Meet the Team

Azania Imtiaz Patel is a journalist, researcher, and founder working at the intersection of technology, democracy, and culture. She co-leads the India Ghost Project, an anthropological initiative documenting paranormal narratives in urban India, and is building the LIPI Library, an open-source translation library for modern South Asian literature with Equitech Futures. She currently serves as Interim Director of Suffrago India, an AI-powered polling and media platform. She holds a Master's in Public Policy and an MSc in Modern South Asian Studies - and has previously worked at The Economist.

Dhruva Bhat is an entrepreneur and researcher with extensive experience in educational innovation and international development. He co-founded and directs Lumiere Education, a company that delivers advanced extracurricular programs focusing on research, AI/ML, and professional development to high school students worldwide. Under his leadership, Lumiere has reached thousands of students from over 80 countries. In the past, he has helped scale India’s largest debate education nonprofit, the Indian Schools Debating Society, and coached the Indian national team to win the World Schools Debating Championships.

Dhruva graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in economics, magna cum laude and from Oxford University with a Ph.D. in international development as a Rhodes Scholar.

Dr. Kakoli Ghosh works for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and specializes in sustainable agriculture, agrobiodiversity and food security. She is the Chief Technical Adviser, Sustainable Rural Agriculture Development Program of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where FAO is providing technical and advisory assistance for strengthening agricultural productivity, natural resource management and value addition of commodities for rural development. Kakoli has extensive experience in dealing with issues and challenges facing agriculture development around the world. Throughout her career, she was based in the FAO Headquarters in Rome, where she held progressive responsible positions in Plant Production and Protection, Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Strategic Program on Sustainable Food and Agriculture, Partnerships and Cooperation Division. Kakoli completed her Batchelor’s in Botany from Bhagalpur University, Masters in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from G.B Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in India and doctorate in Plant Sciences from the University of Oxford, UK on a Rhodes Scholarship. She has published widely and received several scholarships and awards.

Dr Megha Kumar is Chief Product Officer and Head of Geopolitical Risk at the global cyber consultancy CyXcel, which is a Weightmans business. She has long been a trusted adviser to C-Suite decision-makers in Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies on digital resilience, AI and geopolitics of tech. Within the public sector, she has worked extensively with major governments on national policy and regulations, and various international bodies, including the United Nations, IMF, NATO and the World Bank. Prior to joining CyXcel in 2024, Megha held senior leadership positions at the pioneering geopolitical risk consultancy Oxford Analytica, where she established and led the firm’s Cybersecurity and Technology Practice.  
 
A renowned researcher and writer on technology and gender rights, she has co-authored ‘Global Perspectives on Women, Work and Digital Labour Platforms’ and authored ‘Communalism and Sexual Violence in India:  The Politics of Gender, Ethnicity and Conflict’. She has lectured in history and politics at the University of Oxford, and was a journalist at two major Indian broadsheets.

Anita Mehta is a statistical physicist of complex systems, currently affiliated to the Faculty of Linguistics at Oxford. She has worked
on the physics of the granular state, long- and short-term memory, risk analysis and speech perception, among many other subjects. A Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard in 2006, and a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Oxford in 2018, she loves travelling, languages (she has native fluency in English, French, Bengali, Hindi and Gujarati), writing and western classical music.