I speak on technology, democracy, AI governance and participation — drawing on 15 years across grassroots movements, government and international organisations. My speaking past includes village-level public hearings in rural areas, civil society and government-commissioned speaking, and facilitation of digital rights workshops in the field. I carry that same energy into global spaces.
In English · keynote, panel, workshop or moderation
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Who benefits from technology decisions, who is excluded, and how organisations can navigate change responsibly. Draws on examples from Asia, Africa, Europe and multilateral AI governance spaces.
Practical approaches to AI adoption in nonprofits and public-interest organisations — what's real, what's risk, and what it looks like to design for people who are absent from the rooms where AI decisions get made.
Why successful technology projects begin with people rather than platforms. Case studies from village communities in Tamil Nadu, grassroots digital literacy work, and stories of activism where technology served movement rather than replaced it.
Lessons from India's right to information movement, social audit practice, and public hearings on wage entitlements — and what these models offer for digital accountability and civic participation today.
What barriers to digital access actually look like at community level: device-sharing, surveillance, gatekeeping, invisible labour. Based on fieldwork across rural India and urban slums.
Building spaces where people can learn together across disciplines, power imbalances and difference — and hold solidarity together through real tension. From music as a facilitation tool to coalitions that outlast their funding. What makes solidarity last.
Co-facilitated a session on technology sovereignty in low-resource settings, designed and planned with Tobias Seigen.
Civil society and Global South perspectives in international AI policy. Self-funded participation.
Monthly space for honest, grounded conversation about AI and society — practitioners, researchers, civil society.
Measures on how to tackle fraud in low-literacy settings, drawing from work in Vidarbha training communities on fighting payment scams and misinformation campaigns.
Key address to a civil society group on working with women's voices in technology — participation, access and power.
Community tools to tackle technology-facilitated misinformation campaigns and attacks on human rights defenders. Delivered in Hindi and Marathi.
Community talk ending in a participatory singing session — building shared identity through song across a diverse London audience.
Special lecture on social audit and public accountability, for a class of political science students.
Ongoing training programme across 12 states of India, facilitated through TISS Mumbai in partnership with the Government of India.
Spoke alongside Aruna Roy on grassroots accountability and social audit, before an audience from 192 countries. My first international stage.
Before I spoke at conferences, I spoke in village circles, school grounds and community spaces — un-learning and re-learning lots of things myself.
I love pilots. They're my preferred way of testing anything on the ground. Training-of-trainers I've spoken at:
Some of the spaces I have spoken at that left me deeply inspired.
The perspective I built over a decade of grassroots work now travels to international policy spaces — because those rooms need it most.
20 to 45 minutes, in English. Adaptable to specialist or mixed audiences.
With subject-matter framing and context — I don't just respond, I anchor the conversation.
Facilitated and participatory. Standalone or embedded within a conference.
Panels and fireside chats — I facilitate across power differences and keep the thread visible.
Academic and training contexts. I've spoken at LSE, ISFiT and civil society training programmes.
Participatory, informal, honest — AI Circle Basel format. Small group, real conversation.
"In one day with you, we learned more than in the previous 27 days."
MGNREGA Audit Cohort, Uttar Pradesh
"Seeing a woman like you — fearless, knowledgeable, and committed to the poor — raises our confidence as women."
Women Trainees, Social Audit Batch
"The diversity of ideas, challenges, and real projects shared today made the session genuinely inspiring."
AI Circle Basel Participant
Send a short note with the event, the date, the audience and the format. I respond within two working days.
Most people advising civil society organisations have sat on one side of the table — the grassroots side or the institutional side, rarely both, and almost never the side that had to build something from zero with no money and no name. I have done all three.
In 2021, with lockdowns still easing, I relocated to Vidarbha — a region in central India — to build a digital-safety initiative from scratch. I knew no one there. No office, no funding, no existing network. Only a curriculum I believed the region needed and the will to build partnerships from zero.
I designed a 90-minute course in local languages, delivered it myself across colleges, schools, slums and rural communities, and trained over 1,000 people face to face. Then I stepped back from delivery and built the thing that would outlast me: a pool of 40 Master Trainers who still carry the work forward today, through a partnership with a local NGO whose founders understood the ground I was learning.
I know what the earliest and hardest stretch of building a civil society organisation looks like: no budget, no title, no one to brainstorm with, and a slow, patient process of finding partners who make the work possible at all. That is not theory. It is two years of my life.
I have also registered and administered a civil society body, navigated the compliance and governance requirements of local organisations, and built governance frameworks that had to work under real resource pressure — not just on paper.
If your organisation is early-stage, mission-driven, and needs someone who has actually built a civil society initiative from nothing — not just advised one from the outside — I'd like to hear from you.
