Advancing Gender Equality in and Through Education
The Accelerator for Shifting Gender Norms through Education is a collaborative designed to deepen and disseminate evidence-based models that effectively shift gender norms in adolescence through school systems.
Our Team
Leadership
Our leaders have dedicated their careers to advancing gender equality and bring deep insight, knowledge and passion to our mission.
Managing Director
Erin Ganju
Erin turned a bold idea for advancing literacy and gender equality into an international NGO: Room to Read. She is the co-founder and former CEO of Room to Read, which has impacted over 45 million children in 15 countries. She also co-authored “Scaling Global Change: A Social Entrepreneur’s Guide to Surviving the Start-up Phase and Driving Impact,” utilizing Room to Read as an organizational case study. After Room to Read, Erin was Managing Director at Echidna Giving, one of the largest private funders in gender equality in education in lower-income countries from 2018-2024. She was selected as a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy (2022); a Global Impact Featured Member by the Young Presidents’ Organization (2017); and a World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur (2014). Before co-founding Room to Read, Erin worked at Goldman Sachs & Co, Unilever and several technology start-ups. Erin holds a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in international relations and economics from The Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.
Senior Advisor
Sohini Bhattacharya
Sohini has worked in the development sector for 30+ years with a focus on women and empowerment. She is the former CEO of Breakthrough, a 25-year-old organization focused on transforming gender norms and building the leadership of young people to prevent gender-based violence. Before Breakthrough, Sohini worked with Ashoka Innovators for the Public for 10 years to bring in more women entrepreneurs to the fellowship and on institution- building for the organization in South Asia. She also worked as the India strategy advisor for the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network from 2010-2013. In addition, Sohini co-founded Sanhita Gender Resource Centre — the first of its kind in Eastern India — in 1996. Sohini is a founding member of the Coalition for Good Schools – Voices from the South, a collection of leading practitioners and influencers committed to delivering access to a safe learning environment for children across the Global South. Sohini is also an advisory board member at Ignite Philanthropy, a philanthropic fund that supports bold efforts to ensure every child lives a life free from violence; a board member of The Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre For Women (ARROW), a regional women and young people’s organization that has consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations; and a member of the Global Reference Group of the Spotlight Initiative, the United Nations’ high-impact initiative to end violence against women and girls. As leader of Breakthrough, Sohini deepened the adolescent empowerment program and lead the organisation through a deep dive into a design phase and subsequent launch of a systems change approach of shifting gender norms through education. The program in partnership with state governments is expected to reach 4 million adolescents over the next few years. The organization’s work to change gender norms at the community level while keeping adolescents and young people at the center earned it the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurs.
Design & Facilitation Consultants
During Phase One of the Accelerator, throughout 2025, a Facilitation and Design Consulting Team will accompany the member organizations to facilitate a participatory design process and co-create a strong foundation and ways of working for the Accelerator.
Angelika Arutyunova
Angelika Arutyunova is a charming and collaborative international social justice leader with over 20 years of experience in bridging international funding and human rights and social justice organizing through thought leadership, strategic interventions, direct grantmaking, donor advice and advocacy, long-term programs and project design, participatory action research, convenings, and more. With strong roots and expertise in women, adolescents, youth, and LGBTQIA+ movements, Angelika centers the impacted communities' needs, voices, and expertise, serving as a bridge and relationship builder between diverse funding sectors and organizers. Angelika worked for flagship institutions like the Global Fund for Women as Regional Program Director for Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia and then for the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), where she led the research on Where is the Money for Women’s Rights. She has demonstrated long-term facilitator magic, having facilitated anywhere from small multi-stakeholder complex convenings and processes like those between funders and activists, determining the future of the funding modalities for feminist movements, to holding global large convenings like AWID International Feminist Forum in Brazil in 2016 in the role of Program Director for the Forum. Angelika is a co-founder of FRIDA: The Young Feminist Fund, and most recently of Dalan Fund, intimately understanding the gaps in philanthropy and filling them in with concrete solutions, including a co-creation of a groundbreaking at the time global participatory grantmaking model. Angelika is based in Berkeley, California.
Jody Myrum
Jody Myrum is a feminist activist, strategist, researcher, and writer, driven by a commitment to creating a world of safety, dignity of freedom for all girls and young people. She brings over 25 years of experience working across regions, movements, and sectors. Throughout her career, Jody has facilitated complex multi-stakeholder processes - from bringing together a diverse range of unaligned stakeholders working in refugee camps on the Ethiopia/Somalia border to advance the safety of girls and women, to working with groups of funders coming from different sectors/frameworks towards a collective vision. She has played a key role in designing philanthropic and programmatic strategies that include participatory practices. She co-led the Global Resilience Fund, a participatory fund for girls and young feminists responding to crises and directed NoVo Foundation's adolescent girls’ rights initiative for a decade. As a consultant, Jody has worked with a diverse range of clients to facilitate and develop strategies and implementation plans, including complex grantmaking strategies that required the participation from multiple stakeholders. Last year, Jody founded Our Collective Practice, a hub for building narrative, knowledge and collective power with and for girls. She is also one of the co-creators of the Stories of Girls’ Resistance, a global storytelling initiative dedicated to documenting a true recount of history grounded in the role of girls’ resistance and power across social movements and geographies. Jody got her start as a youth activist and spent her early career working with systems impacted young people where her commitment to supporting their resistance, power and dreams was rooted and has remained at the center of all her work. Jody is rooted in social work and holds a deep commitment to racial, gender, youth, class and disability justice and always centers people and lived experience in any strategy, interaction and decision. Jody is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Partner Selection Committee Members
Our Global Partner Selection Committee members have deep expertise and come from a variety of organizations and backgrounds. We are grateful for their support in helping us choose partners that will enable us to reach our goals.
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Sattva Consulting
Rathish Balakrishnan
Rathish is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Sattva Consulting. As part of his role, Rathish has extensive experience in conceptualizing and implementing large-scale solutions that bring together leading foundations, corporations, civil society organizations and the government. He has extensive hands-on experience across a wide range of sectors, including education, healthcare, skill development, livelihoods, women’s empowerment, forced labor and child rights. Rathish has contributed to both state and national level policy discussions across education and skills development. He is a published author and TEDx speaker. His professional journey has three intertwined tracks —- as a consultant, he is able to facilitate the impact agenda of inspiring leaders, institutions and collaborative initiatives. As an entrepreneur, he is committed to building an institution anchored on impact, integrity and scale. As someone committed to ending poverty, he is a lifelong learner deeply curious about the systems that perpetuate inter-generational poverty.
Director and US Lead, Philanthropic Collaboration at Co-Impact
Yasmin Madan
Yasmin is a global leader with over 20 years of experience in the commercial sector, international development, and philanthropy. She has dedicated her career to supporting social change that shifts power, addresses discrimination, and fosters inclusion. Her expertise lies in systems change, gender, strategic planning, organizational strengthening, market systems, and making markets work for the poor. Yasmin is passionate about bringing her lived experience to support social change. She understands the structural barriers that prevent systems from functioning effectively, especially for women and girls and those from marginalized groups. Throughout her career, Yasmin has held senior leadership roles where she was responsible for setting the vision and strategy development, program development and management, change management, and organizational development. She has led diverse and senior teams across different countries and has extensive grantmaking and fundraising experience. She has worked across a broad range of sectors, including civil society, private sector, government and international development. Her experience includes partnering with local actors, small and medium businesses, foundations, bilateral and multilateral agencies, and corporations. In her current role as director and U.S. lead, philanthropic collaboration at Co-Impact, Yasmin leads on developing and managing strategic partnerships and funder engagement.
Director of Programs, Quality, and Impact, Save the Children, Brazil
MaÍra Martins
With 18 years of experience dedicated to fighting inequalities, Maíra has been supporting civil society organizations and community programs in Brazil with a particular focus on strategic partnerships and advocacy strategies. Currently, Maíra is the director of programs, quality and impact for Save the Children in Brazil. Previously, she was the in-country representative for Malala Fund. While there, Maíra built and managed a network of education advocates and grantees to expand girls’ education by leading the strategy and expansion of Malala Fund in Brazil. She also worked for eight years for ActionAid Brazil, managing a grantee portfolio on poverty reduction and sustainable agriculture, supporting grassroots organizations, coordinating research and advocacy strategies. Maíra has always been passionate about working with children and youth. For her Master’s Degree in Social Sciences, she researched the aspirations and life goals of marginalized youth in rural contexts and engaged in research projects about youth participation and political engagement.
Former CEO at the African Women’s Development Fund
Theo Sowa
Born in Ghana, Theo has lived and worked in many countries in Africa, Europe and North America. She specializes in international development and human rights with particular emphasis on women and children’s rights and protection. Formerly CEO at the African Women's Development Fund, she led the organization through 10 years of growth in income, reach and impact. Prior to that she worked with a range of international organizations and agencies, and was Senior Programme Advisor on the UN Study on Children and Armed Conflict (the Machel Report). Currently Theo is co-chair of the Equality Fund; and board member of the UBS Optimus Foundation; the Graça Machel Trust; Luminate; and TheirWorld. She sits on the advisory committee of CAPSI (the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Impact), The Stephen Lewis Foundation Africa Advisory group and the Advisory Circle of the Feminist Foreign Policy Initiative and is a Patron of Evidence for Development.
Program Director, Echidna Giving
Dana Schmidt
Dana is the Program Director for Echidna Giving, a private funder supporting the best ways to educate girls in lower-income countries. Before joining Echidna as its first full-time employee in 2016, Dana was a program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where she helped to develop and run a ten-year, $125 million grantmaking initiative to improve the quality of education that children receive in the developing world. While at Hewlett, she oversaw grantmaking related to education in India and East Africa and led the Foundation's international grantmaking for Open Educational Resources. Dana spent time teaching secondary school students in both Kenya and Zambia. She graduated from Stanford University with an undergraduate degree in Economics and African Studies and earned her master's degree in International Educational Administration and Policy Analysis, Her master’s thesis explores the impact of the elimination of primary school fees on enrollment in Kenya. Dana speaks Swahili and French.
Our Funder
The Accelerator for Shifting Gender Norms though Education is solely funded by Echidna Giving, a private funder that joins with critical thinkers, innovators and practitioners to advance gender equality in and through education in historically low- and middle-income countries.
Echidna Giving has one sole aim: to deliver on the promise of girls’ education, creating deep, wide and long-lasting change. By supporting this collaboration, Echidna Giving seeks to accelerate progress against this promise.