Shivani Desai

2022/2023 Kirchner Food Fellow
Americas Fellows

Shivani is a graduate student at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where she is focusing on Environmental Policy and International Business. She has over seven years of experience in the international development space – consulting with nonprofits and social businesses on their organizational strategies and programs, advising private funders on their philanthropic investments, and managing multi-year implementation projects in South Asia.

Shivani’s professional engagements helped her observe some of the underlying challenges with charity-led approaches to problem-solving, and inspired an interest in market-based models. Post Fletcher, she is keen to foray into the impact investing field where she can help find local entrepreneurs and support bottom-up solutions to important issues in emerging economies. She is also interested in understanding how proven, high-impact innovations can be scaled from one developing region to another. Her specific domain interests include the role of sustainable agriculture and technology in reducing food insecurity, improving farmer livelihoods, and combating climate change.

Shivani holds a Bachelors in Management Studies with a specialization in Finance from Mumbai, India.