A Warm Welcome to the New Program Director for LASER PULSE

We are delighted to inform you that Pallavi Gupta has joined us as Program Director for LASER PULSE as of April 1, 2021.

Born and brought up in Uttar Pradesh India, Pallavi comes to LASER PULSE with more than 14 years of experience having worked across engineering, management consulting, social entrepreneurship and international development fields with public, private and academic institutions. Most recently, Pallavi served as the Program Director of the Shah Family Global Innovation Lab in Purdue’s Global Engineering Programs and Partnerships Office. In that role she coordinated and managed 28 projects in more than 17 countries across focus areas including humanitarian response, disaster preparedness, health, clean energy and environment, agriculture and food security, and education. Prior to that, Pallavi founded her own social enterprise in India managing the scaling of projects in agriculture, health, women empowerment, financial inclusion, youth employability, education, and clean energy, in partnership with the Government of the State of Uttar Pradesh, and served as a member of the State’s Innovation Council. She has also worked as a management consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in London where she worked across private and public sector clients, including DFID, UK Govt’s Dept of Education, Home Office, where she encouraged innovation and research in the use of technology and non-technology approaches to support open, responsive government and citizen engagement. 

Pallavi holds an MA in Sustainable International Development (Brandeis University), a MSc. in Management Information Systems (London School of Economics) and a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Science from V. T. U. India. Pallavi is also an Ashoka Fellow. 

As the Program Director for LASER PULSE, Pallavi has the responsibility of the overall management and coordination of all project activities and staff to ensure timely and high-quality completion of activities and deliverables. She will also work closely with the LASER academic leadership in establishing and executing programmatic strategies across thematic areas and consortium partners. Pallavi  will have the principal responsibility for representing LASER PULSE to USAID and will work closely with the USAID Agreement Officer Representative (AOR) to strengthen partnerships with other USAID Missions/Bureaus/Independent Offices and other international and national organizations.

Please join us in welcoming Pallavi to the LASER family, 

Arvind Raman, Director of LASER PULSE