Samjhana has been working in the field of social entrepreneurship, social innovation, and social enterprise development for over 15 years. Currently, she is working as a senior advisor for Ashoka’s Global Venture Program, and advising women led social enterprises in Asia including Japan.
At Ashoka, Samjhana previously led the venture program managing search and selection process of Fellows globally, and started new country programs in Turkey, Nepal and Pakistan. later she served as a director of Global Fellowship Program to support a community of over 2000 Social Entrepreneurs and their organizations in over 40 countries to ensure sustainability of their work through collaboration, partnership, and impact investment. Prior to Ashoka, Samjhana worked at the World Bank’s Development Marketplace Program (DM), a flagship grants program for innovation market based solution. Working in partnership with Private sector and Government, Samjhana successfully managed regional and country specific innovation competitions for the first time in Central Asia Region and the Philippines to address local development challenges. Samjhana holds BS from University Vermont and Kansai Gaidai and Master in International Public policy (MIPP) from Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She serves as an executive board member for Japan based non-profit World in Tohoku. Samjhana lives in New York City with her husband and two young daughters.