Karthik Ekambaram

Co-Founder & Head of Solutions

A Diversity and Inclusion specialist who has completed several seminal projects successfully for various organizations. An MBA, with over 19 years of experience in business analysis, talent strategy and workforce diversity consulting, Karthik has devised flexible working policies and created diversity-ready workplaces for several fortune 500 organizations. Karthik has also co-authored several papers that have been published in Journals of National and International repute. He has been conferred the DIVERSITY LEADERSHIP AWARD by World HRD Congress.

Priya Dayabaran

Senior Vice President, Organizational Development

One of the founder members of Avtar, Priya heads the Organizational Development function. Since joining Avtar in 2000 she has handled multiple roles – Recruiter, Management Representative – ISO, Team Leader and Head of Practice. A true blue Avtarite, her multifarious experience has made Priya a very astute talent strategy consultant & a perfect culture ambassador. She also leads the Centralized Support Function of the Avtar Group.

Eswar Balasubramanian

Senior Vice President, Outreach and Impact

Heading the Outreach Programs at AVTAR Human Capital Trust and project Puthri, Eswar is a Management Post Graduate in Finance & HR from Anna University, with over 17+ years of work experience. Having joined Avtar as a management trainee and now raised to leadership levels, he is a seasoned HR professional with well-honed expertise in handling large Clientele. He has completed a very specialised Leadership certification program from Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode. His indulgence in free coaching classes for the needy and community service has led him to handle his current role with a greater sense of purpose.

Roy Vijayakumar

Vice President, Talent and Infra

Roy started his career at Avtar in system administration and moved on to head the IT Recruitment Practice handling a large team of 50+ recruiters. He has one and half decades of experience in Recruitment & managing the clients. He now managers IT infrastructure and Administration. His Primary areas of responsibility include providing technical expertise in networking technology and hardware, including switches, routers and firewalls. He takes care of the management of services and processes that support the core business of the organisation. He is involved in both strategic planning and day-to-day operations, particularly in relation to buildings and premises.

Dr. Nandini Murali, PhD

Vice President – Learning & Research

Nandini Murali, PhD is a certified life coach, a suicide prevention and mental health activist, author and a communications, and gender and diversity professional. She has a doctorate in Gender Studies, two postgraduate degrees each in English and Psychology, a diploma in journalism and advanced degrees in teaching English as a Foreign Language from the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad, India.

She has written five books, including fiction and nonfiction and is currently working on two other books. Her collection of poetry on love, loss and longing can be found at www.wildlfowerpoetry.com

Veena Mukund

Vice President - Client Engagements

A veteran with over one and half decades of experience in Recruitment, Veena handles the BD & Client engagements for Avtar. In her stint here, she has closed senior positions for clients across industries. Veena now manages the Business development for the Southern & Eastern region of India. Apart from this she works closely with organizations in helping them craft suitable “Second Career Programs for Women” and help them successfully close positions. Veena’s vision in the professional front is to help maximum women get back to work through the various “Career come back programs for women” Avtar is partnering with various Corporate companies.

Anju G Parvathy

Vice President – Research & Solutions, Avtar

A CBSE national topper and a Computer Science Engineer from BITS, Pilani, Anju leads Research based solutioning at Avtar. Working across the length and breadth of workplace culture and inclusion metrics for companies, Anju and her team produces several strategic insights for corporate India. She leads Corporate India’s largest workplace inclusion benchmarking exercises – Avtar & Seramount Best Companies for Women in India and Most Inclusive Companies Index. In her career spanning 17 years, she has co-authored several papers on workplace inclusion and women’s advancement that have been published in Journals of National and International repute.

Shankari Nandi

Assistant Vice President - Client Solutions

A Post Graduate Diploma holder in Public Relations from Bhavan’s College, Mumbai, Shankari has over 20 years of work experience in diverse industries – Printing, Real Estate, etc. She is part of the Sales and BD team and has been working with Avtar for nearly a decade now. She handles Sales, Client Relationship Management and Business Development, managing the Western Region – Mumbai, Pune and NCR. She received the “Extra Miler Award” from Dr. Saundarya Rajesh during the 18th Avtar Anniversary Celebrations @ Chennai.

Lakshmi Vijaykumar

Assistant Vice President - Events & Media Relations

With over 15 years of journalistic experiences in the print media, Lakshmi has worked in leading business dailies – Business Standard in Delhi and The Hindu Business Line in Chennai. At Avtar, she carefully curates the group’s media presence to align with the group’s over-arching vision on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and increasing women’s workforce participation. She spearheads the Events function to conceptualize, form strategies and operationalize the events and conferences at Avtar.

Swetha Lakshmi Narayanan

Assistant Vice President - Talent Acquisition

Swetha Lakshmi is a seasoned talent acquisition leader with 22 years of experience, specializing in leadership hiring, career transitions, and diversity recruitment. With 18 years in recruitment, she has successfully placed 500+ candidates across Business As Usual hiring, Second Career Hiring for women, and Leadership hiring in industries such as Consumer Goods, Retail, Manufacturing, Telecom, BPOs, KPOs, and IT. Passionate about leadership hiring, Swetha focuses on women in leadership and C-suite roles. Her contributions have earned her recognition among the Top 150 Recruiters by IIMJobs, underscoring her commitment to diversity and leadership excellence. She holds a Post Graduate degree in Management from Madras University.

Usha Pillai

Senior Vice President, Recruitment Solutions

Usha has over 30 years of experience spanning several industries--- IT Education, Telecom, Tech support BPO, Accounting KPO, Holidays & leisure and Consulting. She has acquired rich domain experience in HR Consulting and Telecom sectors, Education & Training and Contact Centre operations, by virtue of building the necessary infrastructure, capacity planning, streamlining operations through systems, processes and people to deliver client metrics and organization goals. She has played several roles from being a trainer, CRM specialist, profit centre head, regional head, head of service delivery to being a Chief Operating Officer. She believes in continuous learning, evident in the fact that she completed her MBA with XLRI after 15 years of working and has been certified in MBTI, Strong, and POSH Awareness.

S. Bhanu Kumar

Head - Information Technology

A Technologist with close to 3 decades of hands on experience in Technology relating to Cloud Infrastructure, Automatic Identification & Data Capture (AIDC), Analytics, DevOps, Agile. An industry veteran currently focusing on Giving back to Society. Robust experience around identifying and implementing the right technical solution for any requirement with appropriate due diligence, risk assessment, solution design and implementation. Built multiple Technology Centers of excellence facilitating career progression for individuals and effective solutioning for the Organization. A passionate Trainer, Mentor & Coach with more than 5000 hours of training and still ticking. Bhanu handles anything and everything around Technology at Avtar.

Bhavani Balasubramanian

Chief Strategist – Diversity Evaluation

Bhavani a Chartered Accountant by profession was formerly Partner and Head of Inclusion & Diversity at Deloitte. As the Inclusion Leader at Deloitte, she has lead various D&I initiatives for around 5000 professionals over four years. She has been the Chair Person of Company Law Committees of Assocham, Madras Chamber of Commerce, Hindustan Chamber of Commerce for two respective terms and member of the Audit and Assurance Board at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Amita Kasbekar

Principal Strategist – LGBTQ+ Practice

Amita has over 23 years of experience in the space of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. For the past 11 years, she has worked with Deloitte US India offices, where she led their DE&I efforts. Amita successfully positioned Deloitte among the top 10 Best Companies for Women in India. She has several years of experience leading and influencing all aspects of Inclusion and HR policies as they relate to talent acquisition, retention and advancement. Amita has rich experience contributing to Gender, Disability, cultural, generational, sexual orientation and holistic wellbeing.

Sriram P

Chief Strategist, DEI Transformation, Avtar Group

A post graduate in Production Management, Sriram has around 39 years of corporate experience having worked in Senior Leadership Roles across large MNCs & reputed Indian organizations like Pernod Ricard, UB Group, Shaw Wallace and so on. Superannuated in June 2021 as Executive Vice President, Operations and he was also a former Director on the board of Pernod Ricard India. He was leading All-India Operations to drive Business Results, Formulating Strategy, Key Projects for future growth, driving Procurement efficiency, Capex, Quality Assurance, Consumer centricity, end to end Supply Security to achieve desired Growth both in Top & Bottom-line. He was instrumental in developing seamless cross-functional collaborative processes around operations, planning and delivery to ensure timely availability of quality product against forecasted demand in the most cost-effective manner.