Anusha Bharadwaj

Anusha Bharadwaj is a 2023 Echidna Global scholar at Brookings. Her research focuses on how a feminist approach to adolescent leadership can cause ripple effects that can transform families and communities.

She believes in the power of adolescent and youth leadership to transform communities and nations. With this conviction, she leads a group of passionate individuals at VOICE 4 Girls (VOICE), an NGO that strives to eliminate gender inequality by educating and empowering marginalized adolescent girls and boys. In the last decade, VOICE has impacted more than a quarter of a million adolescents and around 6,000 young men and women. She is an Ashoka Fellow, a position recognized as the world’s leading social entrepreneurs.

Building on her vision of youth leadership, Bharadwaj founded SoCh for Social Change, an organization aimed at honing young women’s leadership skills and becoming agents of change in their communities. Anusha also facilitates leadership programs for social entrepreneurs and leaders on global platforms.

Bharadwaj has curated unique social impact leadership programs to help women embark on their social impact journeys. VOICE’s work has been recognized as innovative and transformational, providing benefits for adolescent girls but ripple effects that improve the lives of millions of other people. She has spoken at TEDxWomen Hyderabad and TEDxVCE, amplifying the need for feminist education.

Her work has been recognized with various awards, namely the Great Indian Women of the Year award from Golden Signatures in 2021, World Economic Forum award for “Exceptional Women of Excellence” in 2019, Balika Bandhu Award in 2017, and Leader in Volunteer Engagement in 2017. Anusha was also recently recognized in the top 17 SDG Women Chngemakers of India by Sayfty and Twitter India.

She is an alumnus of the Asia Pacific Leadership Program (2013-14) at the East-West Center; a member of the first cohort of Harvard-Dasra Social Impact Leadership Program (2014-15); a Cordes Fellow (2017); and a Kalinga Fellow (2020). She is an advisor to Fairshare International, a feminist organization promoting women’s leadership, and an ethics committee member of Fernandez Foundation.