Anupama Pain is a learning designer, curator, and institution builder working at the intersection of community leadership development, experiential learning, systems practice, and design thinking. With two decades of experience across India’s civil society ecosystem and management consulting, she has dedicated her work to building socially conscious and ethical leadership through thoughtfully designed learning journeys, action research, and narrative platforms.
For a decade, she has held the role of the cofounder of India Fellow, one of India’s pioneering grassroots leadership programs for youth, where she anchored the design and execution of learning, partnerships and ecosystem nurturing. While building a lean, value-driven institution focused on deep impact, the India Fellow community comprises of over two hundred and fifty fellows and fifty partner organizations and mentors, and continues to work at the intersection of learning, problem solving and social reflection.
Anupama’s practice spans program design and facilitation, research-informed inquiry, storytelling and curation, knowledge management and online learning platform design, and commune building. She has also led and contributed to multiple impact studies, including work on microfinance action research, silicosis policy impact, women’s empowerment, and the design of e-learning programs for large public systems such as NRLM.
Currently, Anupama leads Chabutra, an ethnographic and cultural storytelling platform, as its lead curator.
PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATION
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Mumbai University, 2006
- Leadership Essentials Centification (Harvard Online School), 2010
- Systems Practice and Human-Centered Design Certification (+Acumen), 2018-20
- Introduction to Social Anthropology Certification (Oxford Lifelong Learning), 2024
- Early career in technology and consulting at Hexaware Technologies and US-Deloitte, 2006-10