Sohini Bhattacharya is an intrepid intrapreneur and social change enthusiast who has 25+ years of experience in the development sector. Currently, she is CEO & President at Breakthrough, a global human rights organization working in the U.S. and India using multi-media, popular culture, leadership development, and community mobilization strategies to promote values of dignity, equality, and justice. Sohini leads strategy in Breakthrough, works on scaling up the organization, manages a senior leadership team, and works to transform the organization into a professionally managed one.

Sohini joined Breakthrough as a consultant in 2010, as the Resource Mobilisation head and helped the organization scale up its annual budget from 150,000 USD to 2.5 million in 2016. She was also part of the Global Management Team and a part of the senior management team in helping to think through the strategy for an initial growth phase of the organization. At the same time, she also worked as the India Strategy Consultant in a start-up – the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN), a unique platform for and by people interested in Venture Philanthropy, across India, Japan, and Greater China, a sister concern of the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA).

Sohini serves on the advisory board of Dastkar, a national organization working with crafts and craftspeople. She is also a founding trustee of Read India, an organization that sets up libraries for rural communities to kickstart income generation initiatives and also serves on the board of Kolkata Sanved, an organization using the power of Dance Therapy to work with underprivileged populations.

In this episode with Deepak Nanda from CSRBOX, she talks about how the social landscape has changed, empowering women to speak up for themselves, and how can you raise funding for your cause.

She answers the following questions in the conversation:

1. You define yourself as an Intrepid intrapreneur with 30 years of experience in the social sector. How would you say the sector has changed and where would you say is it headed?

2. Talking about your current role at Breakthrough. What are some of the issues that you are working towards as part of the same?

3. How would you define the current state of gender-specific issues, be it the rights, the opportunities or just a free will to do what they like?

4. How is Breakthrough making sure the chain of “that’s how it has been” issues is broken to create “that’s how it should be” perspective? Thus creating a more inclusive and empowered society.

5. The target group that you work with, comprises of people who are too shy to talk about themselves, let alone them talking about their rights. In such a difficult space, how do you use storytelling and community-led leadership?

6. One of your strong suits is Fundraising. How do you go about it and what suggestions would you have for the ones struggling with it despite having a great idea?

Impact-Talk is a series of views and interviews of CSR heads, impact leaders and change-makers, addressing development challenges in India. If you have an impact-maker in your network, please suggest/share details at csr@ngobox.org