Diversity and inclusion panels at corporate events tend to recirculate the same familiar names. This list is an attempt to widen that bench. The women documented here have verifiable records in DEI work: they have built internal inclusion programmes, led organisational change, conducted research, founded consulting firms, or advocated publicly for systemic reform. Each profile has been checked before publication. The list spans HR practitioners, mental health specialists, disability inclusion advocates, journalists, policy voices, and financial professionals, because D&I is not a single conversation but a cluster of distinct and intersecting ones. India's corporate diversity conversation has evolved significantly over the last five years. Companies are now being asked to publish data, not just statements. Event organisers are under pressure to reflect their audience on stage. ERG leaders need subject-matter support that goes beyond general awareness. The panelists listed here can provide it. Their backgrounds and speaking topics vary, but all share one thing: they have done the work, not just talked about it. Use this list as a sourcing tool for your next panel, not as a rankings exercise.
1. Arundhati Bhattacharya
Former Chairperson, State Bank of India; Former CEO, Salesforce India
Arundhati Bhattacharya spent four decades at the State Bank of India before becoming its first woman Chairman in 2013, overseeing a workforce of more than 200,000 employees and managing a balance sheet among the largest in global banking. She subsequently served as CEO of Salesforce India, guiding the technology company across the subcontinent. In her speaking work, she addresses women in institutional leadership, the gender dynamics that operate within large public-sector organisations, the compounding effects of structural bias over long careers, and financial inclusion as it looks from inside a bank that services India's underbanked populations. Her framing is structural rather than personal: she speaks about what institutions look like from the inside and what it takes to change them from within. She is among the most cited names in India when conversations turn to women in banking and financial services, and her perspective carries the weight of someone who has been in those rooms for most of her professional life.
2. Naina Lal Kidwai
Former Country Head, HSBC India
Naina Lal Kidwai held some of the most senior positions in Indian banking, including Country Head of HSBC India and Group General Manager at HSBC Asia Pacific. She was the first Indian woman to graduate from Harvard Business School and the first woman President of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. Her speaking work covers inclusive leadership, women in financial services, the governance conditions that allow women to advance rather than exit large institutions, and the intersection of business strategy and public policy. Her D&I-focused talks draw on decades of managing diverse teams inside multinational organisations while navigating gender dynamics at the highest levels of Indian finance. She has also spoken on water governance and sustainable business, areas where corporate responsibility and social equity intersect directly. Her perspective is grounded in long practice inside institutions that were not designed with senior women in mind.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
3. Deepa Srinivasan
Design Project Lead, Magnum Opus Foundation
Deepa Srinivasan is a design professional with over nine years of experience in the creative industry, currently working as Design Project Lead at Magnum Opus Foundation in Bengaluru. She brings a perspective on diversity and inclusion that is specific to creative fields and architecture, areas where women are present in significant numbers at the entry level but underrepresented in senior design leadership and decision-making roles. Her speaking topics include diversity within design practice, women's representation in architecture and the built environment, career progression for women in creative industries, and the ways in which design itself encodes inclusion or exclusion. She speaks from within a professional context rather than as an HR or policy specialist, which gives her talks a particular texture for audiences in creative, architecture, and urban development sectors. She is based in Bengaluru and speaks at events across the country.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
4. Barkha Dutt
Journalist, Founder, MoJo Story
Barkha Dutt is one of India's most prominent journalists, with a reporting career spanning over two decades covering conflicts, elections, disasters, and social movements across South Asia. She is the founder of MoJo Story, an independent media company built on the premise that quality journalism does not require institutional infrastructure. In her speaking work on diversity and inclusion, she draws on her experience navigating gender in a newsroom culture that has historically been male-dominated, her coverage of women in conflict zones and marginalised communities, and her observations about who gets to tell stories and whose stories get told. She speaks on gender equality in media, the economics of independent journalism, accountability and institutional power, and the structures that determine which voices are amplified and which are suppressed. She is particularly effective as a panel moderator or in conversation formats.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
5. Aninda Sidhana
Psychiatrist; National President, WICCI Mental Wellness Council
Aninda Sidhana is a practising psychiatrist and the National President of the WICCI Mental Wellness Council, where she works to integrate mental health advocacy into the organisational and policy mainstream in India. Her intersection of clinical expertise and institutional leadership gives her a distinctive voice in D&I conversations: she speaks on mental health not as a peripheral wellness topic but as a central equity issue, particularly as it relates to women in the workplace. Her speaking topics include psychological safety within organisations, the mental health burden carried specifically by women in professional environments, the stigma around mental health disclosures in corporate settings, institutional responses to burnout and stress, and the relationship between inclusive cultures and employee wellbeing. She brings clinical depth to policy discussions in a way that most D&I speakers cannot. She is available for panel appearances, keynotes, and workshops at corporate events and leadership conferences.
6. Ratnaprabha Sable
Founder and Managing Director, Vividhataa (DEI Consulting)
Ratnaprabha Sable founded Vividhataa, a DEI consulting firm that runs India's Diversity Job Fair and the annual DEI Conference, making her one of the few speakers in this space who has built the actual infrastructure of the inclusion industry rather than commented on it from the outside. Her work spans diversity recruitment, disability inclusion, gender equity programming, and the measurement of DEI outcomes inside organisations. She advises companies on moving from policy statements to practice, and her speaking reflects that orientation: she is specific about what changes and what does not, and why. Her topics include building disability-inclusive workplaces, the business case for DEI as a board-level issue, procurement diversity, and diversity analytics. She speaks from the position of someone who has delivered DEI programmes at scale, which makes her talks operationally useful to HR leaders and D&I practitioners.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
7. Sumaira Abidi
Vice President, Investor Connect, SBI Mutual Fund
Sumaira Abidi serves as Vice President of Investor Connect at SBI Mutual Fund, where she works at the intersection of financial services and retail investor outreach, with a particular focus on reaching women investors across India's urban and semi-urban markets. Her speaking work in the D&I space centres on women and personal finance, the structural barriers that prevent women from building financial independence in India, and what inclusion looks like inside a large public-sector institution with access to a mass retail market. She speaks on financial literacy as a gender equity issue, the investment patterns and constraints specific to Indian women across income brackets, the role of financial institutions in closing the gender wealth gap, and what genuine inclusion of women as investors requires beyond marketing. Her background at one of India's largest asset managers gives her a ground-level understanding of how financial exclusion operates in practice.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
8. Enu Mittal
Director of Technology, Microsoft India
Enu Mittal is Director of Technology at Microsoft India, where she works on enterprise technology solutions and engineering strategy. She brings a dual perspective to D&I conversations: as a senior technical leader at a global technology company, she speaks from within a sector that has struggled systematically with gender representation, particularly at engineering leadership levels. Her speaking topics include women in STEM, building inclusive engineering cultures, AI ethics and its intersection with social equity, career progression for women in technical organisations, and what it takes to retain women in engineering past the mid-career mark where attrition tends to spike. She has spoken at technology conferences and corporate events on the structural changes that produce more equitable outcomes in tech workplaces, drawing on her direct experience managing teams and building products at Microsoft. Her perspective is operational rather than theoretical.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
9. Radhika Mulay
Senior Research Associate, FLAME University Centre for Sustainability, Environment and Climate Change
Radhika Mulay is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Sustainability, Environment and Climate Change at FLAME University, Pune, where her research sits at the intersection of environmental science, water governance, and social equity. Her contribution to D&I conversations is particular and technical: she speaks on environmental inclusion, the ways in which climate disruption and resource scarcity disproportionately affect women and marginalised communities in India, and what a genuinely inclusive sustainability agenda requires at both the policy and corporate level. Her academic background gives her talks a grounding in field research and data rather than advocacy alone. She speaks on water governance, climate adaptation and gendered vulnerability, the environmental dimensions of social inclusion, and what ESG frameworks miss when they treat diversity and sustainability as separate issues. She is particularly relevant for D&I discussions in the context of environmental responsibility.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
10. Sutapa Sanyal
Former Director General of Police, Uttar Pradesh
Sutapa Sanyal served as Director General of Police in Uttar Pradesh, making her one of the very few women to reach the highest rank in the Indian Police Service and to hold a DGP position in one of India's largest and most complex state police forces. Her speaking work draws on that experience: she addresses women in institutional leadership within government and law enforcement, the specific obstacles that arise when women enter organisations built entirely by and for men, the reform of institutional cultures that were not designed to accommodate diversity, and self-empowerment within hierarchical professional structures. She speaks with the authority of someone who has navigated those hierarchies at the highest level and emerged with a clear-eyed view of what changes them and what does not. Her talks carry particular resonance for audiences in the public sector and institutions undergoing cultural transformation.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
11. Mona Cheriyan
Former President and Group Head, Human Resources, Thomas Cook India
Mona Cheriyan spent a significant part of her career at Thomas Cook India, where she served as President and Group Head of Human Resources, overseeing people strategy, culture, and organisational development for one of India's largest travel and tourism companies. Her expertise in HR leadership gives her a precise vocabulary for what D&I work requires at the implementation level: she speaks on building inclusive hiring practices, managing diverse teams across geographic and generational lines, workplace culture design, and the specific challenges of institutionalising inclusion within large, distributed organisations. She is also experienced in leadership development and career coaching, which gives her D&I talks a practical orientation toward what individuals and managers can actually change within their spheres of influence. She brings a practitioner's grounding to conversations that can sometimes remain at the level of principle.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
12. Kiran Bedi
India's First Woman IPS Officer
Kiran Bedi is India's first woman officer of the Indian Police Service, a position she entered in 1972 and in which she became known for institutional reform initiatives, including significant governance and rehabilitation changes at Tihar Jail in Delhi. She later served with the United Nations as its highest-ranking civilian police officer globally. She speaks on gender equality and the particular form of institutional bias that operates in uniformed services and government organisations, leadership development within hierarchical structures, institutional reform and what it actually requires to change large organisations from within, and civic responsibility and public service. She is available through her own agency and tends to draw large audiences across both public and corporate contexts. Her talks on diversity and inclusion in public institutions draw on a career that is itself one of the most visible examples of the subject she addresses.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
13. Priyanka Agarwal
Finance and FP&A Leader, former PepsiCo
Priyanka Agarwal is a finance and strategy professional with substantial experience at PepsiCo, where she worked in financial planning and analysis roles across the FMCG sector. Her speaking work in the D&I space centres on women in finance and corporate leadership, the dynamics of sponsorship versus mentorship for women in typically male-dominated functions, career strategy for women navigating large consumer goods organisations, and the visibility challenges that arise when women work in finance roles that are less public-facing than sales or marketing. She speaks from a peer context rather than as a policy commentator, which makes her effective with audiences of mid-to-senior corporate professionals. She also brings financial literacy to the D&I conversation: the economic case for gender equity in organisations, how inclusion translates into measurable business outcomes, and the concrete levers that produce real change rather than symbolic progress.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
14. Aradhana Lal
Vice President, Sustainability and Inclusion, Lemon Tree Hotels
Aradhana Lal is Vice President of Sustainability and Inclusion at Lemon Tree Hotels, where she leads the company's disability inclusion programme, which has become one of the most cited examples of large-scale disability employment in the Indian hospitality sector. Lemon Tree employs a significant percentage of people with disabilities across its properties, and Aradhana has been central to building the operational and cultural infrastructure that makes this possible at scale. She speaks on disability inclusion in the workplace, responsible hospitality, the business case for employing people with disabilities, the specific training and operational adjustments that make inclusion practical rather than symbolic, and the relationship between sustainability and inclusion as interconnected rather than parallel corporate commitments. She is among the most knowledgeable practitioners in India on disability employment at scale in the private sector.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
15. Shivangi Shrivastava
Corporate Trainer and Career Growth Coach
Shivangi Shrivastava is a corporate trainer and career growth coach whose work focuses on professional development for women navigating career plateaus, salary negotiation, and the transition into leadership roles. She works with individuals and corporate clients on practical skills that tend to be underemphasised in formal education: how to advocate for advancement, how to build visibility in large organisations, how to negotiate compensation effectively, and how to navigate gender dynamics in performance review and promotion processes. Her approach is actionable and concrete; she is not a mindset speaker but a practitioner focused on transferable techniques. In D&I contexts, she speaks on the structural and behavioural factors that prevent capable women from advancing and what companies can do to change that. She has built a presence as a content creator, making her speaking informed by a strong understanding of professional communication and personal branding.
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
About Draupadi on the Dais
Draupadi on the Dais was built on a specific observation: the women doing the most consequential work in India tend to be the least visible on conference stages. This is particularly true in the D&I space, where the panel circuit often privileges recognition over expertise. The Dais model is different. Every profile on the platform is individually verified. No one appears on the basis of application, payment, or prestige alone. The women listed here have been included because their work in diversity, equity, and inclusion is documented and their professional standing is confirmed. If you are sourcing for your next D&I panel, keynote slot, or workshop, this list is a starting point rather than an end point. The full roster of verified women D&I panelists in India, with speaker profiles and booking information, is available on the platform.
Browse the full Women D&I Panelists in India roster on Draupadi on the Dais.
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