Ragini Kathail

Age: 23

Home Town: Palo Alto, CA

Education: BA, Molecular Biology, Pomona College

Specific Field Interests: Science-based public policy, social and environmental justice, global health, food and water security, movement-building, and transformational social change

Placement: Arghyam, Bangalore, Karnataka

Area of Focus: Environment

Highlights: During her time at Pomona College, Ragini created a computer literacy program in a rural Indian village to provide educational and economic opportunities to under-served students at a resource-poor government high school. After graduation, her interest in rural development issues led to ten months of work at the Foundation for Rural Recovery and Development (FORRAD), a Delhi-based non-profit focusing on natural resource management. While there, she documented the state of clean drinking water and comprehensive water conservation projects in rural areas of Rajasthan, Bundelkhand, and Tamil Nadu, with a focus on sustainable development work that created participatory, accountable systems of community involvement. Ragini speaks English, Hindi, and some Spanish.