Janani Rajashekar

India Program Officer

Country Portfolio

Janani is a Program Officer for BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative in India. Janani will be responsible for supporting the UPGI team in India by creating systems, overseeing program delivery, grants management, procurement, and operations, and leading on project management to achieve organizational goals.

Prior to joining UPGI team she was the Program Manager for the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation & Scale (Y-RISE), where she provided research and project management support and was responsible for strategy, communications, and finance for the center. Prior to this she worked for Dasra and Evidence Action. At Dasra, Janani’s work included identifying under-served, high potential sectors and organizations for
philanthropic funders, conducting pre-grant due diligence, and supporting a community of practice of 60 non-profits working on adolescent health. At Evidence Action, she identified promising evidence-based interventions and analyzed their implementation potential for the organization. Between 2013-17, she also spent four years in the financial sector working at Deloitte and SiMPL – a wealth management firm – conducting statutory audits, providing accounting advisory services and identifying equity stocks for investment.

Janani is a Chartered Accountant, and has a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from the Yale School of Management, with eight years of work experience across the financial and development sectors.

She is interested in using data and feedback loops to deliver high-quality and contextualized interventions at scale. In her free time, she enjoys singing, trying new recipes and spending time in nature.