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Kalpana SANKAR
Chief Executive Officer, Hand in Hand Tamil Nadu, Chennai, India
Dr. Kalpana Sankar has been involved in the self-help movement of women in Tamil Nadu for
the last twelve years. She is the Chief Executive Officer for Hand in Hand, which seeks to
eradicate child labor and reduce poverty with a focus on education, employment, income
generation and empowerment. Hand in Hand’s model has been very successful, reaching more
than 350,000 Indian women in 200,000 small enterprises. Hand in Hand has also expanded into
Afghanistan, South Africa and Brazil, and will add four other Latin American countries in the
near future.
Among other things, Kalpana is responsible for the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty
Reduction Project, which has been included in the World Bank lending program, as well as the
chapter on Social Welfare for the tenth five-year plan of the Government of Tamil Nadu. Today,
Kalpana is leading an effort to consolidate Hand in Hand’s microfinance institutions into a
registered company.
Prior to joining Hand in Hand, Kalpana served as Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), assisting the Tamil Nadu Women's
Development Project (Mahalir Thittam). She also worked as Research Associate at the
Manonmaniam Sundaranar University. She has functioned as a consultant on gender and
microfinance issues to such organizations as: UNDP, UNOPS, Christian-Aid, and Wetlands
International. She is currently acting as Adviser to the Government of South Africa’s
microfinance program.
Kalpana is a double doctorate in theoretical nuclear physics and women’s development.