Inspiring Women Fall 2018

decide FMCH’s future. We put together a team of women, brought in a capacity-building nonprofit
to help with the transition and spent almost a year laying a foundation, developing a
strategic plan and bringing in experts to help us develop the best methods to achieve the
refocused mission and vision of the organization.
Over the course of the next five
years, we steadily built FMCH. A
key element of our longer-term
strategy was to wean FMCH off a
hands-on managing committee
and hand it over to a strong
Executive Board and an even
stronger CEO. Since I had been
the Committee Chair from the
beginning, I needed to step away
to let this happen successfully. We
hired an interim CEO on contract,
whose job was to find candidates
for the Executive Board and
groom a salaried CEO. I stayed on
in a less visible role as an advisor to
the new Board, and in 2016 joined
the Executive Board as Board
Chair. Today FMCH has 60
employees and reaches more
than 750,000 beneficiaries and a
2.5 Crore budget.
I realize that by focusing on the first 100 days of a child’s life, FMCH is challenging current Indian
medical and social practices - myths and beliefs that can cause a child in India to never reach
his or her full potential. We are creating a change that can last generations. My focus at FMCH
has been to make the knowledge about nutrition accessible and transferable within the less
privileged communities of Mumbai. Fortunately, today this issue is becoming a major part of the
dialogue within the Government and with other stakeholders. It is good to be a part of this kind
of change.
The first step for me was just to be a volunteer and then to demonstrate through hard work and
the right attitude that I was serious enough to be considered “of value” to an NGO. It took a
few tries, but it worked out. Interestingly, when I look at people who want to volunteer with my
NGO now, I sometimes have the same scepticism
about their commitment and attitude. I shouldn’t be
too critical given the obstacles I faced early on!
My role in the non-profit world from the beginning was
to help create the infrastructure for growth and to
leave the grass roots work to those that have the
knowledge and/or are from the communities where
we work. In order to achieve our goals at FMCH, we
needed to be a professionally run organization that
would attract the best and the brightest staff, donors
and supporters. Along with a great committee in the
beginning, and today with an amazing CEO, the
senior staff and Executive Board, I feel we have
achieved this.
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