The Bridge

Speakers for the Bridge's second edition in 2018 will be announced shortly.

Speakers - 2016

Aditi Mittal

is a stand-up comedian who is also a member of India's first comedy troupe, The Cardinal Bengans. Her comedy grapples with issues considered taboo, as well as misconceptions surrounding comedy and her role as a woman in the standup arena.

Anant Goenka

is the Wholetime Director and Head of New Media at The Indian Express. Under his leadership, indianexpress.com has emerged as India’s 2nd largest newspaper website, and the Group one of the 4 largest digital news players. He previously worked as a media manager at Spenta Multimedia in Mumbai and graduated a Dean's Scholar at the Annenberg School for Communications, University of Southern California with a Master's degree in Print Journalism.

Ankhi Das

is the Director of Public Policy for Facebook in India and South & Central Asia. With over 17 years of public policy and regulatory affairs experience in the technology sector, her primary responsibilities are to lead Facebook’s efforts on connectivity, Internet governance, promoting access and Open Internet, privacy, data security, safety issues and political risk management. In this role, Ankhi oversees the company’s relationships with policymakers, elected officials, government agencies and NGOs.

Dibakar Banerjee

is a director, screenwriter, producer and ad filmmaker. Under the banner of his company, Dibakar Banerjee Productions, he has directed movies like Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Khosla ka Ghosla, both of which have won National Awards.

Farah Khan

is a choreographer, director, producer and actor. She has directed several films, choreographed songs in over 80 Bollywood movies, and was the second female director to be nominated for a Filmfare award for her debut film, Main Hoon Na.

Ginni Mahi

is a young pop singer from Punjab known for her songs on caste discrimination, Dalit identity, women’s rights, and social equality. She is a student of music at HMV College, Jalandhar.

Ishita Chaudhry

is an Ashoka Fellow and the founder and managing trustee of The YP Foundation (TYPF) in New Delhi. TYPF is a youth-led and -run nonprofit founded in 2002 that enables young people to create programs and influence policies in the areas of gender, sexuality, health, education, the arts and governance. Chaudhry is also a founding member of RESURJ (Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice), an international alliance of feminist activists seeking full implementation of international commitments to secure the sexual/ reproductive health and rights of all women and young people by 2015.

Jai Arjun Singh

is a Delhi-based freelance writer and journalist. He has written for Business Standard, The Hindu, Yahoo India, Tehelka, The Sunday Guardian, The Caravan, Forbes Life, Vogue, Elle and Hindustan Times, among other publications. His book about the film Jaane bhi do Yaaro was published in 2010.

Mallika Dua

is copywriter from Delhi, who shot to fame on social media when her video, Shit People Say: Sarojini Nagar Edition, went viral.

Maneka Gandhi

is the Indian Union Cabinet Minister for Women & Child Development. She is also an environmentalist and animal rights activist, and has authored a number of books on etymology, law and animal welfare.

Mani Shankar Aiyar

is a diplomat-turned-politician. He is a member of the India National Congress, and was in Dr. Manmohan Singh’s Cabinet of Ministers.

Manish Sisodia

is the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi. Before going into politics, he worked as a writer, radio anchor and news producer. Sisodia currently holds the portfolios for urban development, education, finance and planning and revenue, among others.

Mayank Shekhar

is a film critic, journalist, and author. He is the Entertainment Head of Mid-Day and has earlier worked with Hindustan Times and Mumbai Mirror. He is the author of the book Name Place Animal Thing.

Meenakshi Lekhi

is a Supreme Court lawyer and the National Spokesperson for the Bhartiya Janata Party.

Mona Eltahawy

is a freelance Egyptian American journalist who has written extensively on gender and sexuality issues in Egypt, and the Middle East at large. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, and her first book, Headscarves and Hymens, was published in 2015.

Nandita Das

has acted in more than 40 feature films in 10 different languages. She made her directorial debut with Firaaq in 2008 and Between the Lines marks her debut as a playwright and theater director. Das was the first Indian to be inducted into the Hall of Fame of the International Women’s Forum, and has also been conferred the ‘Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters’ by the French Government.

Neha Barjatya

is head of business marketing for Google as well as several brand initiatives in India. She joined Google in 2011 and has spearheaded Great Online Shopping Festival, Helping Women Get Online and more recently Internet Saathi which is aimed at empowering women through the Internet across rural India.

Nivedita Menon

is a professor of political thought at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and the author of Seeing Like a Feminist and Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law among other books. She has been involved in a number of social and political movements, and is one of the leading voices in Indian feminist discourse.

Paresh Nath

is Editor-in-chief of Delhi Press magazines.

Parmesh Shahani

is the head of Godrej India Culture Lab - an experimental ideas space. He also serves as the Editor-at-large for Verve magazine, and is the author of Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be) Longing in Contemporary India.

Paromita Vohra

is an award-winning filmmaker and writer from Mumbai whose work mixes fiction and non-fiction to explore themes of urban life, popular culture, love, desire and gender. Her work has been broadcast internationally as well as shown in museums such as the Tate Modern, Wellcome Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Art.

Piyush Mishra

is a film and theatre actor, music director, lyricist, singer, scriptwriter and playwright. After graduating from the National School of Drama, he started his career in theater in Delhi where he wrote and directed several plays as a part of Act One Theatre Group, including the acclaimed play, Gagan Damama Bajiyo (The Sky Resounds with the Call to Arms), based on freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. He has won accolades for his roles in Maqbool and Gangs of Wasseypur.

Poonam Saxena

is a writer and journalist. She has served as the features editor with The Asian Age and the columnist of the popular Small Screen TV review for Hindustan Times. Currently, she is the editor of the Hindustan Times’ Sunday magazine, Brunch.

Radhika Piramal

is the Managing Director of VIP Industries. In 2015, Forbes named her among its 12 'power businesswomen' from Asia. This year, Business Today also counted her as one of India's most powerful women entrepreneurs.

Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana

is the flagship poverty reduction program of the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust (RGCT) and is committed to disrupting deep hierarchies which inhibit efforts towards poverty reduction and women's empowerment. Women from the group talk about their journey of empowerment and the long road to emancipation.

Rishi Majumder

is a journalist with over 12 years of experience. He has worked with the Times of India group and Tehelka magazine and is now an Associate Partner at the new media company Oijo.

Rohini Nilekani

is an advocate for Indian philanthropy who actively funds work in areas such as governance and accountability, independent media, education and research and environmental sustainability. She is the Founder-Chairperson of Arghyam, a foundation she has personally endowed to fund initiatives for safe and sustainable water, as well as Pratham a non-profit children’s publisher, which aims to democratize the joy of reading. For 12 years, Arghyam has supported work in up to 23 states, especially for the better management of ground water, on which millions depend for basic needs.

Sapna Chadha

is the head of marketing at Google India. With over 15 years of experience under her belt, her team at Google is focused on digitising India and developing the Google brand, along with brand & strategy, consumer marketing, B2B marketing and acquisition growth, among others.

Sara Pilot

is the director of the Center for Equity and Inclusion (CEQUIN), an NGO that works with marginalized communities, especially women and girls, around a wide spectrum of issues, including economic empowerment, violence, health and wellbeing.

Sharmila Tagore

is an actor who has worked in both Bengali and Hindi cinema, and has been awarded two National Awards for her roles. She is also a recipient of the distinguished Padma Bhushan, the second highest civilian award in India.

Shikha Makan

is a filmmaker and writer, and one of the few women ad-film directors in India to have lent her craft to TVS, Hero Motor Corp and Firefox. She has directed films such as Linger and Bachelor Girls, the latter of which grapples with the questions of women's freedom in the urban world.

Shohini Ghosh

is the Sajjad Zaheer Professor of media at the AJK Mass Communication Research Center, at Jamial Milia Islamia in New Delhi. Prior to starting her career as an academic, she worked as a producer of UGC educational films at the MCRC where she produced, directed and edited educational films and documentaries for the Country-wide classroom project. She is the co-founder of Mediastorm Collective, India’s first all women documentary production collective which received the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Work among Women Media Professionals in 1992. Ghosh also writes extensively on cinema, contemporary media, speech and censorship, documentary and issues of gender and sexuality.

Subhashini Ali

is a politburo member of the Communist party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) and former Member of Parliament from Kanpur. She is the president of All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA). A former member of the National Commission for Women, Subhashini is well-known for her work as a women’s rights activist.

Taru Kapoor

is the head of India Operations for the US-based mobile dating application Tinder. She graduated from IIT Delhi and did her from MBA at Harvard Business School. She has previously worked with the Boston Consulting Group and Sequoia Capital India.

Urvashi Butalia

is the co-founder of India’s first feminist publisher, Kali for Women, and later Zubaan Books. She has also edited and co-authored several books, including The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.