Name	Title	Extension
Ahmed, Sara	Senior Program Specialist	7403
Bogra, Lalit	Regional IT Manager	7402
Couture, Roger	Regional Controller	7504
Gill, Kaveri	Senior Program Officer (TTI)	7601
Hay, Katherine	Senior Regional Program Evaluation Specialist	7501
John, Rakesh	Office Assistant & Driver	7506
Kalia, Ritu	Senior Accountant	7507
Madhavan, Rajaram	Accountant/Administrative Officer	7505
McGurk, Stephen J.	Director	7411
Méndez, Ethel	Research Awardee	7503
Mishra, Shiba Prasad	Grant Administrator	7605
Nathan, Nichols	Office Assistant & Driver	7409
Prasad, Reena	Grant Administration Officer	7603
Rawat, Sucheta	Regional Program Assistant	7604
Sayo, Phet	Senior Program Officer	7611
Sethuraman, Prabha	Executive Assistant/Communications Officer	7412
Sharma, Ambika	Partnerships and Program Managment Officer	7608
Singh, Navsharan	Senior Program Specialist	7404
Singh, Reema	Grant Administrator	7606
Singh, Sheo	Administrative Coordinator/Receptionist	7400
Valthsala	Regional Program Assistant	7405
Varghese, Sheeba	Regional Program Assistant	7407
Verma, Samar	Senior Program Officer (TTI)	7401

 

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Sara Ahmed
Senior Program Specialist
Sara Ahmed is a Senior Program Specialist based at IDRC's Regional Office for South Asia and China. She has worked on the political economy of water in India for 20 years. Before joining IDRC, she worked with non-governmental organizations in parts of India vulnerable to drought, flood, and coastal storms. She tackled issues ranging from the impacts of climate change to the role of gender in water governance and conflicts over water. She was chair of the international Gender and Water Alliance and sat on the steering committee of the Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India. She has also worked with the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, taught for a decade at India's Institute of Rural Management, and published on many facets of water policy and gender issues. She holds a PhD in environmental sociology and an MPhil in international relations from the University of Cambridge (UK).
Email: sahmed@idrc.org.in   
   

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Lalit Bogra
Regional IT Manager
Lalit Bogra is Regional IT Manager at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. He has more than 10 years of experience in information technology. Before joining IDRC, he worked with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (South Asia Regional Delegation). His areas of responsibility included IT services, disaster response activities, and global information and communication technology development projects.  He has a post-graduate diploma in computer maintenance and networks, as well as a Microsoft Certification.
Email: lbogra@idrc.org.in  
 

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Kaveri Gill
Senior Program Officer
Kaveri Gill is a Senior Program Officer for the Think Tank Initiative based at IDRC's Regional Office for South Asia and China. She is a development economist and social scientist with expertise in poverty and deprivation, the informal sector, the political economy of development, and urbanization in emerging economies. She has worked on flagship government welfare schemes in India, especially in public health. Before joining IDRC, Gill spent a decade at the University of Cambridge in the UK. During a teaching fellowship there, she wrote a book, Of Poverty and Plastic: Scavenging and Scrap Trading Entrepreneurs in India's Urban Informal Economy. She then worked for two years at the Planning Commission of India, where she designed and led an evaluation of the National Rural Health Mission. She has also developed a framework for UNICEF India for the assessment of social exclusion in public service delivery schemes in the sectors of sanitation, integrated child development, and reproductive health. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
Email: kgill@idrc.org.in
 

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Katherine Hay
Senior Program Specialist
Katherine Hay is a Senior Program Specialist with IDRC's Evaluation Unit, based at the Regional Office for South Asia and China. An expert on the role of evaluation in development in South Asia, she promotes approaches and methods that assess and inform how women and other marginalized groups benefit from development in the region. She joined IDRC's New Delhi office in 2000 but has done research in South Asia for more than 15 years. Her work with IDRC includes building evaluation curriculum in universities in the region, and supporting evaluation communities of practice spanning South Asia and Afghanistan. Katherine's work has been published in the American Journal of Evaluation, Economics and Political Weekly, and the Indian Journal of Gender Studies. She holds an MA in international affairs from Carleton University in Ottawa.
Email: khay@idrc.org.in   
 

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Rakesh John
Office Assistant
Rakesh John works as an Office Assistant and Driver at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. He joined IDRC in 2004, and is responsible for general administration and filing. He has a bachelor's degree from Delhi University and has completed a computer course at NIIT in Delhi.
Email: rjohn@idrc.org.in   
 

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Ritu Kalia
Senior Accountant
Ritu Kalia is a Senior Accountant at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. She joined IDRC in 2001 and is responsible for all office and project administration accounting matters. She has more than 14 years of experience in the financial sector. Before joining IDRC, she worked at Thomson Financial BankWatch, where she was primarily responsible for ratings and research on Indian banks and banking systems. She is an associate member of the Institute of Chartered Management Accountants (London) and holds a master's degree in business management.
Email: rkalia@idrc.org.in  
 

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Rajaram Madhavan
Accountant/Administrative Officer
Rajaram Madhavan is an Accountant and Administrative Officer in IDRC's Regional Office for South Asia and China, where he has worked since 1983. He is responsible for all general accounting matters. Before joining IDRC, he worked as an assistant accountant at the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development in New Delhi. He holds a bachelor of commerce degree.
Email: rmadhavan@idrc.org.in
 

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Stephen J. McGurk
Director, Regional Office for South Asia and China
As Regional Director for South Asia and China, Stephen McGurk leads an active program of research in a diverse region - from helping Afghanistan rebuild its research and policy and planning capabilities to supporting innovative applied research on productivity in India's dry heartlands. He is a Sinologist and economist who has spent more than two decades studying Asia's rural development. Over the past dozen years he has served as Regional Director in both of IDRC's offices in Asia, focusing in turn on Southeast and East Asia and South Asia and China. Before joining IDRC, he was responsible for the Ford Foundation's economic security program in China based in Beijing. He has also taught at the University of California and worked as an economist for the World Bank focused on investments in China's rural development. He has a PhD from Stanford University's Food Research Institute.
Email: smcgurk@idrc.org.in 
 

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Ethel Méndez
Research Awardee
Ethel Méndez has worked as a Research Awardee in IDRC's Evaluation Unit since February 2011. Before joining IDRC, she was involved in various evaluation projects with the TCC Group, New York University's Research Center for Leadership in Action, and the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Program in Bangladesh. She also worked for three years with the Americas program of Heifer International, an NGO focused on hunger and poverty reduction. She holds a bachelor's degree in international studies from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a master's in public and non-profit management and policy from New York University.
Email: emendez@idrc.org.in

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Shiba Prasad Mishra
Grant Administrator
Shiba Mishra works as a Grant Administrator at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. He has more than 10 years of experience in the development sector. Before joining IDRC, he worked at CARE India in program monitoring, logistics management, and finance and procurement. He has a bachelor of science degree as well as a master diploma in computer application and design and an honours diploma in computer science.
Email: smishra@idrc.org.in 
 

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Nichols Nathan
Office Assistant
Nichols Nathan is an Office Assistant and Driver at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. After joining IDRC in 1994, he worked as an office assistant for the Nagaland environment protection and economic development project. He is working toward his bachelor's degree at Delhi University.
Email: nnathan@idrc.org.in 
  

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Reena Prasad
Grant Administration Officer
Reena Prasad is a Grant Administration Officer at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. She joined IDRC in 2001 as a program assistant, moving to her current position in 2009. She previously worked as a marketing supervisor with Alliance Air and before that as a computer and mathematics teacher at Delhi's Manav Sthali School. She holds a BSc in physics from Kolkata University as well as an advanced diploma in computer applications and a diploma in financial management.
Email: rprasad@idrc.org.in
 

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Sucheta Rawat
Regional Program Assistant
Sucheta Rawat works as a Program Assistant at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. Before joining IDRC in 2007, she worked for five years with the Resource Centre for Sexual Health and HIV/AIDS in New Delhi, funded by the UK's Department for International Development. She has also done work for UNICEF and Oxfam GB. Her areas of expertise include project management and organizing workshops, conferences, and training programs. She holds a bachelor's degree in economics and mathematics and a post-graduate diploma in business administration.
Email: srawat@idrc.org.in 
 

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Phet Sayo
Senior Program Officer
Phet Sayo is a Senior Program Officer based at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi, where he moved in 2006. His work centres on issues related to the emergence of the networked information society and its impact on human development in South and Southeast Asia. He has worked on policies governing the Internet; issues related to intellectual property rights, including software piracy and copyright infringement; and alternative delivery models for information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as free open-source software. As a senior member of IDRC's Information and Networks team, he manages research that aims to help communities make the best use of ICTs. Before joining IDRC, Sayo worked with the United Nations Development Programme, based in Malaysia and Thailand. He holds a BA in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (United States).
Email: psayo@idrc.org.in 
 

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Prabha Sethuraman
Executive Assistant/Communications Officer
Prabha Sethuraman is the Executive Assistant/Communications Officer with the IDRC Regional Director's Office in New Delhi. She joined IDRC in 1993 as a program assistant and later worked as executive secretary for the Nagaland environment protection and economic development project. Before joining IDRC, she worked for 12 years as executive assistant to the head of the Development Cooperation Section at the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi. She holds a bachelor of commerce degree from Delhi University, as well as a post-graduate diploma in public relations and communications and a diploma in secretarial practice.
Email: psethuraman@idrc.org.in 
 

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Ambika Sharma
Partnerships and Program Management Officer
Ambika Sharma works as a Partnerships and Program Management Officer with the IDRC Regional Director's office in New Delhi. She focuses on understanding research issues and gaps across active programs in South Asia and China. She is also on the donor partnership team at IDRC, exploring and developing regional partnerships. She joined IDRC in 2006 as a coordinator with the telecentre.org Mission 2007 project.  She has more than 10 years of experience in the development sector and previously worked with Winrock International India and Development Alternatives. She holds an MA in town and country planning, an MA in geography (Delhi School of Economics), and a PhD in ecosystem planning (Open University, Australia). She also has a certificate in establishing Web-based social business ventures from the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 
Email: asharma@idrc.org.in
 

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Navsharan Singh
Senior Program Specialist
Navsharan Singh is a Senior Program Specialist based at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. She is an expert in women's rights and peacebuilding in South Asia. Her extensive experience cuts across areas such as health - including sexual and reproductive health - the informal economy, and human rights. Before joining IDRC in 2003, Singh worked with the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi, leading research on economic liberalization, globalization and health sector reforms, women's reproductive rights, and informal economies. Projects under her direction at IDRC include research on women's political participation and economic rights in South Asia; the impacts of migration on women's economic rights; India and China's "daughter deficit"; and the state of human rights, sexual violence, and impunity in South Asia. She holds a PhD in political science from Carleton University in Ottawa.
Email: nsingh@idrc.org.in
 

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Reema Singh
Grant Administrator
Reema Singh works as Grant Administrator at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. Before joining IDRC as a program assistant in 2003, she worked as an administrator at the South African High Commission. Her areas of expertise include project management, administration, and budgets. She has a master's in business administration, as well as a professional diploma in human resource management and a higher diploma in information and systems management.
Email: rsingh@idrc.org.in
 
 

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Sheo Singh
Administrative Coordinator/Receptionist
Sheo Singh joined IDRC's Regional Office for South Asia and China as Receptionist in 1985. Since 1997, he has also taken on administrative functions. He holds a bachelor's degree from Punjab University.
Email: ssingh@idrc.org.in   
 

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Valthsala
Regional Program Assistant
Valthsala joined IDRC as a Program Assistant in 1999. Before then, she completed a secretarial course at the YWCA and worked for 12 years in secretarial and administrative posts. These included eight years with the German donor organization Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung, where she gained experience in the development sector.
Email: valthsala@idrc.org.in 

 

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Sheeba Varghese
Regional Program Assistant
Sheeba Varghese joined IDRC in 2010 as a Program Assistant. Before then, she worked for four years as an administrative assistant with the international health organization PATH. She also worked for four years as a researcher and technical assistant with the Government of India's National Commission for Scheduled Tribes. She holds an MA in sociology from Kerala University and a post-graduate diploma in computer applications.
Email: svarghese@idrc.org.in
 

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Samar Verma
Senior Program Officer
Samar Verma is a Senior Program Officer for the Think Tank Initiative, based at IDRC's Regional Office in New Delhi. Before then, he worked with Oxfam GB, which he first joined as trade policy advisor in 2003. He progressed to South Asia regional policy advisor in 2005 before becoming team leader of their global economic justice policy group in 2006, based in Oxford, UK. He is also the founding executive director of the Centre for Trade and Development, a Delhi-based regional think tank. Before joining Oxfam GB, he worked as senior fellow with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations in New Delhi, and published widely on international trade and competitiveness, particularly related to textiles. He began his career in the corporate sector in 1996, working as economist and project manager with cotton textile conglomerate Arvind Mills in India. Samar holds a PhD in economics from Magadh University in Bihar, India.
Email: sverma@idrc.org.in