As Manager of Strategic Partnerships, Saisha Srivastava leads the development of the Foundation’s Asia strategy, with an early focus on China and India. She is responsible for creating a framework for a high-level, country approach that includes engaging stakeholders, mapping the political and economic landscape, and managing cross-functional teams within the Foundation to commission data and analytics that inform our strategy.
Saisha has successfully developed and managed projects while holding various roles in operations, strategy and marketing, finance, and financial inclusion research. Prior to joining the Foundation, she worked at the financial advisory firm Z-Ben Advisors in Shanghai, China, helping Fortune 100 companies understand local investment dynamics and capitalize on the Greater China market. Saisha had previously worked for Endeavor’s Fintech division in New York, where she created a benchmark project to pitch potential startups in emerging Asian markets.
Saisha is an experienced entrepreneur. She gave a TEDx talk in 2015 that has garnered half a million views online; founded the educational start-up 20 Days of Rain in 2013, which brought dance classes to 25 blind schools across 7 cities in India; and created Hatch, a peer-to-peer microlending fintech startup, in 2016. While developing Hatch, Saisha worked closely under Dr. Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Prize Laureate, at Grameen Bank in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Saisha also has diverse research experience, having conducted independent field research projects in rural India, China, and Bangladesh. In her research role for the Centre for Studies in International Relations and Development in Kolkata, India during her undergraduate career, she was sponsored by the Ministry of External Affairs, India, to accompany the Indian delegation to China for official negotiations on the Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar (BCIM) trade corridor.
Saisha is based in New York and is fluent in Mandarin, Hindi, and Bengali. She earned a BA in Economics and Chinese from Vassar College.