Gouri Rajagopal Email and Phone Number

TRI’s vision is an ambitious one deeply focused on critical challenges/issues of the bottom 100,000 villages of India (which we call ‘stranded India’) and the marginalised communities living there, with a strong gender-focused lens. TRI is focussed on becoming an organisation that is known for having working solutions to this context of stranded India. In order to realise this vision, it is imperative to equip TRI staff with the required knowledge and competencies to develop and implement solutions for complex issues in the context of rural India, especially considering the resource-constraints that exist in our geographies. In this context, learning and development efforts become critical to support, motivate, and engage staff across the organisation in furthering TRI’s goals and strategic intent through a culture based on continuous learning and anchored by TRI values.The coverage of learning engagements spans across developing TRI’s three main practices – Community Action Labs (CAL), Public Policy in Action (PPiA) and Bending Markets for Flourishing Localities (BMFL). Additionally, we also anchor the Public Policy in Action Fellowships, which provides motivated young professionals an opportunity to directly work with the district administrations across our geographies. The objective of the learning & development department, as a part of the Central Support Unit (CSU), is to provide an exciting array of opportunities for staff to learn, reflect, and derive purpose in translating action to impact, focussing on transforming the lives of the most marginalised communities in rural India.

I was leading the Fellowship Support Team for Aspirational Districts Fellowship which is a part of Transformation of Aspirational Districts Programme (an initiative of Tata Trusts and Ministry of Home Affairs). In this role, I was engaged in the professional and personal development of 70 Aspirational District Fellows spread across 35 LWE-Aspirational Districts. I was overlooking various learning and HR functions for Fellows embedded within district administrations in these districts.

At TRIF, I am responsible for enhancing the efficiency, efficacy and fidelity of TRIF’s current engagements in education through IT-based solutions. I am also involved with TRIF’s youth engagement where I work in conscientising the influencers of tomorrow around issues of rural India particularly the challenges and opportunities that exist in stranded India - the poorest 100,000 villages in the country.

Public Policy in Action Praxis Residency Programme emanates from the need for a world-class public policy programme in India contextualized to the evolving needs of the modern welfare state in the world’s largest democracy. The programme prepares young adaptive leaders to inject fresh thinking and new ways of working in our “public programmes” that is : based on evidence, evolved well-researched processes on design of programme and delivery, disentangling change process: context, institutions,agents, and events and coming with innovative processes, procedures; multi-disciplinary agility; not underestimating contextual limitations – particularly existing distribution of power and influence, leveraging and deploying science and technology which is increasingly becoming central to development and recognize the importance of personal relationships and mutual understandingas potential locus of change.The program offers a unique blend of public policy practice with the highest academic rigour, covering theory, approaches and application in real-life practice context. The programme provides an exceptional learning opportunity for young learners looking for skills, experiential learning, and an understanding of how governments make decisions and impact lives of citizens. At core of PPiA Practice lies in the placement of the learners within the public administration, providing a unique leverage for the learner where they are able to practice ‘public policy in action’ in a live setting while simultaneously engaging with the opportunities, complexities, and vulnerabilities of the public system in real-time. The programme has been designed to nurture future-ready adaptive leaders who driven by purpose and seek to become change agents.

Education Vertical - was involved in a consulting project to build a school education pipeline in the resource starved districts of rural India so as to bridge the gaps in the current rural school education system.

• Customer Relationship Management➢ Analyzed the effects of various marketing campaigns and their impacts on various factors.➢ Generated simple to complex ad-hoc reports using SQL and Microsoft Excel.• RTRA Compliance Reports➢ Compiled reports on affected revenue and transactions due to the implementation of rules against fraud and in compliance with the government rules in various countries using SQL and Microsoft Excel.• Ad-hoc Reporting➢ Created SQL queries to suit the clients’ requirements.➢ Generated simple to complex ad-hoc reports using SQL and Microsoft Excel.• Training➢ Completed training course and various assessment tests in SAS, VBA, SQL and SAS modeling.