India, Nepal and Sri Lanka

Vanita Nayak Mukherjee

Program Officer New Delhi

Vanita Nayak Mukherjee's work focusess on sexual and reproductive health and rights of adolescents from Ford's New Delhi office. Her grant making focuses on supporting civil society initiatives that work toward positive policy and programmatic outcomes for the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young women living in poor and marginalized communities where iniquitous gender relations are common.

Before joining the Ford Foundation in 2006, Vanita worked with women's groups for 24 years in South and Southeast Asia. She was the South Asia regional coordinator for Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), a global network of activists and researchers working on cutting-edge issues and feminist analysis of globalization, sexual and reproductive health rights, governance and the environment. She also worked for the Asia Pacific Development Center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as a researcher on population and reproductive rights.

Vanita has participated in several United Nations conferences as a social advocate for the rights and empowerment of women in global policy. She was awarded a fellowship by the MacArthur Foundation in 1995.

She holds a master's degree in gender studies from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and a bachelor's degree in biology from India.