Dr Kiran Modi is the Founder and Managing Trustee of Udayan Care, a nonprofit that works to improve the lives of children and youth in Alternative Care and economically deprived areas across 17 Indian states by raising standards of care, education, and leadership development. She began Udayan Care in 1994 with the vision of “Making Young Lives Shine” and established group homes for orphaned and at-risk children. In addition to her management responsibilities, she serves as a “Mentor Mother” to many children and youth, offering personalised care and attention.

Her passion for evidence-based advocacy led her to create an international bi-annual journal on Alternative Care, ‘Institutionalised Children: Explorations and Beyond’ (ICEB). She holds a doctorate in American Literature from IIT Delhi and has published and presented numerous papers. She is also the recipient of several awards, including the National Award for Child Welfare (2014) on behalf of Udayan Care, India’s highest commendation for a nonprofit child welfare organisation.

Vaidehi Subramani is a child rights activist and POCSO trainer. She has served as Chairperson of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), South-East Delhi, and as a member of the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), South Delhi. With extensive experience in India’s juvenile justice and child protection systems, she brings a nuanced understanding of ground-level realities, the need for improved coordination among stakeholders, and the importance of trauma-informed support. She has also served as the Hon. Executive Director of Akshay Pratishthan for more than a decade and was associated with the Indian Council for Child Welfare, Chennai.

Atiya Bose is the Chief Executive Officer at Aangan Trust, an organisation whose mission is to work in regions with high rates of child marriage, trafficking, exploitation and violence, but are rarely found on policy maps. With over two decades of experience with vulnerable populations in both India and the United States, she leads initiatives to engage state and legal systems to promote child welfare and empower communities to effectively implement prevention models and become decision makers in their own right. She contributed to developing the country’s first Standards of Care tool for children’s shelter homes with UNICEF and has been involved in significant policy and advocacy efforts,  including appointments to key governmental committees such as the Ministry of Women and Child Development’s Working Group for the Twelfth Five Year Plan and the Juvenile Justice Act Review Committee.

Puja Marwaha, Chief Executive of Child Rights and You (CRY), joined the social sector in 1994, guided by the belief that children form the foundation of every nation’s growth and development aspirations. Over the past 30 years, she has built an organisational framework that fosters a passion for children, a strong sense of individual accountability towards them, and a belief in every person’s capacity to drive change for children. She is a TEDx speaker and the author of several published articles and opinion pieces. She also serves on the board of VANI (Voluntary Action Network India) and on the academic advisory board of the XIMB School of Sustainability. In recognition of her notable contributions to the sector, she received the Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize for social innovation in 2018.

Kusum Mohapatra is the Regional Director (Asia and Africa) and India CEO of Miracle India Foundation. She brings over 25 years of experience in the Development Sector to contribute innovative solutions to complex problems and lead efforts to expand Miracle India Foundation’s impact and reach to newer territories in India. She began her career working in Odisha with some of the most vulnerable communities, and later joined Magic Bus India Foundation and Sampark Foundation as Senior Leadership, working on their livelihood and education programmes in various states of India. As her work involves travelling, she uses that time to read, write, and explore cultures through food, language and gender.

Anant Kumar Asthana is an eminent child rights and criminal lawyer with almost two decades of experience working across India’s Child Protection system. He works in and outside courts for strengthening systems, practices, procedures and laws in the Child Justice landscape of India.

Dr Alim Chandani is a prominent advocate for the deaf community and a driving force behind numerous social initiatives aimed at empowering deaf people in India. He holds a doctorate in administration and supervision in Special Education from Gallaudet University and is currently the Mission Leader of the Hear A Million Collective at EnAble India, which aims to free one million deaf people from language deprivation by 2030. His other impactful initiatives include the Centum-GRO initiative, a leadership and entrepreneurial skills training centre for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, and Freedom to Sign, which supports deaf artists and promotes Indian Sign Language. He is also the Founder-CEO of Global Reach Out, a nonprofit focused on building a sustainable community of Deaf advocates through peer-to-peer cross-cultural programs in developing countries. Dr Chandani has received several prestigious awards for his contributions, including the NCPEDP Mphasis Award and the Bharti Changemaker Award. He is an International Board Member of the Happy Hands School for the Deaf and a lifetime member of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) in India.

Saumya Kalia is a Delhi-based journalist and writer at BehanBox who explores issues of social justice, gender, labour, and digital subcultures. She has received the Laadli and REACH Media Awards for her work on gender justice and has reported on the intersections of gender and healthcare as a Dr Amit Sengupta Health Rights Fellow. Deeply interested in themes of grief, care, cities, and communities, she is currently building an editorial series, highlighting the voices of people who are often overlooked by mainstream media, while redefining news engagement across different platforms. Prior to joining BehanBox, she worked as a Senior Staff Writer for The Hindu and an Associate Editor at The Swaddle.

Patralekha Chatterjee is an award-winning journalist-columnist, author, public speaker, and consultant whose work emphasises the role of transdisciplinary factors (such as urbanisation, forced displacement, and sexual orientation) in shaping public health outcomes in the Global South. Some of the key areas she has reported on include the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, maternal and infant malnutrition, morbidity and mortality, and HIV/AIDS in India.

Her work has been featured in several reputed journals and mass media outlets, including The Lancet, The Atlantic (Ideas), and New Statesman, and she contributes fortnightly columns to The Asian Age, Deccan Chronicle, Amar Ujala, and The Lens. She has received several awards and fellowships and is a Visiting Fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership (GHJP) of Yale Law School and the Yale School of Public Health.

Arpan Rai is a correspondent for the British newspaper, The Independent, and is based in India. She reports on human rights issues and political affairs in Asia, with a particular focus on the gender apartheid affecting women and children in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. Her other key areas of reporting include wildlife conservation efforts, Indian political developments, and human rights atrocities in conflict-ridden regions of Afghanistan and Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

Prior to this, she worked with the digital arm of India’s leading daily, Hindustan Times, the news website The Quint, and New Delhi’s only tabloid, Mail Today, where she covered gender issues, education rights, and India’s federal administration.

Justice Madan B. Lokur, Chairperson of the United Nations Internal Justice Council and former judge of the Supreme Court of India, is a leading advocate for child rights. His work has strengthened the provisions and implementation of child-friendly statutes such as the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act. He has also served as Chief Advisor to the advisory board of the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR).

He has highlighted major legal challenges faced by child abuse survivors, including limited access to legal aid, procedural delays, and the need for a more child-centric approach, especially for children in conflict with the law.