About Us: Our Team

Nisha Dhawan

Country Director, India

Languages Spoken: English, Hindi, Dutch

Nisha Dhawan is the Country Director for India. She is passionate about amplifying the voices of girls, financial inclusion, and gender equity. Prior to assuming this role, she was the Director of the Adolescent Girls and Gender Initiatives at EMpower where she worked collaboratively with the global program team developing girl-focused capacity-building workshops, providing technical assistance and promoting cross-pollination of learnings in all 15 countries where EMpower works. Nisha’s initial role at EMpower was as the Senior Program Officer for India and Regional Advisor, Asia with responsibility for developing and managing grantee partnerships and programmatic initiatives. Nisha began her career working at Deutsche Bank and Barclays in London where she managed the Banks relationship with regulators and exchanges. Nisha is a TedX speaker – where she shared her passion about enabling girls’ voices to be heard.

Nisha holds has a PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi in Sociology. Her Doctoral research focussed on the role that Non-Traditional Livelihoods plays in advancing the project of gender equity. She holds an MSc. in Gender, Development and Globalization from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA (Hons.) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada in International Politics and Women’s Studies.