Professor Ajay Mahal is a faculty member with the Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne. Previously, he was the Alan and Elizabeth Finkel Chair of Global Health at Monash University and was on the faculty of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Earlier, he was also the Principal Economist at the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi. Dr. Ajay’s research focuses on issues of health financing, service delivery and linkages in health and development. He has evaluated health system interventions in low- and middle-income countries and authored over 100 journal articles, book chapters and books.

Professor Audrey Prost is a social anthropologist with training in epidemiology, and Director of the Centre for the Health of Women, Children and Adolescents at University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on the design and evaluation of participatory community interventions to improve women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health. She works at UCL’s Institute for Global Health and in close collaboration with the Indian civil society organisation Ekjut, evaluating community-based interventions in Jharkhand and Odisha. Audrey also co-wrote a systematic review of interventions with participatory women’s groups to improve maternal and newborn health, which led to a 2014 WHO recommendation. Her current work focuses on developing participatory community interventions to improve early childhood development and adolescent health.

Dr. Prasanta Tripathy is Co-founder and Director of Ekjut – a non-profit based in India involved in community-based studies to improve maternal and child health in underserved districts of India. He is a trained medical doctor, and is an Ashoka Fellow and a LEAD (Leadership for Environment and Development) Fellow. He previously worked with Tata Steel in Jharkhand, where he helped shape the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. In his current role, he has built Ekjut into a prominent organization in the space of evaluations and trials. In 2011, Ekjut's work with University College London’s Institute for Global Health won “Trial of the Year” from the Society for Clinical Trials.

Dr. Purnima Menon is Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), where she leads the South Asia Nutrition Programs in IFPRI’s Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division. In India, she directs POSHAN (Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonize Actions for Nutrition in India), an initiative for evidence-driven approach to nutrition. She conducts implementation research on scaling maternal and child nutrition interventions and evaluations of behaviour change communications programs in health and nutrition. She also serves on many advisory groups on nutrition including the Global Nutrition Report. Dr. Menon holds a PhD in International Nutrition from Cornell University.

Dr. Rajani has over 30 years of experience as a practitioner researcher in the area of women and children’s health and nutrition, and health systems. As a former Executive Director of the National Health Systems Resource Center (Government of India), she led the institutionalisation of India’s ASHA program, and later the design and implementation support for India’s flagship primary health reform – Ayushman Bharat (Health and Wellness Centres). Her expertise spans policy development, implementation research, health system strengthening, and design and evaluation of large-scale health programs. She has a medical degree from Madras University and a master’s in public health from Harvard University. She is a visiting scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Sapna Desai is an Associate with the Population Council, New Delhi and co-lead of the Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups. Her work focuses on women’s health, community-based interventions and health systems research. She previously worked with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and its national federation, where she scaled community health worker and health insurance programs in six states of India. Dr. Desai holds a PhD in epidemiology and population health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and MS from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.