing Youth Alliance's accounts for over 5 years. He like to travel and learn from life's experiences.
Learn more about our team practices here. This includes our org structure, how we organise, various layers of our organisation, our policies and experiments to build a more evolutionary organisation.
We are delighted to announce that we are incubating a new layer in the org structure, learn more about it here.
Team Nurturers
Over the years, people who were once part of the team and nurtured Youth Alliance. They continue to live the purpose of Youth Alliance and guide us however, not deeply engaged in operations.
PRAKHAR BHARTIYA
Prakhar - an engineer by degree entrepreneur by heart co-founded Youth Alliance in 2011 as he began to see youth as a powerful resource pool. A strong believer in the idea of empathetic leadership, he currently bring his rich leadership understanding in Team Development, Fund-raising, Alumni Support and Program Facilitation. He makes his work fun for himself and people around him. Conversations over coffee is his food for thought. Earlier, he has been a Teach For India Fellow. Prakhar transitioned out of Youth Alliance in August, 2018 for further studies and serve his quest to of nurturing principled leaders for Indain Democracy.
TEJAL RAJYAGOR
Tejal holds the chords of Youth Alliance from Mumbai. She primarily engages in program design, facilitation and documentation. Earlier she co-founded Ashiyana - a project that runs in Closed Institutions in Mumbai and has been associated with organisations like GiveIndia and Don Bosco in the past. Currently she also engages by developing and facilitating processes with young people and adults through various academic institutions, NGOs and Social Enterprises as a freelance professional. These include Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Seeds of Awareness, Blue Ribbon Movement and cBalance.
Core Team
Imagining Youth Alliance without its core team isn't possible. We have been able to be and do because of absolutely committed and unconditionally loving members of our our core team. Here's are the super amazing people who have been part of the core team at different points of time in our journey together.
