Meet Our team – pollinate group

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Discover the Dynamic Faces Behind Our Mission: Our Stellar Team!

Meet the Pollinate Group team

Our Leadership squad

To meet our entire team at Pollinate Group, head to our company's LinkedIn page and navigate to the 'People' section.

Sujatha Ramani

CEO

Sujatha shares her leadership and passion for entrepreneurship and women empowerment to create traction, scale and value in social enterprise. With more
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than 28 years of corporate and entrepreneurial experience across sales, marketing, global program management and engineering, she has consistently grown revenues and created new employment. Sujatha has worked at multinationals as well as been a Director in the social sector in India. She holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Science.

Ravi Kumar

Senior Director of Growth

Ravi is an operations leader with more than 20 years of experience, including more than 11 years in the clean cookstove industry in India. At Pollinate Group Ravi
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leads a number of our teams. He is dedicated to creating an environment that is efficient, conducive to out of the box thinking and most of all maintains a strong focus on community impact.

Sita Adhikari

Director of Impact and Co-Founder

Sita is a Co-Founder of Pollinate Group and our Director of Impact. She holds a Masters Economics (Tribhuvan University) and a BA Commerce (Sahid Smriti College)
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While working as an entrepreneur Sita decided she wanted to extend opportunities to women around Nepal. Before joining Pollinate Group Sita was a founder and President of the Jhuwani Women’s Savings and Credit Cooperative, a founder of the Women’s and Children’s Section of the Jhuwani Community Library and the founder of Kalpavriksha.

Prachi Bansal

People Culture Learning Manager

Prachi Bansal is an experienced HR professional with over 10 years of expertise in HR Strategy, Talent Management, Learning & Development, and Employee
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Engagement. At Pollinate Group, Prachi plays a crucial role in driving business performance through Human Capital development and is skilled in addressing people-related challenges to achieve sustained growth. She fosters a culture of trust and empowerment and is passionate about contributing to organisational success and cultivating thriving talent ecosystems. At Pollinate Group, she supports a powerful impact model that operates at the intersection of poverty, gender, and climate, creating lasting positive change.

Vinutha

Finance and Compliance Manager

Vinutha is a finance professional with over 15 years of experience in the industry. As the Head of Finance, she has demonstrated exceptional leadership
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and strategic planning abilities, guiding her team through complex financial landscapes to support organisational objectives. Her expertise encompasses financial operations management and the development of financial strategies, contributing significantly to our mission of driving positive change through sustainable and responsible business practices. She ensures that our financial strategies align with our business goals and comply with relevant laws and regulations.

Runa Laila Tarafdar

Manager Partnerships & Philanthropy

Runa, a purpose-driven leader with over 13 years of experience, brings her project and stakeholder management expertise to Pollinate Group as Manager of
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Partnership & Philanthropy. There, she spearheads the development of sustainable energy solutions that empower underserved communities, fostering women's entrepreneurship and economic participation. Her strong partnership and program management skills, honed in a prior leadership role, fuel her work at Pollinate Group. A collaboration champion, Runa seeks connections for impactful partnerships in sustainable energy and community development.

Joe Manger

Philanthropy Manager

Joe brings extensive experience in strategic relationship building and project management across Private and For Purpose sectors. With a background in
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partnerships and philanthropy focused on international development and health, Joe brings strong business skills to the team. Joe excels in partnership development, developing strong funding pipelines, and being part of teams that create positive social impact. He is skilled in developing and executing events and coordinating strategic communications to support partnerships. His results-driven and entrepreneurial spirit aligns perfectly with Pollinate Group's mission, ensuring impactful change within the communities they serve.

Sayani Bhattacharya

Community Development Manager

Sayani is a dedicated Community Development Manager With 16 years of experience in the social development sector and a seasoned socio-development
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professional. Her expertise spans over sixteen years of excellence in training, coaching, mentoring, project planning and execution, stakeholder and volunteer management, and community engagement initiatives. Sayani is adept at implementing rural and urban community development projects and is dedicated to community upliftment and sustainable development. Sayani holds an MA degree in International Relations, a Master of Social Work, and a Diploma in Counselling Services. She possesses an in-depth knowledge and understanding of managing and executing day-to-day operations, managing stakeholders, building networks, and liaising with government departments, partner NGOs, and international and national funding agencies for joint project implementations.

Global Board of Directors

Scott Watkins

Chair

Scott is the Chief Marketing Officer for KISCO, a Korean chemical company, where he is responsible for new business development and sustainability initiatives.
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Scott is also a non-executive director and chair of parkrun Australia. Scott has a PhD in Chemistry from UNSW Sydney and spent four years in the UK working for two start-up companies in the area of Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs). Scott then spent ten years working at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, where he was a Research Program Leader in Flexible Electronics. Scott managed both the science and commercialisation of technologies such as flexible solar cells.

Adrian Scott

Treasurer

Adrian is a retired Senior Executive, having spent almost 30 years at Accenture helping public and private organisations apply technology to improve their performance.
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Adrian led large scale project teams implementing solutions for major clients across a wide range of industries and has worked extensively in Asia, Europe and North America. He established and operates his family philanthropic foundation in honor of his father where he is focused on social impact investing, aligned with his deep and abiding interest in making a positive impact both locally and across the developing world in access to energy and finance, education and health.

Anya Cherneff

Director and Co-Founder

Anya is the founder of Empower Generation, which merged to form Pollinate Group in 2018. In addition to working with Nepal for a decade, Anya has
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led programmatic areas including women’s economic and political leadership, energy access, addressing human trafficking and forced labour, as well as rural and youth development. Anya’s experience includes building diversity and inclusion within organizations. She currently manages corporate social responsibility at the American Auto Association (AAA) and holds a Masters of Human Rights (University of Denver) and BA in Anthropology (Columbia University).

Bill Scull

Director

After a 25-year Silicon Valley career as a marketing and strategy executive, Bill pivoted to focus upon mentoring and coaching entrepreneurs. He has mentored
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executive teams at over 20 African and Asian enterprises. Bill lived in West Africa for eight months mentoring companies at Stanford University’s Innovation Center and mentors Social Enterprises for Santa Clara University’s Miller Center. Bill also coaches teams at Stanford for two Design Thinking courses and mentors companies at Singularity University’s accelerator. Bill has an MBA from Stanford and a Masters in Engineering from MIT.

Elena Bondareva

Director

Elena Bondareva (MA, BS) is an ardent advocate for eradicating persistent global problems through fusing systems thinking with social innovation and entrepreneurship.
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Through research, advocacy and consulting globally, Elena brings tested expertise in catalysing and sustaining step change across organisations and whole industries. Elena uses her extensive experience, working with Boards and Executive teams of prominent Australian and international organisations, to redefine what is possible.

Kamala Srinivasan

Director

Kamala is a senior executive and coach with more than 20 years of experience in both nonprofit organizations and technology industries. She has been actively
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involved in community advocacy, civic leadership and championing issues impacting women in technology. Kamala’s broad areas of expertise include global technology product delivery and operations, go-to-market strategy, digital transformation, and SAAS in Fintech, retail, legal, and media. She is a proud recipient of the prestigious “Digital Women Leadership Award” in 2018 for her contribution to women in STEM in India. She has experience working at organizations such as EMC, LBrands, and AnitaB.Org in both USA and India.

Marni Oaten

Director

Marni is an experienced energy industry executive with a demonstrated history of working delivering socially sustainable commercial and technical solutions.
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Over the past 10 years Marni has led global corporate sustainability and media relations functions at the global project services company, Worley. She also founded the Worley Foundation and led Worley’s energy and chemicals business across Australia and Papua New Guinea. Marni is also on the Board of the Global Institute of Intrapreneurs. Marni has an honours degree in Electrical (Power) Engineering from Monash University and a Master of Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management. She is also an Eisenhower Fellow, a Vincent Fairfax Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Alumni and Centre for Ethical Leadership Alumni.

Subir Basak

Director

Subir is a 25 year veteran in the biotech and pharma industry and has operating experience in Fortune 500 companies in the US as well as mid-sized companies based in Asia.
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He grew up in India and has worked with nonprofits and foundations to help needy patients access life-saving medicines. He is currently working with the World Bank Group in their Health & Education Investment and Advisory group. He is a Charter Member of TIE and mentors young entrepreneurs. Subir has a Bachelors from IIT Roorkee (India), MBA from Kellogg at Northwestern University and a Masters and PhD in Engineering from Purdue University. Marni has an honours degree in Electrical (Power) Engineering from Monash University and a Master of Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management. She is also an Eisenhower Fellow, a Vincent Fairfax Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Alumni and Centre for Ethical Leadership Alumni.

Board of Directors in India and Nepal

Our implementing partner in Nepal, Kalpavriksha, operates as a private business owned by one of our Co-Founders, Sita Adhikari, and does not necessitate a Board of Directors. In contrast, our entity in India is structured as a Pvt Ltd Company, which mandates a Board of Directors. You can find their profiles below

Padmaja Alaganandan

Director

Padmaja is the Chief People Officer of PwC India. She has more than 25 years of consulting experience in business and human capital advisory across diverse industries.
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Before joining PwC in 2011, Padmaja worked in leadership roles in organisations including Mercer Consulting and A.F. Ferguson. She has been a member of CII’s National HR Committee, as well as on the Committee on Skill Development. Padmaja is a founding partner of Social Venture Partners Bangalore. She graduated from the University of Madras, and completed post-graduate studies at the Indian Institute of Management Kolkata.

Sashi Gumma

Director

Sashi is CBO at Elasticrun prior to this he was CEO of More Supermarkets, which operates in 12 states and more than 140 cities and towns.
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He specializes in food and grocery retail, leading large teams and people and business development. Starting as a Marketing Manager, Sashi has held roles including Regional Head and Operations Head at More Supermarkets, and COO at More Retail Limited. Sashi recently started a focused program for capability building in women associates in the stores to become store leaders. He holds a PGDM with a Specialization in Agriculture from the Indian Institute of Management and a B.Tech in Agricultural and Food Eng from the Indian Institute of Technology.

Pollinate Group Co-Founders

In 2018 Pollinate Group was co-founded through a merger of Pollinate Energy from India and Empower Generation from Nepal.

Anya Cherneff

Alexie Seller

Sita Adhikari

Empower Generation Co-Founders

Empower Generation was founded in 2011 in Nepal and merged with Pollinate Energy to form Pollinate Group in 2018.

Anya Cherneff

Bennett Cohen

Pollinate Energy Co-Founders

Pollinate Energy was founded in 2012 in India and merged with Empower Generation to form Pollinate Group in 2018.

Alexie Seller

Ben Merven

Emma Colenbrander

Jamie Chivers

Katerina Kimmorley

Monique Alfris