Dasra appoints Smarinita Shetty to lead partnership with USAID and Kiawah Trust

Philanthropy foundation Dasra recently appointed Smarinita Shetty to the position of Director to lead the Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn Child Health and Adolescent Girls vertical. In her role at Dasra, Smarinita is responsible for fostering and leading investments for the $14 million initiative that addresses maternal & newborn child health. This is being done by Dasra in collaboration with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and The Kiawah Trust of U.K.

Approximately 67,000 mothers die each year from complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Almost half of children in India under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition, with about 70 percent of these children suffering from anemia. Smarinita will address these significant issues of maternal and child mortality.Neera Nundy, partner and co-founder of Dasra said, “Over the next 5 years, the Alliance aims to forge strategic partnerships in the maternal, child health and adolescent girl empowerment space and build a multi stakeholder ecosystem in India. We are excited to have Smarinita leverage her expertise, skills, networks and passion to create social impact at scale in India.”

Smarinita was a senior practitioner at Monitor Inclusive Markets and leads the unit’s Impact Sourcing initiative. In her last assignment, Smarinita was a core member of the affordable housing team with direct responsibility for facilitating the increase of housing supply and managing relationships with signature clients. She has over 15 years of experience leading and managing functions across operations, sales and business development, largely in start-up environments. "I believe that Dasra's maternal, child health and adolescent girl empowerment mission has the potential to create large scale and long term social change," said Smarinita.

Smarinita was earlier Vice President at JP Morgan where she managed the firm's investment banking research operations in Mumbai. Prior to JP Morgan, she co-founded Netscribes, a third party research outsourcing firm. She subsequently went on to become actively involved with Magic Bus, a non-profit that works with at-risk children in Mumbai. Smarinita has a BE in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai and a Masters in Management Studies in Finance from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies.

We caught up with Samrinita to understand in depth her priorities in her new role and her thoughts on entrepreneurship & social enterprise. Read in detail on Social Story.