Echidna Global Scholars Program

The Echidna Global Scholars Program at the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings seeks to catalyze and amplify the impact of local leaders working to advance gender-transformative education across the Global South. During a six-month fellowship, Echidna Global Scholars conduct individual research focused on improving learning opportunities and life outcomes for girls, young women, and gender-nonconforming people, develop their leadership and evidence-based policy skills, build substantive knowledge on gender and global education issues, and expand their pathways for impact. Upon completion of the fellowship, scholars transition to the Echidna Alumni Network, a growing community of practice aimed at promoting their significant, sustained, and collective influence on gender-transformative education globally and locally. Since its inception in 2012, the Echidna Global Scholars Program has hosted 14 cohorts of fellows and currently supports an alumni network of 48 scholars from 25 different countries. This program is made possible by the generous contribution of Echidna Giving.

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• Learn more about our newest class of scholars below

Please email [email protected] with any questions about the program.

2026 Echidna Global Scholars

Vandita Morarka

Vandita Morarka is a human rights lawyer, researcher, and organizer. For the past decade, she has worked across business, politics, policy, government, and nonprofits to protect, promote. and further social justice. Vandita’s work has spanned industries and geographies, from leading election campaigns and strategic philanthropy efforts, working with the government to increase voter turnout and gender protections, advocating for criminal justice and judicial reforms, and shaping national and global norms and policy to address sexual and gender-based violence, while remaining rooted in the belief that violence and apathy can be resisted by centering care, courage, and collective responsibility.

Vandita is the founder and CEO of One Future Collective, a social purpose organization committed to advancing social justice by activating agency, building community infrastructure, and shifting narratives. Under her leadership, One Future Collective has nurtured thousands of emerging women and queer leaders and reached millions through programs and institutional engagements that advance rights-based advocacy and access to justice. Vandita is also a Chevening Scholar and serves on the board of CIVICUS.

Her research explores how informal leadership programs run by feminist civil society organizations (CSOs) support young women and queer people (18-35) to participate and lead in civic life in India. She will examine the aspirations, barriers, and enablers that young women and queer people identify for themselves and the approaches feminist CSOs use to build civic participation and leadership, and how these respond to the realities young people face on the ground.

Ritika Khunnah

Ritika Khunnah is a feminist leader and social impact practitioner with over 27 years of experience advancing gender justice, youth leadership, and adolescent rights across India and the Global South. She is the chief executive officer and a board member at Pravah, a leading youth development organization that has reached over 18 million young people and nurtured around 800 youth-led social enterprises. She also serves on the boards of VartaLeap Coalition, Antardhara Foundation, and Rubaroo.

Ritika has contributed to shaping policy and discourse on gender equality and youth inclusion, including influencing reforms in sexual assault laws in India and advocating for the meaningful participation of young people in decisionmaking spaces. She has served on the U.N. Women Multi-Country Civil Society Advisory Group for South Asia and has trained members of the judiciary across South Asia on gender equality and women’s rights. She continues to design and lead capacity-building initiatives for senior leaders and mentoring for emerging social entrepreneurs.

She is passionate about sexual and reproductive health and rights, leadership development, systems thinking, and movement building. Ritika holds a master’s in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and has completed executive education at the Harvard Kennedy School, along with a postgraduate diploma in human rights and international law.

Ritika will be exploring how adolescents and young adults aged 13-29, particularly girls and young women, experience mental well-being within school and college environments, and what institutional conditions and civil society initiatives enable educational institutions to function as effective mental health ecosystems.

Irene Muinde

Irene Muinde is a visionary executive leader and social impact practitioner with over 17 years of experience driving inclusive development in Africa. She specializes in strategic leadership, program design, partnerships, and ecosystem strengthening, with a strong track record of advancing gender equality through education and youth empowerment. Her work focuses on translating field-based insights into scalable, systems-level solutions. She currently serves as an independent growth and strategy adviser, supporting mission-driven organizations to scale through evidence-informed strategy, sustainable financing, and cross-sector collaboration. Irene has held executive leadership roles at Impact Africa Network and One Girl Can, where she led organizational growth and transformation, advancing education and entrepreneurship initiatives.

At One Girl Can, she played a pivotal role in scaling a girls’ education model that increased scholarships twenty-five-fold and reached thousands of girls annually with mentorship and leadership development. Across her career, she has mobilized significant resources, built multi-stakeholder partnerships, and led high-performing teams to deliver measurable results, while contributing to global dialogue and accountability on inclusive development. She holds an MBA in human resources management and a Bachelor of Arts in social work, and serves in volunteer governance roles supporting education leadership, gender equality, and mentorship.

Irene will investigate how career guidance systems can be strengthened to better support equitable transitions for young people in rural Kenya from secondary education into further learning, training, and work pathways, and how gender norms, structural inequalities, and institutional conditions shape young people’s access to and experiences of career guidance in under-resourced rural secondary schools.

Cristiana Pereira Pinto

Cristiana Pereira Pinto is a grassroots-driven education innovator working to embed voice, agency, and mentorship into education systems as the foundation for children’s learning, identity and community. As systemic education director at Girl MOVE Academy, she co-designed and piloted Mozambique’s national school mentorship program, a gender-transformative, near-peer model that supports school progression, vocational guidance, and youth citizenship. Commissioned by the Ministry of Education and endorsed by the president, the program is now being rolled out across all provinces.

Prompted by her son’s insatiable quest for new narratives, she founded the Formiga Juju children’s book series and literacy movement, sparking children to become authors of their own stories. With one title now included in the national primary school curriculum, her work brings Mozambican children’s voices back into the classroom.

In 2026, she joins the Echidna Global Scholars Program at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education, where she will develop research on scaling near-peer mentoring to advance gender equality in and through education. Her study will explore what capabilities, values, and aspirations families and communities consider important for girls and boys, how children acquire these through relationships, practices, and everyday life, and how these understandings can inform more culturally rooted, gender-transformative, and relational approaches to foundational learning in Mozambique.