Shibani Sachdeva has 20+ years of senior management experience including 10+ years of CEO experience. Entrepreneurial by nature and able to see the ‘bigger picture’, a strategic planner with proficiency in devising strategy for start-up for non-profits, positioning and establishing the non-profit amongst the top leading non-profits in the country, Shibani has an excellent record of taking up challenging assignments initiating and leading turnaround growth strategies in complex environments and delivering sustainable solutions for growth and social impact.
Currently, Shibani Sachdeva serves as the Regional Director of Positive Planet India (erstwhile Planet Finance India) having returned to the organization after having started it more than a decade earlier. At Positive Planet Shibani’s main focus is to assist the microfinance sector leverage the power of technology for accelerating the pace of financial inclusion. Capacity building of organisations working in the financial inclusion space, agricultural value chain and building a sustainable water positive Maharashtra are some of her other key areas of focus.
Prior to re-joining PlaNet Finance India Shibani served as the National Corporate Social Responsibility Manager of the world’s largest cement manufacturer-Lafarge and spearheaded Lafarge’s community development initiative across the 6 states of Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Rajasthan and West Bengal in India. At Lafarge, Shibani built and launched the national CSR strategy which including the launching of the Lafarge India Foundation. Her tasks involved building a company wide systematic process as CSR was being taken to the next level in the company and this involved introducing and managing change at the local factories and greenfield sites. Leading change also included conceptualizing new CSR programs under the pillars of Health, Education, Employability, Environment.
Prior to leading the Lafarge CSR strategy, Shibani spent 5+ years successfully launching and spearheading the scaling up of United Way to a position of leadership in India. United Way Mumbai is a part of United Way International, amongst the largest charity networks in the world. Shibani worked closely with a board of 13 CEOs of leading corporates such as AIG, Citigroup, Ernst & Young, JP Morgan, Jasubhai Group, Mahindra & Mahindra, Morgan Stanley amongst others. Her core focus at United Way was partnering with the corporate sector for community development. At United Way, Shibani successfully pioneered the launch of Payroll Giving in India a format of community support that most corporates in India recognize today and have adopted to benefit several hundreds of NGOs across India. Through her leadership United Way’s corporate giving and payroll giving programs were supported by leading corporates such as Accenture, AIG, Bank of America, Colgate, Castrol, Citibank, HSBC, JP Morgan, Kodak, Kellogg’s, LG, Samsung amongst several others.
Shibani Sachdeva also led the strategic partnership of United Way as the Charity Partner of the Mumbai Marathon a city-wide large scale charity supporting event, thus successfully positioning United Way as a gateway partner NGO to over 200 non-profits in India.
Post the Tsunami in December 2004, Shibani Sachdeva led the United Way Disaster Management team in India and spear-headed the rehabilitation of over 500 Tsunami affected families across 12 villages by re-building villages addressing livelihoods needs as well as re-building schools. The state of the art English medium Samsung School of Hope at Chinnagudi Village, Tamil Nadu with 400 children and the complete re-construction of Poombuhar village of 300 homes (which included working with the Panchayats, Public Works Department etc) ranks as amongst her most tangible impact CSR projects. United Way Mumbai was awarded a ‘Best Practices Award’ by United Way International, Washington DC for its Tsunami related work.
Prior to working in the Social Sector, Shibani Sachdeva had a strong career in the corporate sector. At a relatively young age she was appointed to spearhead the National Marketing Operations of SAS Institute in India. SAS Institute is the world’s leading data warehousing and decision support software company and is a billion dollar+ company and the eighth largest computer software firm in the world. 95% of the Fortune 500 are SAS customers. Shibani’s international corporate experience includes working with Young & Rubicam in San Francisco. Young & Rubicam ranks as one of the top three largest advertising agencies worldwide. Shibani was trained on Y&R’s Consumer Perspective Strategy such as : 4C’s: Cross-Cultural Consumer Characterizations, which included using tools such as Mapping and Laddering. Her work included application of Y&Rs Consumer Perspective Strategy to Pine-Sol Liquid Cleaner, Hidden Valley Ranch Salad Dressing, Chevron Gasoline and First Nationwide Bank accounts. Shibani received one of the rare detailed, complementary ‘Letters of Promotion’ and was designated as the likeable want to have back agency person at Y&RSF.
Shibani is a James Webb Young Scholar with a Master’s of Science in Advertising & Enterprise Management degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, USA. She also has a Master of Management Studies, Marketing from the University of Bombay. She graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Bombay with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and also has to her credit a Diploma in Advertising & Marketing.
When Shibani Sachdeva is not busy building the social sector in India she takes time to skipper sailboats on the Bombay high seas as well as skippering boats sailing long-distance from Mumbai on several occasions. Being one of the very few Indian lady skippers Shibani won the Best Female Helmsman, Enterprise National Sailing Championships, Mumbai India in 2005 as well as the Best Female Helmsman,1997, National Inland Water Championships, Khadakvasla, India. Shibani is the only Women Council Member on the Yachting Association of India Council, 2004-2008. She was the first Indian Women to receive certificate of National Yachting Judge, 2000. Shibani has represented India as Team Coach of the Indian Under 15 Yachting Team for the :World Optimist Sailing Championships Spain-2000; Optimist Sailing Nationals UK-2000; Asian Optimist Sailing Championship Singapore-2000; Asian Championships Dubai-2001
Shibani is also a teacher of Art of Living’s-Youth Empowerment Skills Workshop a Yoga & Meditation course for 18-30 years olds. Other than teaching meditation which is her core passion, Shibani also invests all her free time in volunteering for the Art of Living’s “Volunteer for a Better India’ initiative.