Smita Premchander is a development practitioner and consultant of international repute. She has done extensive work on poverty reduction, gender equality and women’s empowerment, microfinance, informal and migrant labour, elimination of child labour and bonded labour, crafts development, social inclusion and sustainable development.
She trained as an economist at the University of Delhi, received a Masters in Business from the esteemed Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, and a PhD from Durham University, UK with support from the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Berne, Switzerland. She is a Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers.
Smita is a founder member of Sampark, a highly accredited NGO with operations in India and Nepal for more than 30 years, which has reached over 100,000 women, children and migrant workers. Sampark promotes empowering models of microfinance, rights-based access to official social protection and workers’ organisations. She serves on the board of several Indian NGOs, including Bandhan Konnagar, Agriculture Man and Ecology, Earthfocus and the Rishi Valley School of the Krishnamurti Foundation.
Smita has been a member, and Chairperson of the International Advisory Committee (Board) of the UNU Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn (2014–2022). She is currently on the Board of the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII), housed at UNU-EHS; and the CDE, University of Berne, Switzerland. She is a reviewer for the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Smita has worked on issues at the grassroots level, institutions and capacity building, design of large donor-funded programmes, and policy and governance issues. She has been invited as a trainer, evaluator and advisor on projects of several international donor organizations, UN organizations such as the International Labour Organization and UNDP, and the World Bank. She has worked in countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, Uganda, the UK, and the USA.
She is a Visiting Faculty at IIMA, where she teaches courses on Microfinance and Gender and Development Policies and Programmes. She serves on the board of several non-profit organizations, academic committees, and editorial committees of international peer-reviewed journals. She has also been a member of task forces set up for policy and programme advice by state governments in India.