Our Team

Dr. Shyam Bishen is currently Head of Healthcare at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland. Previously, he was a regional director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in USA. Before joining the non-profit sector, he held several senior executive roles across the broader healthcare industry in the US, in which he was most recently responsible for strategy, business development, and expansion in emerging markets as a vice president at Merck. Prior to joining the private sector, Dr. Bishen was in academia and served as an Assistant Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Dr. Bishen is qualified with a Doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Newcastle and an MBA in management from Washington University in St. Louis. He has also received leadership training at Harvard.

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Dr. Bishen is truly passionate about children's education. In 2006, he co-founded Global Ambitions Trust for Education in India. Dr. Bishen has traveled to more than 75 countries and observed the desperate need to educate underprivileged girls in order to uplift those marginalized societies in developing world.

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Ms. Priya Bishen is a finance executive in New York City, currently working as Investors Relations and Business Development executive at Viking Global Investors. Before joining Viking, Ms. Bishen served as senior vice president (SVP) of client management at PIMCO (Pacific Investment Management Company) and previously worked at UBS in Currency & Commodities Sales & Trading.  She graduated with an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and has a BS from Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics.

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Outside of her career in finance, Ms. Bishen has long been passionate about social impact and helping those in need.  She has enjoyed mentoring young girls through the Big Brother Big Sister program and Riverside Community Center in New York City since 2011. Ms. Bishen is also on the board of Resonate which provides leadership workshops that allow girls in Rwanda to  fulfill their potential. 

Mrs. Sangeeta Singh is currently working as a principal of a primary school in UP, India. She earned a Master of Science degree in Microbiology from Bundelkhand University, Jhansi and also holds a Bachelor of Education degree from C.C.S. University, Meerut.

 

Mrs. Singh has more than 6 years of experience of teaching children in a low resource setting and has a keen eye for identifying underprivileged bright kids and guiding them.

 

Mrs. Singh is always pleased to work with needy, poor girls who are neglected by the society. She has been involved with GGSF from very early days.

 

Mrs. Singh worked as a microbiologist in corporate sector in Delhi for many years before taking up teaching.

As the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Medable, Dr. Michelle Longmire is mission-driven to accelerate the development of new therapies for disease.

 

A Stanford trained physician-scientist, Dr. Longmire founded Medable to pioneer a new category of clinical trial technologies that remove traditional roadblocks to participation and radically accelerate the research process. Medable is now the industry leader in decentralized and direct-to-patient
research, with the ability to serve patients in over 120 languages, 60 countries, and across all therapeutic areas.

 

In addition to having raised over $500M in venture capital and driving Medable to
an industry-leading position, Dr. Longmire has received recognition as a leading innovator and businesswoman, including being named as one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company.

 

Dr. Longmire is also an educationalist with over 20 years of experience in international development in progressive leadership roles. She is very passionate about girls education andgender equity.

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Betty Lee Patch, MA, M.Ed., is a professor in the Augustine and Culture Seminar Program at Villanova University and teaches ancient philosophy, history, and literature. Her career and passion as an educator spans more than 30 years. She has served as an international consultant on curriculum design for schools in China as well as for schools in Vietnam.  She currently serves on Global Interdisciplinary Studies Committee, the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, the Intergroup Relations Committee and chairs panel discussions. 

 

Professor Patch’s current research involves examining different pedagogical approaches to increase awareness on race and racism, intersectionality, and equity in education both nationally and internationally.

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Catherine Birir Tanui is a Senior Headteacher of a public primary school under the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Service Commission in Kenya. She heads Unity Primary School in Nairobi which accepts over 2500 students and employs at least 50 teachers and administrative workers. 

 

Catherine boasts over 30 years’ experience in primary and secondary school education. Within this time, she has been an overall head of institution of two schools in Nairobi. She is charged with enrollment, curriculum implementation, and staff management responsibilities, liaising between the schools’ boards, national and county education ministries, and implementing education policies and innovations that enhance effectiveness of education delivery.

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Catherine has a background in Education, graduating with First Class Honors from the Kenyatta University in Nairobi. She has done further studies in educational psychology, administration and policy and ICT in education, and has been selected for training and benchmarking workshops in China and the United Kingdom.

Dr. Chikondi Lisimba Mpokosa is an Educationalist with over 20 years of experience in international development in progressive leadership roles.

 

Dr. Chikondi brings real experience in the education and gender sector and conveys a wealth of experience managing programs across multi-countries and within organizations in international development in a variety of areas, including education and gender equality. Originally from Malawi, Dr. Chikondi has gained tremendous experience from her development work in over a dozen low and middle-income countries.

 

Dr. Chikondi recently completed working with UNICEF Nigeria. She has previously served as the National Advocacy Manager for the Malala Fund. She has also worked as the Global Program Director for "Women and Girls".

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Dr. Chikondi holds a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Malawi, a Master of Arts in education, gender and international development from the University of London and a Doctor of Education degree from Commonwealth University. She lives with her family in Oxford, UK.

Mrs. Indira Bishen was most recently the chairwoman of the Global Ambitions Trust for Education. She has a diverse set of work experience, from serving for the New Jersey State Government in the social services sector to working in corporate America as a financial/accounting analyst. Mrs. Bishen earned a Master of Science degree in Management of Information Systems from Kean University and also holds a Bachelor of Science degree from State University of New York. 

 

Mrs. Bishen is deeply concerned by the current lack of financial and other resources needed to provide education and training for poor girls in India and other developing countries she has traveled to. This realization has led her to join hands with the chairman to start the Global Girls Scholarship Foundation.

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Mrs. Chimwemwe Likonge is a Malawian mother with a diploma in rural and community development which she obtained in 2009 from ABMA, UK. She went to Bakhita College in Balaka, Malawi.

 

Mrs. Likongwe is working with Youth Action for Sustainable Development as Project Officer since 2019. She has also worked with the Adolescent Girls Literacy organization as a project supervisor where she helped out of school youths, from 2009 to 2017. Previously, Mrs. Chimwemwe Likongwe worked as a Primary School Teacher from 1996 to 2004 in Malawi and is passionate about educating underprivileged girls.