Sohini Bhattacharya, CEO & President at Breakthrough

Between 1992 and 2000, she worked with Dastkar in Delhi for 4 years, working with traditional craftspeople, identifying their needs and understanding markets, issues in production and the struggle of the craftspeople. In 1996 she co-founded Sanhita, a Gender Rights Centre, in Calcutta, where as a founding trustee she worked on setting the organisation up, creating resource materials on Human Rights and Women’s Rights and modules for training on gender and rights. She joined Ashoka Innovators for the Public, an international organisation focused on creating the field for social entrepreneurship in 2000, where she lead institution building for the organisation in South Asia, ramped up the numbers of Fellows elected, raised awareness and resources, rebuild the 300+ Ashoka Fellowship program and created strategic partnerships. Sohini joined Breakthrough as a consultant in 2010, as the Resource Mobilisation head and helped the organisation scale up its annual budget from 150,000 USD to 2.5 million in 2016. As part of the Global Management Team she also contributed significantly to the strategy for an initial growth phase of the organisation from 2012-2016. At the same time, she also worked as the India Strategy Consultant in a start-up – the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN), an unique platform for and by people interested in Venture Philanthropy, across India, Japan and Greater China. Sohini joined Breakthrough full-time in 2014 and became the CEO when the founder and president decided to step down in 2017. Sohini serves on the advisory board of Dastkar, a national organization working with crafts and craftspeople. She is also a founding trustee of Read India, an organization that sets up libraries for rural communities to kickstart income generation initiatives and also serves on the board of Kolkata Sanved, an organization using the power of Dance Movement Therapy to work with underprivileged populations.