Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande is the President and Chair-man of Sparta Group LLC, a family investment office and is also the Chairman of Tejas Networks.
'Desh' is the Founder of Deshpande Foundation, a global phil-anthropic organization nurturing innovation and en-trepreneurship in universities and cities across USA.

Dr. Jaishree Deshpande is the Treasurer of Sparta Group LLC, and a founder of the Deshpande Founda-tion. The Deshpande Foundation fosters social entre-preneurship by supporting a variety of non-profit or-ganizations in India working in the areas of health, ed-ucation, microcredit and agriculture.

Dr. Vachani is the former Director of IIM Bangalore and the Professor of Strategy & Policy, School of Management, Bos-ton University. His prior business experience includes work-ing as an engineer with Phillips India, as a manager with the Tata Group and as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. His areas of research interest include the impact of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on international business, the role of governments, NGOs and multinational enterprises (MNEs) in reducing poverty.

Vivek Pawar is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sankalp Semiconductor Pvt. Ltd , which he founded in 2005. Sankalp has grown from 6 employees in 2005 to 100+ employees focused on niche area of analog and mixed-signal IC design. He brings in 20+ years of industry experience in varied functions like general management, operations, program management, cus-tomer relations, and design.

As a COO of Deshpande Skilling, Nayak has been the crux of transformation with Deshpande Skilling. It has been a year of standardization and shifting to technology. The initia-tives of a. integrated ERP+LMS, b.flip classes with E-Content, c.standardization of modular content for our skilling and school programs and d.adoption of an AI-based tool for measurement of employability, will all support our strategy to evolve our interventions to be rapidly scalable and sus-tainable without compromising quality.

Venkatesh Belagali is a B.Com graduate from Karnataka University. He has 14 years of work experience in different sectors. Venkatesh has been associated with the Foundation for the past two years. Currently, he heads 14 SIV centers and is focused on the development and application of technology in the program while also being the community lead of the Shiggaon cluster.

Gavisiddappa is an MSW postgraduate from Vijayanagar University. He has 10 years+ of work experience in the social sector. Gavi joined Deshpande Foundation with a persistent passion in the field of education. It has been two years since he joined the foundation as a cluster head. Now, he manages 15 SIV centers and works primarily on stakeholder management, community mobilization, teacher development, and program monitoring.

Gollapally Bhanuchandar belongs to Jangaon District Telangana. He completed his Master’s in Social work (MSW) from Kakatiya University- Warangal. He is very passionate about the social development sector and believes in the power of education to transform society. He enjoys working with students to enhance their skills and confidence. He pioneered skilling fellowship batches in Kakatiya Sandbox, Nizamabad, and graduated the first two batches from KS DET IN 2016. He introduced the Skill in Village program in Telangana in 2017. Currently, he is working as a Program Officer in the SIV Siddipet cluster.

Parvati Kumbar is an MSW graduate. Parvati joined Deshpande Foundation in 2018 and is one of the two cluster heads who led the SIV program in its first year. She is currently the Cluster Head for Hubli and Dharwad clusters.

Darshana pursued the Deshpande Fellowship Program after completing her MBA. She comes with a stunning four years of work experience in the social sector. Previous to joining DF, Darshana was working with the Samarthanam trust for the Disabled (Dharwad) as a program officer. She is currently the Cluster Head for Rona cluster.

Guranagouda is presently working as the Director of Deshpande Skilling. He has been associated with Deshpande Foundation from the last 10 years, since his time as a program manager in 2011. He has pioneered many sustainable and scalable skilling efforts under his leadership. He marshalled the BFSI program to become one of the biggest programs of the Foundation, graduating 7000+ passion-ate youths. He has also modelled innovative strategies for business development at DS. This has helped develop next level leaders for different verticals of the organisation. Prior to this, Mr Guranagouda served for Toxics link as a training coordinator for Hubli. He holds Masters in Social work from Karnataka University and is an Alumni of Deshpande Fellowship Program. He is also a proud Acumen Fellow, from the graduated batch of Acumen Fellowship‘ 2020.

Hareesh an alumni of the Deshpande Fellowship Pro-gram, and has been with Deshpande Skilling for the last 5 years. Working his way up the ranks, Hareesha now leads DS's Skill In Village program where higher primary and high school students are trained to per-form better in their studies. Known for his commit-ment, honesty and hard work, Hareesh has been able to scale the program 8x in only 2 years.

Deepta Sunil is a senior associate at the CEO’s Office and works extensively with the Skill in Village as its Aca-demic and Quality Lead. Deepta dedicates her time, fetching the best solutions from the globe to shape and improve the program design, strategy, academics, and visibility. She holds an integrated MA in develop-ment studies from IIT Madras.

Guru graduated with a Masters in Education from Karnataka University Dharwad and has 10 years experience in the De-velopment sector. He has previously worked for 9 years in Agastya International Foundation and 1 Year in SVYM. Pres-ently, Guru has joined the team as a Deputy Manager in Skill In Village program. He closely works with students and SiV Teachers for Assessments, Teacher Development, and Mon-itoring & Evaluation.

Gavisiddappa is an MSW postgraduate from Vijayanagar University. He has 10 years+ of work experience in the social sector. Gavi joined Deshpande Foundation with a persistent passion in the field of education. It has been two years since he joined the foundation as a cluster head. Now, he manages 15 SIV centers and works primarily on stakeholder management, community mobilization, teacher development, and program monitoring.

Swati handles the length and breadth of the program research and content development. She is a seeker and pays attention to the voices of our stakeholders to tailor the best content and stories. Her leadership has guided and still drives the monthly publishing of our newsletter, Grassroot Gazette. Swati holds a B.Com degree from Karnataka University.

Mrs.Shobhana Shenoy comes with a teaching background having specialized in Human Development. Her experience ranges from teaching nursery children to undergraduate stu-dents. She also writes about her experiences as a parent on her blog www.ponderingparent.com. She is an avid reader who also likes to explore new places and cultures. She has been helping the content team in reviewing and quality check since the inception of its efforts in 2019.

Ashwini is an Assistant Teacher at G.H.P.S, Chitradurga. She comes with 13+ years of experience as a primary school English teacher. She also trains primary and higher school teacher in British Council, English Language Empowerment Program etc. She has served in the Karnataka Textbook So-ciety and has designed state level textbooks for different grades. Furthermore, Ashwini has developed resource books for teachers such as Lets Speak Well (2013), Kriya Samshodana Sanchaya (2014) etc.