The Board

Raj Shah, Founder Chairman Raj is the Founder and President of the Nanubhai Education Foundation. Previously, he was a Special Assistant in the US Department of Defense. Raj serves as a reserve F-16 pilot in the United States Air Force where he completed a tour in Iraq. He has also worked as consultant at McKinsey & Co., assisting clients in both the public and private sectors. Raj holds degrees from from Princeton University and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Soros Fellow. On a lighter note, Raj loves traveling through India – on his last visit he survived a motorcycle trip from Delhi to Leh on an Enfield Bullet.

Nita Nehru, Executive Director Nita is the Executive Director of the Nanubhai Education Foundation. Prior to joining Nanubhai, Nita worked as the Director of Marketing for Avana Microinsurance, a start-up social enterprise. She has also served as a consultant to socially-minded organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme and Endeavor in Chile. She holds a B.A. in International Relations and History from Claremont McKenna College and a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. When finding herself with down time, Nita enjoys traveling to tropical destinations and trying as many new restaurants as possible.

Vikram D. Bakhru Dr. Vikram D. Bakhru currently serves as a Director at New York Presbyterian Hospital/The University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell in New York City. While completing his medical studies at The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences, Vik founded the Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children (FIMRC, www.fimrc.org) in 2002. FIMRC is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to providing health care access to children in underserved areas of the developing world. FIMRC now boasts a team of over 3,000 full-time staff and volunteers who work hard to further develop FIMRC’s self-sustainable revenue model and the world’s first non-monetary model of micro-health insurance. Prior to medical school, Vik earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from The George Washington University as part of the Seven-Year Integrated Medical Program. Upon graduation from medical school, Vik pursued a surgical residency in Philadelphia and subsequently earned a Master of Business Administration degree in Health Care Management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his position at NYP and continuing his work with FIMRC, Vik is a Founding Partner and Managing Director of Application Prep (www.applicationprep.com) and serves on the Board of Directors for several organizations including The Nanubhai Education Foundation (www.nanubhai.org) and the American Overseas Medical Aid Association (www.aomaa.org).  

Jennifer Bealer Jennifer Bealer joined the Nanubhai team in 2010 with a focus in health care and international law. Along with her experience in health regulatory compliance, she also advised hospitals regarding proposed health care policies and legislation, and helped clients receive health care coverage from private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. She received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a Master of Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. She is admitted to practice law in New York. Before attending law school, Jennifer spent four years investigating the link between environmental factors and breast cancer as a Research Coordinator for the Harvard School of Public Health. She also received an A.L.M. in Government from Harvard University. Jennifer has B.S. degrees in Biology and Psychology from the Pennsylvania State University.  

Cat Biddle Cat Biddle is a doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University in Comparative and International Education. She received her B.A. in South Asian Studies from Brown University and her M.Ed from Lesley University. She currently serves as the managing editor for the Journal of Research in Rural Education and her research interests concern the role of schools in rural communities both internationally and domestically. Prior to her doctoral studies, Cat served as Nanubhai’s Executive Director and spent two years living in Nanubhai’s partner communities in this role and as one of the first Nanubhai Fellows. Before joining Nanubhai, Cat was a teacher in South Boston with the national non-profit after school program, Citizen Schools.

Hamel Shah Hamel joined the Nanubhai team in 2009. She is currently the Director of Operations at Allscripts Healthcare Solutions. Hamel began her career at GE Healthcare where she worked across several functional areas including engineering, sales and marketing. Hamel holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from McMaster University and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.  

Kandarp Shah Kandarp originally joined Nanubhai in 2009 as the VP of Business Development, and worked on the gala committee, managed volunteers in New York City and worked on projects to increase awareness. Professionally, Kandarp is VP of Business Development at BabyVision, a designer and distributor of infant products. He has extensive experience in small business development and has traveled to rural India frequently over the past decade. Kandarp is currently pursuing his MBA at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and also holds a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University.

Joanne Yoong Joanne is an Associate Economist at the RAND Corporation in Washington DC, where she works for RAND Labor and Population, Health and the Institute for Civil Justice. Her primary research interests are financial and behavioral incentives for health and financial decision making in vulnerable populations in the United States and the developing world, including those in Africa and India. In addition to holding an undergraduate degree from Princeton University, Joanne graduated with a Ph.D in Economics from Stanford University in 2008, where she held the Starr Foundation Fellowship at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. At Stanford, she designed and taught “Development Policy and Practice”, a service-learning Economics course in the paired advanced undergraduates with locally-based organizations to work on collaborative research projects. Prior to pursuing her graduate work, Joanne was a Fixed Income analyst at Goldman, Sachs and Company in New York and London. In Joanne’s travels to India, she has authored papers on gender bias, children’s health, microfinance and local entrepreneurship, but her secret research calling is to really understand the cosmic strangeness of Indian Chinese food.