Team

Sachi Shenoy

Sachi Shenoy has nearly a decade of experience in developing social enterprises to meet the needs of the poor and ultra poor, designing and implementing field interventions, and conducting social performance evaluations and investment advisory for a variety of organizations throughout Asia. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Upaya and Samridhi Agri-Products, and on the Advisory Boards of InVenture and the Chicago Booth Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI). Her work has been featured in Wall Street Journal – India and the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Sachi spent three years at Unitus, where she most recently served as Director of Global Programs and led the Social Performance Management Implementation Project (SPM IP) and Sorenson / Unitus Ultra Poor Initiative. Prior to Unitus, Sachi served as Area Manager at SKS Microfinance Pvt. Ltd., leading the organization's entry into the New Delhi urban microfinance market. In 2005, Sachi authored the business proposal for the SKS Ultra Poor Program, designed to uplift rural, destitute populations. Sachi has also worked at New York-based CDVCA, where she evaluated seed-stage social enterprises and constructed investment recommendations for its Central Fund; JP Morgan Chase, where she worked in the Sales & Trading division; and Price Waterhouse LLP, where she served as a management consultant for the financial services industry.

Sachi holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.B.A. in Finance and Entrepreneurship with High Honors from the University of Chicago.

Sriram Gutta

Director, Business Development   

Sriram has spent almost the entirety of his professional career in the social impact space as both an entrepreneur and an advisor. As one of Upaya’s co-founders, Sriram leads the organization’s India operations and works closely with Upaya’s LiftUP Project and consulting partners. He also oversees Upaya’s LiftUP Project partner selection process, working closely with candidates to identify those with the strongest potential to scale and create jobs for the very poorest.

Prior to Upaya’s launch, Sriram was a core member of the Sorenson / Unitus Ultra Poor Initiative team where he led project design and implementation, business development and monitoring and evaluation activities with program partners SKS NGO in Orissa and Equitas Microfinance in Chennai. Before joining Unitus, Sriram was with MXV Consulting, a boutique strategy and operations consulting firm based out of Bangalore, serving clients in the areas of strategy, operations and organizational development across various industries.

Sriram’s career began as a co-founder of Mobile Medics Healthcare – a for-profit social venture aimed at creating a sustainable business that provided private sector, high quality, and affordable medical care to rural India. The team received the seed funding from the Goldman Sachs Foundation as winners of the Global Social Venture Competition in 2006. Mobile Medics later got absorbed in to Piramal Group, a global business conglomerate, and is known as Piramal eSwasthya.

Sriram continually shares his insights on ultra poverty and business development as a regular conference speaker including recent presentations to the Acara Summer Institute in Bangalore and at XLRI Jamshedpur, and as a staff writer at NextBillion.net - a discussion forum on the role of enterprise and markets in addressing the needs of the world’s low-income consumers and producers. Sriram completed his Masters in Management Studies from BITS, Pilani.

Steve Schwartz

Director, Strategy & Operations   

With nine years professional experience on four continents, Steve's expertise lies at the intersection of marketing and project management in service of global development goals. As Upaya's Director of Strategy & Operations, he is responsible for managing Upaya's day-to-day financial, legal, human resource, IT, and fundraising activities while overseeing the organization's public presence. He also provides regular marketing and communications support to Upaya's partners, working with entrepreneurs to develop outreach strategies and execution tools.

Steve came to Upaya from Unitus where he was responsible for designing marketing communication programs to promote the organization’s service offerings and promote a positive regulatory environment for the industry’s continued growth in India and East Africa. Prior to joining Unitus, Steve served two years in the West African nation of Benin as a Small Enterprise Development consultant. Partnering with local trades-people, women's groups, government officials and international organizations, he focused on developing revenue generating activities and expanding business support services and financing for micro and small enterprises. In addition, Steve was an organizational development and marketing advisor to Millennium Challenge Corporation-funded Access to Justice alternative dispute resolution system established under the Beninese Chamber of Commerce. Steve began his marketing career in public relations with the New York-based Walek & Associates representing investment banking, financial law, hedge fund and private equity clients. This work was succeeded by a year spent as a Switzerland-based correspondent for US-based business and finance trade publications.

In addition to his work with Upaya, he sits on the board of SeaMo, a Seattle microfinance connector organization. He holds an M.A. in International Relations and International Communications from Boston University, and a B.A. in History from the University of Western Ontario.

Jyotsna Taparia

Senior Associate, Business Development  

Jyotsna is an experienced development professional with specialized knowledge across a range of issues from agricultural economics to public health and nutrition.

Before joining Upaya, Jyotsna was part of the Child Health and Nutrition team at the ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth. There she worked on programs to strengthen public health systems, improve community health worker models, enhance public nutrition schemes, and address issues revolving around Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS).

Jyotsna holds a M.A. in Development Studies, with specialization in Development Economics from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and a B.A. in Economics from University of Delhi. Her Masters thesis analyzed the costs and margins associated with marketing mustard seeds.

Aparna Arora

Senior Associate, Business Development  

Aparna brings to Upaya rich finance related experience across a variety of industries. Her core expertise lies in a unique mix of corporate finance and strategy domains. She most recently completed a project with Drishtee, a social enterprise focused on rural India and catering to the critical needs of base of the pyramid. She also played a key role in devising the financial plan for the company's micro-enterprise lending arm and worked closely on financial projections and valuation for the fund, creating the business plan as well as strategies for entrepreneur assessment.

Prior to her time at Drishtee Aparna was with Masan Group, Vietnam's largest private sector company with large scale operating platforms in the consumer products, financial services and resources sectors. At Masan, Aparna worked as part of the Business Intelligence Unit, reporting directly to the group CEO office, and was responsible for analyzing M&A opportunities for the group in the South-east Asia market. Before joining Masan Aparna was a core team member of an early stage internet start-up, trefis.com where she authored several research reports on the aviation sector and regularly blogged on major online finance news forums such as the Forbes ‘Great Speculations’ column, The Street and Seeking Alpha. Aparna started out at McKinsey as an Analyst with the Corporate Finance practice. Here, she worked extensively with McKinsey Partners and consultants on corporate finance related client projects, such as diagnosing the capital market performance of the client and creating strategic recommendations.

Aparna holds a Bachelor's in Business from College of Business Studies, Delhi University. She has completed two levels of international CFA program. She has also completed many papers in Actuarial Sciences and certification programmes from National Stock Exchange of India.

Specialists

Sue Chappell

Specialist, Finance & Compliance  

As Upaya's Finance and Compliance Specialist, Sue manages the organization's accounting, financial management, and regulatory reporting activities. Much of Sue's recent career has been in nonprofit finance and accounting, having held similar roles with the Children's Institute for Learning Differences/ CHILD, Unitus, and the Springboard Alliance.

Sue holds an MBA in Finance and International Business from the University of Washington. An avid rower, she is a proud member of the Sammamish Rowing Association.

Kenny Rowe

Specialist, Management Information System   

As Upaya's MIS Specialist, Kenny Rowe brings expertise in leveraging new technologies, programs and strategies to drive growth to the organization and its partners. He is actively involved in designing systems to manage Upaya's social metrics data and constructing the organization's online presence.

In addition to his work with Upaya, Kenny is the e-Commerce manager for ExOfficio in Seattle, Washington where he has a track record of success in implementing creative and effective solutions to meet business objectives within the fields of e-commerce and information technology. A graduate of Seattle Pacific University and a northwest native, Kenny loves to travel and spend time outdoors.