Hi, I am Krathika (Kruh-ti-ka)!

I'm a Programme Manager at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, running a $12M programme called VaxSocial Across India, Indonesia, and Nigeria. Most of my working hours are spent figuring out how to reach children missed by health systems, and how to convince the right mix of governments, international organisations, philanthropies, and platforms to pay for it. Before this I was on Gavi's resource mobilisation team, closing multi-million dollar partnerships with funders across the private sector, philanthropy, and governments.

Before Gavi I was at Simprints, a biometrics-for-health nonprofit. Three weeks into the job I was asked to build a Board of Directors from scratch; two quarters later we had five people from McKinsey, Harvard, Google, Salesforce, and Dimagi around a table in Dhaka, and I had learned that a skills matrix is the most underrated document in the non-profit sector.

I grew up in Jabalpur, a city in central India known to outsiders for the marble rocks on the Narmada and to me for the eighteen years I spent there before leaving for university. At 18 I moved to Delhi to join Ashoka University — India's first liberal arts institution, and now its most established — where I read Economics and International Relations and learned that the most interesting problems usually sit between disciplines rather than inside them.

I'm particularly interested in how organisations fund and govern emerging technologies — particularly AI — within constrained settings. Lately I'm thinking a lot about the responsible, ethical, and equitable use of AI for public health and last-mile health delivery. I'm cautiously optimistic about its role, though if I'm honest, the cautious side probably wins. 

Outside of work, I am an above-average chef, below-average skier, and a pretty decent kayaker. I enjoy hosting, reading (inconsistently), and going on long walks. And no, unfortunately I do not have a nickname.