In today’s era, people create their own rules, notions, and stories. But the women in our society still live like puppets because the community doesn’t accept them as self-contained. There is a notion that women always need a helping hand to move forward. This is a story of ‘A business working mother-woman” who fought every prejudice and established herself as a famous personality.
Ms. Pragya Pranjali is Executive Director & Principal Scientist. She has worked with the UN for the protection of child rights and supported in achieving SDGs. Pragya is a Public Health Strategic Consultant working on Women, Children, and Adolescent health issues. A post-graduate from India’s top Public Health Management Institute, an ardent learner, a globetrotter who’s addressing salient health missions from 23 states in India and five overseas countries. Till now, she has been involved in several policy discussions organized by the government of India on Maternal and Child Health. She also provides technical assistance, program monitoring, research support, and prepares corporate implementation plans for organizations – such as Pepsi, Relaxo, Piramal, Eicher, ILFS, etc.
Success comes to those who are busy and looking for it.
Being a professional public health and behaviour scientist, her scope of work is ceaseless. From dealing with a simple lady of the remote area to dealing with the CEO of a giant corporate, is the spectrum of people, she works with and from designing a program for a remote location to developing a development advisory strategy for a corporate or foundation, is the bandwidth of her work.
Till now, she has been involved in several policy discussions organized by Govt. of India on Maternal and Child Health. Not only this, but she also provides technical assistance, program monitoring, research support and prepares corporate implementation plans for organizations – such as Pepsi, Relaxo, Piramal, Eicher, ILFS, etc. for intervening on the issues such as adolescent health issues, menstrual hygiene, water and sanitation, anaemia management, nutrition enhancement, etc.
In her working field, she observed that at the time of help, some people choose to stay silent and don’t succour help because of the fear of getting judged by others and the lack of trust. She firmly believes that there’re diverse problems that people, especially, women, children, and adolescents won’t be able to share because of a lack of communication and trust. Just like an eagle needs a push to soar into the sky, some people also need a gentle nudge to move forward. So, to help those deprived souls, she offers space and environment to people where they can talk and vent their unsaid words and feelings.
The current scenario of the pandemic had affected the mental health of the people at large. So, to succor them, she launched a talking corner “Maitreyi,” particularly for adolescents, where they will be able to share their thoughts, concerns, issues through WhatsApp and email.She wants this platform to be a story of bridging and addressing those broken ends between the previous generation and the upcoming generation creating positive deviance.
When problems knock our door, we get a thousand more opportunities to know our hidden strengths.
All her life she feared only one thing “Perception” but also dared to fight with it on her won. She believes that ‘We all are slaves of our perceptions but the sooner we manage them, the better it is. To fight her perceptions, she chose the path of evidence to all the actions to provide feedback. We have heard people taking inspirations from celebrities and successful people but she’s a whole different person who chose movies and web series to be the torchbearer of her life. She takes experiences from the plot and the characters of the story, relate them to herself and try to work on both critical as well as positive feedback.
Pragya is a businesswoman and mother. Even at the time of her pregnancy, she worked to scratch incessantly and took care of the baby. Her hard work and vitality bagged her various awards like the best employee of the year, recognition from corporates for research in public health- nutrition enhancement program for adolescent girls. She has been awarded as Public Health Entrepreneur Award by All India Radio- 2020. She was an active volunteer for CII for 11 Empowered Groups for Covid-19, created by India’s Government. Cohesive- India has appreciated her for contributing to the quality of care of indicators for pregnant women. She is also an associated member of the UN core team to prepare creatives for Census 2021.
