Hi, I’m Dhananjay,

My professional journey has taken me across fields—both literal and metaphorical—and into communities where every conversation holds insight, and every challenge is deeply human.

One of the most defining chapters has been my work in Punjab, where I currently lead a project focused on regenerative agriculture and stubble burning reduction. Through Project PRANA, I work closely with agri-entrepreneurs, local farmers, and institutions to promote climate-smart farming practices that protect both livelihoods and the environment. It’s a vast landscape—six districts, over 1,600 entrepreneurs, and 850+ villages—and I get to navigate it alongside a team of dedicated field staff, technical experts, and local partners. The work ranges from high-level coordination with universities and government departments to on-the-ground problem-solving with farmers facing daily uncertainties. It’s demanding, but the kind of demanding that makes you feel alive and accountable.

Before this, I worked on a powerful initiative to support rural women entrepreneurs across 12 states. Through a skilling and entrepreneurship program designed for tailors and artisans, we built a digital learning model that reached more than 3,000 women. Many of them were stepping into a training space—virtual or physical—for the very first time. My role involved everything from project design and monitoring to communications and behavior change. What stayed with me was not just the scale, but the personal transformations—women who started out hesitant and emerged with confidence, clarity, and control over their own livelihoods.

Not long before that, I had the opportunity to manage a ₹50 crore CSR-funded agribusiness project in Rajasthan, aimed at strengthening rural livelihoods through enterprise creation and value chain development. Working with over 36,000 families, we supported farmer-producer organizations and microenterprises, linking them to markets and institutions while navigating everything from weather challenges to supply chain shifts. I found myself learning as much from conversations with sugarcane growers and dairy farmers as I did from strategic planning sessions with university researchers and district officials.



Earlier in my journey, I spent four years working in the heart of Punjab with an organization focused on sustainable agriculture and women’s empowerment. I helped form organic FPOs, led community mobilization efforts, and worked closely on campaigns tackling stubble burning. We built MIS systems to track our progress, developed knowledge-sharing frameworks, and raised funds for a women-led initiative that revived traditional crafts and turned them into viable, dignified income sources. It was here that I first began to understand what community-led development really looks like—not as a concept, but as something living and breathing.

My exposure to systems-level thinking deepened further during my time with a UN agency in Punjab. Working on resource mobilization and partnerships, I helped build bridges between state departments, development institutions, and rural communities. I supported project proposals, co-designed dashboards for monitoring SDG progress, and even authored a report on strengthening collaboration between academia and the public sector. It was my first real experience operating inside government frameworks, and it taught me how policy and practice can—when aligned—move entire ecosystems forward.

Through these years, across roles and regions, what has stayed constant is my approach: listen carefully, act practically, and stay grounded in the people I serve. I’ve worked in fields, led consultations, reviewed data, built coalitions, and trained entrepreneurs—but at the core, I’ve simply tried to connect the dots between need and opportunity, voice and visibility, challenge and change.