SPRING 2004 • VOLUME 9, NUMBER 1
Kavita Ramdas '85 Helps Girls
and Women Build New Lives
by Investing in Their Dreams
and Women Build New Lives
by Investing in Their Dreams
When Kavita N. Ramdas '85, president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, says that standing with women who are making peace, challenging injustice, and creating change is the organization's everyday work, she means it literally. During her eight-year tenure, Ramdas has supported South African domestic workers in their fight for minimum wage and unemployment rights, empowered teenage girls in Uganda to denounce the brutal rite of female genital mutilation, and helped inspire more than 3,000 women to run for political office in Cambodia. In 2003, the Mount Holyoke trustee visited groups of women and girls in Ghana, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Afghanistan. This year she will meet with women from Sierra Leone, Ukraine, Cambodia, and Iran.Born in India, Ramdas was drawn to social work as a teenager and dropped out of college to volunteer at a small farm in the Indian state of Bihar. Thinking it was the best way she could help the poor, she worked, separating wheat from chaff, until an elderly farmer offered her some life-changing advice. "He told me to go use my education and compassion to make a bigger difference. He urged me to tell the world about his community's struggles," she recalled. "I suddenly understood that the advantages I'd been given could be used to help others on a much larger scale."
Soon after, Ramdas had a serendipitous meeting with Mary Jacob, Mount Holyoke's former dean of international students, who was traveling in India. She remembered being inspired by Jacob, "who made MHC feel accessible and welcoming." Only after she was accepted did Ramdas learn that her mother, a peace activist, had applied to Mount Holyoke many years earlier. "My mom did not go, because her folks would not let her live so far away," Ramdas said. "I was very grateful that my parents had always expected us to excel and be independent. My parents have three daughters, and despite gender biases in India, our minds and ambitions always mattered to them. Attending Mount Holyoke was a natural extension of my upbringing."
As a woman who spends her days demonstrating that investing in women is a strategy that works, Ramdas has the highest regard for Mount Holyoke's mission. She remains grateful for the scholarship that made it possible for her to enroll at the College. And it was the realization that alumnae and other individuals were contributing so that she could have choices and opportunities that sparked her interest in philanthropy.
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations, Ramdas earned a master's degree in international development and public policy from Princeton University. She then spent eight years working as a program officer for the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. Along the way, she married Zulfiqar Ahmad, a longtime peace activist and Hampshire College graduate who works as a South Asia program officer for the University of California at Berkeley's Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development. The couple has a ten-year-old daughter, Mira.
Ramdas met Ahmad at a campus dance three weeks after her arrival at Mount Holyoke. Their unlikely relationship--Ramdas is a Hindu and the granddaughter and daughter of India's highest-ranking naval officers, while Ahmad is a Muslim from Pakistan--reflects Ramdas's commitment to bridging cultures and respecting individual choices.
At the Global Fund, that translates to never assuming what poor and disadvantaged women need. As an example, Ramdas points out that what girls in a war-torn African nation might really need is a van to transport them safely to and from school without the threat of rape. Ramdas's organization allows women and girls to speak for themselves, and accepts grant applications in any language or format. Some requests, she said, have arrived on scraps of paper after traveling for months by post. Any project promoting women's equality and human rights will be considered. Global Fund grants range from $500 to $15,000.
Ramdas is inspired by the grant recipients, girls and women who--despite being deprived of the most basic human rights and sometimes living in situations where they risk their lives daily--still dare to imagine a new world for themselves. "These women give me a huge amount of hope," Ramdas said.
As for believing in her own potential to create change, Ramdas said that that conviction became firmly rooted during her time at Mount Holyoke.
"MHC was life changing in far-reaching ways. It gave me confidence in myself at a time when I was unsure and searching for direction. It opened a whole world of strong women achievers to me, from math professors to crew members who were my dorm mates. It let me choose a wide variety of courses and to revel in learning. And it made me a more open and tolerant person as I made friends with Latina and African American women, out lesbians, and women from countries I had been taught were enemy nations," Ramdas said. "Meeting my husband at Mount Holyoke was wonderful, but it could have happened anywhere. The rest, however, was not accidental--it was a part of what makes MHC so special."
India, Nepal and Sri Lanka
Kavita N. Ramdas serves as the representative for the foundation's office in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, where she oversees all of our grant making in the region. The regional work focuses on issues of equity, inclusion, economic fairness, freedom of expression, human rights, sexuality and reproductive health and rights, transparency and accountable governance, and sustainable development. Kavita also works to leverage relationships with government, civil society and the private sector to advance social justice.
Before joining the foundation in 2012, Kavita served as the founder and first executive director of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship (PSE)—housed at the Centre for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. PSE brings global leaders in social innovation to share their expertise as practitioners with the academic community.
From 1996 to 2010, Kavita served as president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, which grew under her leadership to become the world's largest public foundation for women's rights. During her tenure, the fund's assets increased from $3 million to $21 million—giving women in more than 170 countries access to financial capital that fueled innovation and change.
In addition, Kavita has broadly promoted women's human rights, social justice philanthropy and international development through her membership and professional affiliations on the boards and advisory councils of a diverse array of organizations. She currently chairs the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council for India and serves as a board member at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Kavita has a master's degree in public affairs with a focus on international development from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She holds a bachelor's degree in politics and international relations from Mount Holyoke and academic training from Delhi University. She is fluent in Hindi/Urdu, English and German and is conversant in Tamil, Spanish and French.
Admiral Ramdas heads Transparency International of India. His wife Lila Ramdas looks after Green Peace and comes to AAP meetings to bless all.