TARINI MISRA
Tarini is a student of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IBDP) in Grade 12, and the Chairperson of the Student Council, at the Bombay International School. She has multi-disciplinary academic interests that span across Biology and Genetics, Global Politics, and Business Management. She is also a passionate and gifted dancer who has trained for over thirteen years, in Kathak, and subsequently, more than ten Western styles of dance including Ballet, Jazz, Contemporary, and Tap. In 2024, she completed the Professional Dance Certificate Program (PDCP) from Ashley Lobo’s renowned school, the Danceworx Performing Arts Academy. Tarini also enjoys Singing and various forms of Visual Art.
Over the last 6 years, empowerment of women and girls has become a key purpose for Tarini.
At age 7, Tarini decided to forego birthday presents, asking friends & family to contribute to gifts for children at the NGO instead. This became a regular practice for her, and through her inspiration, for her younger sister too. She was just over 12 in 2020, when she learnt that a staggering 23 million girls in India drop out of school due to lack of menstrual hygiene resources. It broke her heart. She initiated a campaign to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity & the Alpha Urbane Project, in their mission to build facilities for menstrual health in schools. She conducted art & dance workshops for younger children, contributing the proceeds to this cause, and also collected money through crowdfunding. Through her passionate efforts and support from her parents, friends & family, she collected Rs.3,97,000.
In 2021, Tarini got an opportunity to intern with XL4W, on the up! SURGE program, to develop women leaders for the C-suite. This introduced her to the challenges faced by even educated, corporate women in their professional journey, and possible interventions that can help. Tarini continued to intern with, up! SURGE every year thereafter, and in late 2024, she decided to apply her learnings to design a development journey for teenage girls from underprivileged backgrounds - to help them proactively address these challenges early in their lives. Since Jan 2025, she has been executing this with a group of girls at St Catherine of Siena School and Orphanage, through weekly sessions focused on Career building, Life-skills, Arts-based development and Well-being.
DIYA KAPUR MISRA
Diya is a Leadership Impact Advisor and Coach, and a Champion for Diversity and Inclusion. After graduating with honours in Economics from Delhi University, and earning a Double Gold Medal from XLRI Jamshedpur in 1999, she joined Hindustan Unilever. She then went on to work with Hewitt Associates and Cadbury/ Kraft Foods, and became a Partner in Korn Ferry’s Leadership Advisory practice. In 2016, Diya became an entrepreneur, partnering with companies across industries on their leadership & talent needs. Over her career across business HR, consulting and leading her own venture, THE POWER OF i, she has impacted 2600+ leaders from 46 organisations. Diya has been passionate about enabling women’s education and empowerment since she stepped out of home, and realised the lack of equal opportunities and treatment that half the world’s population has to face.
Right from her first salary, Diya began contributing financially to the education of underprivileged girls, contributing significantly to Project Nanhi Kali of the KC Mahindra Educational Trust. As time went on, she sought and created opportunities to volunteer her time, skills and experience to do more, to shift the needle for gender equity, and access of girls and women to growth opportunities. Her work since 2021, leading up! SURGE, the C-suite Development program for women, by XLRI’s Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership, and XLRI for Women (XL4W), is an example of this. Diya is passionate about coaching women to dream bigger, overcome self limiting beliefs, and realise their potential. She designs and facilitates leadership development programs for her clients, to nurture inclusive leadership, and build organisations that can be systemically and culturally more equitable. Diya believes that to be a consistently high growth organisation needs continuous innovation, which is spawned by building a diverse talent pool, and actively leveraging their complementary strengths, through inclusive structures and practices. In her words, “Inclusion and Leadership are two sides of the same coin”
Diya also serves on the Advisory Board of two social purpose organisations: Child in Need Institute (CINI) and Ashraya Initiative for Children (AIC), both of which work extensively with women and children. In the last few years, Diya and her family have been routing all major instances of their personal and social gifting (weddings, anniversaries, milestone birthdays and festivals), towards sponsoring the education of girls. They hope that this will inspire their friends and family, in whose name the sponsorships are gifted, to also do the same.
