Meet our management team, global Board of Directors, India Board of Directors and Co-Founders.
Meet our team
To meet all the members of our Pollinate Group family visit our company page on LinkedIn and look under the people menu.
Management team
Sita Adhikari
Director of Impact and Co-Founder
Sita is a Co-Founder of Pollinate Group and our Director of Impact. She holds a Masters Economics (Tribhuvan University) and a BA Commerce (Sahid Smriti College). While working as an entrepreneur Sita decided she wanted to extend opportunities to women around Nepal. Before joining Pollinate Group Sita was a founder and President of the Jhuwani Women’s Savings and Credit Cooperative, a founder of the Women’s and Children’s Section of the Jhuwani Community Library and the founder of Kalpavriksha.
Goutam Biswas
Head of Finance and Compliance (Global)
Goutam has 8 years of experience in accounting and taxation. He holds an MBA in Finance and HR Management from Vidyasagar University, B.Com (Hons) in Finance from Calcutta University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Financial Accounting from Jadavpur University. Prior to joining Pollinate Group, Goutam worked with TaxMantra Solutions as Assistant Manager Finance, and Hiland Group and Bengal NRI Complex Limited as Sr. Executive Finance and Accounts.
Ravi Kumar
Director of Operations
Ravi is an operations leader with more than 20 years of experience, including more than 11 years in the clean cookstove industry in India. At Pollinate Group Ravi leads a number of our teams. He is dedicated to creating an environment that is efficient, conducive to out of the box thinking and most of all maintains a strong focus on community impact.
Murli Padmanabhan
Director of Growth
Murli has an MBA in Marketing and is a senior sales and marketing professional with more than 25 years of work experience in India and West Africa. He has handled diverse industry sectors including construction, printing, training and development and consumer goods.
His primary expertise is in sales and business development, leading large sales teams and creating distribution channels. He is keenly interested in bringing a positive change and impacting the lives of underprivileged communities.
Biheng Zhang
Director of Philanthropy
Biheng is deeply committed to the for-purpose sector, professionally and personally. She has built a career forming partnerships and raising vital funds for organisations including the National Gallery of Victoria, The Song Room, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and Prostate Cancer UK. Outside of Pollinate Group, Biheng sits on the board of contemporary art gallery Linden New Art, and is a committee member of Lengo Football Academy.
Roopa Dwarkanath
Head of People and Culture
Roopa has a degree in Nutrition and Dietetics and over 9 yrs of experience in HR and Training. She heads the People and Culture team at Pollinate Group. Her passion to work with underprivileged women and create a positive impact, lead her to explore a career in the social sector. Prior to Pollinate Group, she worked with companies like Dell, Deutsche Bank and Cerner Corporation in consultative and full-time roles. She is dedicated to creating a culture of positivity and growth and is passionate about skills enhancement and development of people.
Veena Soppimath
Technical Project Manager
Veena has a degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering and more than 18 years of experience in the software development industry. Early in her career she worked in government software and banking projects and was a part of a Centre of Excellence. She transitioned to cloud analytics and specializes in database security. Veena is focused on making technology simpler for end users and making applications fail-safe. She leads an all-women team and has also been a regular volunteer in CSR projects involving special needs children.
Global Board of Directors
Scott Watkins
Chair
Scott is the Chief Marketing Officer for KISCO, a Korean chemical company, where he is responsible for new business development and sustainability initiatives. Scott is also a non-executive director and chair of parkrun Australia. Scott has a PhD in Chemistry from UNSW Sydney and spent four years in the UK working for two start-up companies in the area of Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs). Scott then spent ten years working at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, where he was a Research Program Leader in Flexible Electronics. Scott managed both the science and commercialisation of technologies such as flexible solar cells.
Elena Bondareva
Director
Elena Bondareva (MA, BS) is an ardent advocate for eradicating persistent global problems through fusing systems thinking with social innovation and entrepreneurship.
Through research, advocacy and consulting globally, Elena brings tested expertise in catalysing and sustaining step change across organisations and whole industries. Elena uses her extensive experience, working with Boards and Executive teams of prominent Australian and international organisations, to redefine what is possible.
Anya Cherneff
Director and Co-Founder
Anya is the founder of Empower Generation, which merged to form Pollinate Group in 2018. In addition to working with Nepal for a decade, Anya has led programmatic areas including women’s economic and political leadership, energy access, addressing human trafficking and forced labour, as well as rural and youth development. Anya’s experience includes building diversity and inclusion within organizations. She currently manages corporate social responsibility at the American Auto Association (AAA) and holds a Masters of Human Rights (University of Denver) and BA in Anthropology (Columbia University).
Adrian Scott
Treasurer
Adrian is a retired Senior Executive, having spent almost 30 years at Accenture helping public and private organisations apply technology to improve their performance. Adrian led large scale project teams implementing solutions for major clients across a wide range of industries and has worked extensively in Asia, Europe and North America. He established and operates his family philanthropic foundation in honor of his father where he is focused on social impact investing, aligned with his deep and abiding interest in making a positive impact both locally and across the developing world in access to energy and finance, education and health.
Bill Scull
Director
After a 25-year Silicon Valley career as a marketing and strategy executive, Bill pivoted to focus upon mentoring and coaching entrepreneurs. He has mentored executive teams at over 20 African and Asian enterprises. Bill lived in West Africa for eight months mentoring companies at Stanford University’s Innovation Center and mentors Social Enterprises for Santa Clara University’s Miller Center. Bill also coaches teams at Stanford for two Design Thinking courses and mentors companies at Singularity University’s accelerator. Bill has an MBA from Stanford and a Masters in Engineering from MIT.
Board of Directors in India and Nepal
Our Nepal implementing partner Kalpavriksha is a private business owned by one of our Co-Founders Sita Adhikari, and does not require a Board of Directors.
Our India entity is a Pvt Ltd Company, a structure requiring a Board of Directors. See their profiles below.
Padmaja Alaganandan
Director
Padmaja is the Chief People Officer of PwC India. She has more than 25 years of consulting experience in business and human capital advisory across diverse industries. Before joining PwC in 2011, Padmaja worked in leadership roles in organisations including Mercer Consulting and A.F. Ferguson. She has been a member of CII’s National HR Committee, as well as on the Committee on Skill Development. Padmaja is a founding partner of Social Venture Partners Bangalore. She graduated from the University of Madras, and completed post-graduate studies at the Indian Institute of Management Kolkata.
Sudarshan Ananth
Director
Sudarshan started his corporate journey of 30+ years as a plant engineer and became an executive manager driving a $350m, multi-national business with a US MNC. He has also served on the board of various entities which he managed. Sudarshan is a Mechanical Engineering graduate and attended the executive leader program at Duke University. He also completed the Certified Corporate Director program at the Institute of Directors. Sudarshan is proud of his legacy, having built a start-up renewable energy company to a $100m entity in just five years at Wipro. He speaks six languages.
Alexie Seller
Director and Co-Founder
Alexie is an internationally-recognised entrepreneur, social business leader and community development expert. Alexie has held multiple local and international community leadership roles, including Energy Hub Coordinator for Engineers Without Borders. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sydney and worked at Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation as well as AGL. Alexie joined Pollinate Group in 2013 (then Pollinate Energy) as a Co-Founder. Before becoming the CEO in Bangalore from 2016 to 2019 she was the Australian National Manager in Melbourne and the COO in Bangalore.
Ravi Shankar
Director
Ravi Shankar has been a Rural Manager for over three decades. He served as an Executive Director of the National Dairy Development Board. He has also served as the Managing Director of IDMC Limited (Indian NDDB’s subsidiary) and the National Cooperative Dairy Federation of India. He is currently the COO of Amul Dairy.
