Speakers

• Aishwarya Agarwal
  

  Aishwarya Agarwal

  Aishwarya Agarwal is an urban designer and architect with seven years of practical experience in
  planning, designing, and executing urban development projects. She is a passionate
  advocate for the Global Goals and currently serves as a lead at the Centre for Inclusive Mobility at
  OMI Foundation. Her primary focus in her role is to ensure that both existing and emerging
  mobility paradigms are inclusive and accessible to all, particularly women, children, persons with
  disabilities, and the elderly.

  A proud alumna of the Indian Institute of Technology, Aishwarya’s background includes experience in both the private and non-profit sectors. As a Salzburg Global Fellow, she places great emphasis on the power of collaboration and empathy to drive sustainable and equitable change. Aishwarya’s contributions have played a significant role in promoting positive urban development in critical areas such as urban mobility, universal accessibility, gender equity, and sustainable cities.

• Kalpana Viswanath
  

  Kalpana Viswanath

  Kalpana Viswanath is the co-founder of Safetipin, a mobile app developed to help collect useful data for community and women’s safety. She is also the Chair of Jagori, a well-known women’s organization in India. She has worked on developing and safe city programs for Delhi and other cities in India and globally. She is a member of the Advisory group on Gender issues for UN Habitat and a board member of ICPC and SLOCAT. She has published widely in magazines and journals and has co edited a book on Building Gender Inclusive Cities. She writes a weekly column in Hindustan times.

• Mitali Nikore
  

  Mitali Nikore

  Mitali Nikore is a consultant with the Transport Global Practice at the World Bank. She is an economist and focuses on devising solutions on inclusive, sustainable urban mobility, regional connectivity, and multimodal transport in South Asia. Mitali is the lead writer of the World Bank’s toolkit on Enabling Gender Responsive Urban Mobility and Public Spaces. Mitali is also contributing to several analytical studies on railways, inland waterways and trade facilitation in eastern South Asia.

• Nausheen H. Anwar
  

  Nausheen H. Anwar

  Nausheen H. Anwar is a Professor of City & Regional Planning, and Director Karachi Urban Lab (KUL), in the School of Economics & Social Sciences (SESS), Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi. She received her PhD in City & Regional Planning from Columbia University, USA. Nausheen’s work focuses on the politics of urban planning and infrastructural development. She has authored a book: Infrastructure Redux: Crisis, Progress in Industrial Pakistan & Beyond (2015, Palgrave Macmillan), which explores, through detailed cases of Sialkot and Faisalabad in industrializing Punjab, the double-edged narratives of development that frame infrastructure in post-independence Pakistan. Fresh lines of enquiry concern new-fangled regimes of infrastructure planning and land acquisition/development and attended regional-urban transformations involving forms of enclosure, protests, and formal/non-formal pathways of redress in Pakistan. Nausheen is the recipient of several grants from DFID, IDRC, AHRC-ESRC, UKRI/GCRF, National University Singapore and Harvard University. Aspects of Nausheen’s work also appear in the journals Antipode, Urban Studies, EPW, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, South Asian History and Culture, and Environment & Planning A.

• Rutul Joshi Architect & Urban Planner
  

  Rutul Joshi

  Architect & Urban Planner

  Rutul Joshi is an architect-urban planner with a PhD in transportation studies from the University of the West of England, Bristol (UK). Rutul teaches urban planning at CEPT University, Ahmedabad with 19 years of experience in the field of urban spatial and transport planning. Recently, Rutul lead a multi-year research project on contextualizing transit-oriented development for Indian cities and the key project outcome was the TOD planning handbook which was used to trained a number of government planners and officials. Rutul is also a ‘sustainable mobility’ enthusiast and aspires to build advocacy campaigns around safer streets design and effective parking policies for Indian cities. He writes occasionally in the newspapers and media on civic issues.

• Sarika Panda
  

  Sarika Panda

  Sarika is Director at Nagarro and founder Trustee of Raahgiri Foundation. Sarika is leading the Raahgiri Day movement in Haryana and Delhi. She is also helping other cities to replicate this hugely successful concept. Sarika is also leading the non-motorised transport work and India Vision Zero work in Haryana. She has about 15 years of experience in the field of urban developments, transport, environment and architecture. Sarika was selected as one of the 60 global women leaders in the world for making a change in how we move in our cites. The recognition came from TUMI, Germany. In 2019 Sarika was selected as the bicycle mayor of Gurugram by BYCS, Netherlands.

• Shreya Gadepalli
  

  Shreya Gadepalli

  Shreya Gadepalli is the South Asia Director at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). She currently leads ITDP’s South Asia team in guiding public agencies on the implementation of sustainable transport and urban planning best practices, reform of urban transport policy and capacity building of public officials and practitioners. Shreya is regarded as one of the foremost experts on sustainable urban mobility in India. She has guided the planning of bus rapid transit (BRT) in many cities across India including Ahmedabad’s Janmarg—India’s first high-quality BRT system. Her other areas of expertise include planning and design of non-motorised transport facilities, parking management, and transit-oriented development. She has contributed to national and state policies, guidelines, and standards, and is sought after as a speaker on issues urban mobility. Shreya received a Master’s in Industrial Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering.