We are so proud to announce The Woman Inc. Advisory Board and so grateful to our board members for sharing their valuable insights and advice with us. With their support, we will continue to better ourselves with every issue.

Introducing our board members below in alphabetical order:

Aparna Bhattacharya has served as Executive Director of Raksha since 1998. Aparna graduated from Georgia State University with a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice. She has volunteered and worked as a Victim Advocate for 5 years for the city of Atlanta’s Victim Witness Assistance Program (VWAP). She also worked as a Project coordinator/Employment Specialist for the Newcomers’ Network’s Refugee Family Violence Prevention Project (where she developed and implemented the License to Freedom Project). As a representative of Raksha, Ms. Bhattacharyya has served as founding Task Force member and Board Secretary for the International Women’s House and a founding member of Tapestri, the Immigrant and Refugee organization that addresses domestic violence and human trafficking. She has served as a member of the Georgia Advisory Committee for the U.S Commission on Civil Rights, Board Vice President for Tapestri, Inc, an Advisory Board member for the National Network to End Violence against Immigrant Women and Advisory Board member for Georgia State’s School of Social Work. Aparna served as a Board member for the Dekalb County Domestic Violence Task Force (2006-2012, Chair in 2012) and Vice President for the Cross Keys Foundation in 2011-2012. She was awarded the Indian Professionals Network (IPN) award in 1997 and 1998 for her service to the community. Ms. Bhattacharyya was awarded the Director’s Eagle Award from the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council in 2006, the Georgia Commission on Family Violence Gender Justice Award, and the Dekalb County Domestic Violence Task Force’s Deborah C. McDorman Award in 2008. She was recognized by the Indian American Cultural Association for Excellent and Continued Contribution to the Community in 2010. She was the Chair of VIDA legal Assistance until June 2013 and is on the Board of National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project and the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She was a White House Champion of Change in May 2013 with a number of other Asian American Women leaders and named by Georgia Asian Times as one of the 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia in July 2013. In April 2014, Aparna was recognized by the Georgia State University with The Distinguished Alumni Service Award by the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies and by Desi Express Magazine for her Community Services. In 2016, Aparna was recognized by the Jeanette Rankin Foundation as “Smart Woman” honoree. In 2017, Ms. Bhattacharyya was named as Glorious Indian during the Glorious Indian Expo for exemplary work in the community and in 2018 she received the Hope for Tomorrow Award from International Women’s House for her advocacy work.

ElsaMarie D’Silva is the Founder & CEO of Red Dot Foundation (India) and President of
Red Dot Foundation Global (USA). Its platform Safecity, crowdsources personal experiences of sexual violence and abuse in public spaces. Since Safecity started in Dec 2012, it has become the largest crowd map on the issue in India and abroad. ElsaMarie is a 2020 IWF Fellow and a Gratitude Network Fellow, 2019 Reagan Fascell Fellow, a 2018 Yale World Fellow and an alumni of the Stanford Draper Hills Summer School, the US State Department’s Fortune Mentoring Program, Oxford Chevening Gurukul and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Leadership Program. She is also a fellow with Rotary Peace, Aspen New Voices, Vital Voices and a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader. She is listed as one of BBC Hindi’s 100 Women and has won several awards including Government of India Niti Aayog’s #WomenTransformingIndia award and The Digital Woman Award in Social Impact by SheThePeople. In 2017, she was awarded the Global Leadership Award by Vital Voices in the presence of Secretary Hillary Clinton. She is also the recipient of Gold Stevie Award for Female Executive of the Year – Government or Non- Profit -10 or Less Employees in 2016. Her work has been recognised by the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations through the Intercultural Innovation Award, SDG Action Festival and the UN Foundation at the Solutions Summit 2016. She has penned articles that have appeared in CNN, Huffington Post, WIP amongst others. She has spoken about her work at the Rotary International Assembly 2019, Aspen Ideas Festival , at TEDx MidAtlantic, UN Women, State Department, Vital Voices South to South Leadership Summit. She has been a panelist for World Bank, NDI, USIP, SheThePeople and hosted a roundtable at the Bloomberg CityLab London 2015.
Prior to Safecity, she was in the aviation industry for 20 years where she worked with Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines. Her last portfolio was Vice President Network Planning & Charters where she oversaw the planning and implementation of 500 daily flights.

Soniah Kamal is an award winning novelist, essayist and public speaker. Her most recent novel, Unmarriageable: Pride & Prejudice in Pakistan, is a a Financial Times Readers’ Best Book of 2019, a New York Public Library, a NPR Code Switch 2019 Summer Read Pick, a Georgia Center for the Book’s 2019 pick for ‘Books All Georgians Should Read,’ shortlisted for the 2020 Townsend Award for Fiction, an Amazon Best Books Pick, a Library Reads Pick, a People Magazine Pick and more. Her debut novel, An Isolated Incident, was a finalist for the Townsend Award for Fiction and the KLF French Fiction Prize. Soniah’s TEDx talk is about second chances and ‘We are the Ink’, her U.S. Citizenship Oath Ceremony address, is about immigrants and the American Dream. Soniah’s Pushcart nominated work has appeared in critically acclaimed anthologies and publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Buzzfeed and more.

Supreet K Singh is a writer, film director, a gender activist and a yoga acharya, who has transitioned from the corporate world to an award-winning filmmaker & champion of an NGO, Safecity that works at the intersection of gender, technology, communications, data and urban planning. She is a certified personal counsellor and conducts workshops creating awareness about sexual violence with children, communities and corporates. A Vital Voices VV Lead fellow, she was recently awarded the Web Wonder Woman by the Ministry of Women (GOI), Woman of substance award by FICCI Flo and the Social Innovator Leadership award by Biz Divas. An artist, she dabbles in charcoal & poetry and believes that wine, love and tango are a reflection of the soul. She has recently published her collection of poetry and is currently working on her first feature film.