10 Kickass Indian Women Who Inspired Me To Live Better In 2017

Going into 2018, here's looking back to 2017 with immense gratitude at women who inspired me and gave me strength to get up, dress up, and get going even on bad days!

Going into 2018, here’s looking back to 2017 with immense gratitude at women who inspired me and gave me strength to get up, dress up, and get going even on bad days!

Introducing 10 women who at various points in 2017 gave me a reason to be proud of being a woman.

Arti Dogra

Born to an educationist mother and a defence officer father, Arti Dogra truly has imbibed the best of both. Fiercely gritty and absolutely sure of her actions, Arti is a force to reckon with.

With early education at Welham’s, Dehradun, she entered the Indian Administrative Services. As DM & Collector in Bikaner, she played an instrumental role for making the district Open Defecation Free.

Her leadership in whatever role she acquires is exemplary and she carries out each task at hand with meticulousness and dedication no matter how daunting.

Mimamsa Singh Tanwar

Mimansa Singh Tanwar is a Clinical Psychologist with the Department of mental health and Behavioural Sciences, Fortis Healthcare. She is a cognitive behaviour therapist working extensively with children & adults with Mental Health related issues. Motivated by her parents to study psychology, she discovered her fascination to understand and analyze human dynamics.

During her study years, her exposure to mental health issues and the struggle with it grew her passion for the field. She strongly feels the need for people to talk and create much needed awareness about mental illnesses, which are on the rise. She believes it is important that as a community we break the stigma & silence of suffering with mental illness, and acknowledge its existence like any other illness.

Isha Pant

There are people who are known by virtue of their position and then there are ones who are known for their person! An enigmatic personality, yet sans the false pride that functional salutes may pump into one, meet Isha Pant.

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She is a 2011 batch IPS officer who was originally on the Madhya Pradesh cadre, but is now the jewel of Karnataka cadre. Adjudged the best all rounder probationer at the National Police Academy, she didn’t allow that to go into her head, and has been a consistent out performer throughout. Her impeccable policing style was also played by tinsel town Priyanka Chopra in the recent Prakash Jha’s movie Jai Gangajal.

Ambika Dabral

She took the road less travelled. Equipped with a Masters in Mathematics from St. Stephens College, it did need some explaining as to why she would choose Disaster Management as a career i.e. as a choice! It takes courage to follow one’s dreams but she says it’s easy when your parents support you. With a silver medal in Disaster Management she is living her dream of being a Disaster Management Professional! She hopes and strives to build disaster resilient communities and recognises that each one of us have significant role to play towards it.

Jhilmil Brekenridge

Jhilmil, is a poet, writer and activist. Her poems worry about issues of feeling lost in a changing world, the immigrant or foreign experience, love and loss and longing, and nostalgia for times gone by. She is passionate about issues of women, disability, and mental health and is involved in writing and advocacy in this field. She is the Founder of Bhor Foundation, an NGO in the field of mental health advocacy and using poetry as therapy. She is also Editor, The Woman Inc., an initiative highlighting women’s issues.

Jhilmil herself is a survivor of abuse and incarceration and has spoken out about her experiences in the hope that her story may inspire others. Her story has recently been made into a documentary by an NGO in Kolkata and is titled Come With Me.

Rashmi Chowdhary

A product of NIFT Delhi, she taught at NIFT, Kolkata for more than 15 years and trained the likes of Sabyasachi Mukherjee. However, over a period she realised that as a designer she also has a social and moral responsibility to protect the Handloom artisan community. From this passion took birth her venture called “Sari Ki Almari”, through which she is committed to promote Handlooms and transfer rightful benefits to the deserving artists. She also loves to create embroidered murals and has created a lovely dozen.

Akanksha Redhu

An ace fashion blogger, she is harbinger of what we call the “new order of the world”. Defying all norms of a commonplace job scenario she has been an alpha even before the word “start-up” caught up in vogue. She is this uber chic, dream like talent packed in the best possible arrangement.

She candidly writes about fashion trends, hospitality and wellness along with excellently curated travelogue. What defines her is her originality in every sense and her boldness to defy what she thinks ain’t relevant over the set order. Her extremely well curated blog and social media sojourns are visually delightful packets of information. No wonder she has won several awards and accolades in this sphere and continues to remain the undisputed queen of the domain.

Shagun Singh

She did her MBA in Finance and Marketing with dual specialization and then worked for over a decade with different MNCs across sectors, leading the marketing, sales and operations teams nationally.

But soon it all started becoming so obvious to her that in the name of development we’ve actually lost all the invaluable wisdom and sheer genius in all fields, be it agriculture, culture, medicine, science. And by further removing ourselves from nature, we are transforming into dispassionate beings. Everything just comes from the supermarket at a great cost to humanity and the environment. It is thus, Geeli Mitti was born.

What started as her personal journey of living a sustainable life growing her own food, canning and preserving, building an energy efficient off-grid natural house, soon turned into a learning and training centre, a centre working towards converting a village into an eco community and promoting organic farming and eco tourism.

Esha Pandey

A mother, a kickass cop and an author- Esha wears several hats with élan. Currently heading Delhi Police’s Special Unit for Women and Children she never minces her words about social evils and how she cracks her whip on that. She is a loving and doting mother n writes on varied topics of social and literary importance. She continues to inspire women in and out of her fraternity

Devhuti Bakshi

A trained classical singer, recipient of a Ministry of Cultures scholarship for her love and talent in Kathak dance form, she is not just a performing artist but also an avid supporter of dying classical art forms.

She has been committed to policy reforms and good governance by virtue of her interest as well as training. She had worked with reputed organisations like KPMG, EY and Trident and has rendered strategic support to government organisations and ministries for the same.

Devhuti is also an empanelled Expert with ADB on its panel of experts for promoting FDI into India from the People’s Republic of China, focusing on the MSME sector. She has conducted several knowledge sharing workshops in China, educating the investors about the investment ecosystem in India. Recipient of several awards for her work, Devhuti continues to champion the cause of women empowerment in the Trident Group, where she has been involved with CSR efforts at the grass root level to help women earn a livelihood through skill development.

Images source: Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Facebook

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Tamiyanti Chandra

Career Bureaucrat/Mother/Wife/ Workhorse/Hedonist writing under the pen name Tamiyanti Chandra read more...

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