Our Founding Team
Familiarize yourself with our founding team, responsible for laying the foundation of Ladies Who Lead.
Founding Team
Our Founding Team at Ladies Who Lead - the think-tank, who set the ball in motion.
Aabha Bakaya
Aabha Bakaya is the Founder & CEO of Ladies Who Lead, a premium members-only platform for women leaders, purpose-built to foster their professional and personal growth through shared experiences and cross-disciplinary exposure.
A veteran Business Journalist, Aabha has closely observed the gender biases prevalent in the business landscape. To mitigate the opportunity gaps induced by these biases, she founded Ladies Who Lead in 2021. Her vision is to build a diverse community of veteran and emerging women leaders who can co-create an equitable future for women in the workforce, and speed up meaningful change. After a successful career as a highly-illustrated Business Journalist, News Anchor, Editor, Writer, and Producer, Aabha has recently exited journalism and is now completely devoted towards strengthening LWL as a brand.
Through Ladies Who Lead, Aabha aims to foster a tribe of connections who can exchange a fresh perspective on their decisions and challenges, while enabling themselves to become better leaders. Today, the platform hosts a robust community of 1000+ members from over 30 sectors, which is shaping the narrative for women in leadership. The platform has built a robust presence across 4 major cities: Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Pune, and is poised to expand across the country.
As the Founder of Ladies Who Lead, Aabha firmly believes that women in positions of power can pave the way for other women who aspire to achieve beyond extraordinary, and drive immense impact through incremental actions. With this belief, she has designed LWL as a platform for needle-moving conversations — empowering, engaging, and enabling powerful women leaders, executives and entrepreneurs to grow and succeed through curated learning and networking experiences.
Across her journalism career spanning 2 decades, Aabha has worked as a Senior Journalist and News Anchor with reputed networks such India Today Group, NDTV Profit, ET NOW, and Bloomberg TV India, wherein she has been instrumental in production of various celebrated shows. Reflecting her versatility, some of the shows that Aabha has hosted and produced include Boss’ Day Out, Gadget Guru, E-Inc, and Rising Stars. Aabha is also the recipient of the Business Today award for Best Business News Anchor.
Aditya Ghosh
Chief Mentor at Ladies Who Lead, Aditya is a Business Leader and Co-Founder of Akasa Air. Aditya is currently on the Board of Directors at FabIndia Group, OYO Hotels & Homes, Director at GreenCell Mobility, a pan-India shared electric mobility player, and an Independent Director at Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) International Airport.
He is also the Chairperson of the Social Enterprise Central body of SEWA. SEWA is a member-based organisation of poor self-employed women from the unorganised sector.
Global Advisors
Allison Kimmich
Allison is a transformative nonprofit leader and consultant who has built thriving, diverse organizations and programs in order to advance gender equity. She led the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) for more than a decade and was a consultant and researcher for Indra Nooyi’s bestselling memoir, My Life in Full.
She has special expertise in creating leadership programs for women. She championed the expansion of the Women of Color Leadership Project in her executive director role at NWSA, and she created a leadership program for Barnard’s Pre-College program. She holds an MA and PhD in women’s studies from Emory University.
Laurien Field
Laurien leads Gender and Economic Inclusion for Disruptive Technologies and Funds at the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group). She also leads IFC Startup Catalyst, a program that invests in accelerators, incubators, and seed funds in emerging markets globally to develop nascent venture capital ecosystems. Previously she spent many years leading direct venture capital investments, and investments in private equity and venture capital funds, in Asia, and prior to that making direct equity investments in sub-Saharan Africa. Originally from the UK, she studied at the London School of Economics and began her career in consulting, with a focus on Private Equity, at Ernst & Young where she also qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ICAS).
Meet the team
A group of dynamic and multi-talented individuals, each bringing a unique skill set to the fore, ensuring seamless operations and business functionality.
Deepti Bellad
Head Brand
& Partnership Alliances
Anoushka Khokher
Programming Head
North & South India
Priyam Narayan
Head Marketing
& Communications
Shruti Khandelwal
Head of Community
Delhi NCR
Priyam Wadhwa
Brand Partnerships and Alliances
Alisa Warsi
Associate Manager
Community Engagement
Prerna Mirpuri
Associate Manager
Community Engagement
Daniela Barretto
Community Manager: Operations & Engagement, Bengaluru
Devika Pathak
Head of Community
Mumbai (West)
