After nearly three years since the 2019 Nirbhaya Gala, Saheli will host its 2022 Nirbhaya Gala at the Boston Burlington Marriott on December 4, 2022 from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm.
For tickets and Sponsorships visit: https://bit.ly/SaheliNirbhayaGala
Speaker Bios
Geeta Aiyer combines over 30 years of experience in finance with a passion for environmental and social justice. Under her leadership, Boston Common has built a strong investment record and meaningfully improved the policies and practices of portfolio companies through impactful, proactive shareowner engagement. Geeta was an early innovator in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and remains an influential leader today. She is the lead Portfolio Manager for Boston Common’s US Large-Cap Value Strategy. Among other awards, Geeta was honored by Investment News as an Innovator and recognized at the CERES conference for Building Sustainability into the Capital Markets. For her diversity advocacy, she was named as one of Boston Business Journal’s Power 50 Movement Makers in 2021.
In 2022, Geeta received an honorary degree from Regis College (Weston, MA) and GreenBiz named her as one of 25 “badass women shaping climate action”. Before founding Boston Common, Geeta was President of Walden Asset Management and worked at US Trust
Company (Boston) and Cambridge Associates. Geeta serves on the Board and Investment Committee of the National Resources Defense Council, Inc. (NRDC) and is also on the board of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). She is co-founder and board chair of DAWN Worldwide, an NGO addressing gender-based violence. Previously, Geeta served on the boards of the Sierra Club Foundation and YW Boston. From 2015-2017, she was on the Board of UN PRI, becoming the first US asset manager elected to serve. Geeta earned her MBA from Harvard Business School, and her MA and BA (Hons) from Delhi University, India.
Dr. Bharti Khurana MD, FACR, is an emergency radiologist and the founding director of the Trauma Imaging Research and Innovation Center at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her clinical and research efforts involve accurate and meaningful imaging interpretation with rapid application of clinical knowledge for patients in the emergency department. Dr. Khurana’s research on intimate partner violence has received wide media attention around the world-the Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Fox News, Forbes, Boston Globe, Reuters, Fox 25 News Hour, National Public Radio, Slate, Popular Science, WGBH. She has won numerous prestigious awards-Mass General Brigham innovation discovery award, the BCRISP award, the Stepping Strong Trauma Innovation award, and more recently, the American College of Radiology Innovation award. She is widely respected as a beloved mentor and has been the three-time recipient of the Distinguished Honored Educator Award by the Radiological Society of North America. Dr. Khurana graduated from Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India, and did her residency in diagnostic radiology, followed by a fellowship in musculoskeletal radiology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and holds a research faculty appointment in the Department of Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is also the director of the Intensive Review of Emergency Radiology CME course at Harvard Medical School.
State Senator Jamie Eldridge has served as State Senator for the Middlesex and Worcester district since January 2009, representing 14 communities in Metrowest. He serves as the Senate chair of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Vice Chair Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight. As an activist legislator, Senator Eldridge is the Senate chair of the Clean Energy, Criminal Justice Reform, Medicare For All and MBTA Caucuses. Senator Eldridge has focused his energies on Beacon Hill on increasing investments in public education and transportation, combating climate change, making healthcare a right, stimulating the economy, advocating for affordable housing, reforming our criminal justice system, advancing campaign and ethics reform, protecting the environment, and supporting immigrants. He lives in Acton, his hometown.
Previously, Senator Eldridge served as the State Representative for the 37th Middlesex District. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Boston College Law School. Prior to his election as State Representative, Jamie worked as a public interest attorney with Merrimack Valley Legal Services in Lowell, a non-profit organization that provides free legal services to the poor and the elderly. As a public interest lawyer, he also worked to help low-income residents with issues of housing, Social Security, disability, and unemployment. In 2001, Jamie was elected as a member of the Acton Housing Authority and was appointed by the Acton Board of Selectmen as an Associate Member to the Acton Planning Board. Holding these positions gave him a deeper understanding of municipal budgets and the impact of state legislation on communities, and housing, environmental, and “Smart Growth” issues, as well as the need for every community to protect its most vulnerable residents.
Debra Altschiller is the Community Liaison for New Hampshire’s largest domestic and sexual violence crisis response center and violence prevention education program. She is a member of the training team working with law enforcement, medical professionals, lawyers, military and professionals in the substance misuse recovery community to create trauma informed work places and deliver trauma informed services to victims of sexual and domestic violence, child abuse and human trafficking. She has been doing this work for a decade in Southern New Hampshire. Debra also serves on the New Hampshire Commission for the Office of the Child Advocate. She was appointed by the Governor in 2017 to bring her expertise in trauma informed services for victims of crime to the Commission. Additionally, Debra has been serving on the New Hampshire Human Trafficking Collaborative Task Force since it formally came together in 2014. She is also a member of the task force’s training team working with emergency room physicians, military personnel and hotel staff to learn to identify the signs of possible human trafficking and how to safely and effectively respond.
Debra is also a three term member of the NH House of Representatives. Her legislative focus has been on children’s safety and crime victim’s rights. She has successfully helped to pass a law lifting the statute of limitations previous imposed on survivors access to remedy from civil courts. She is pushing the needle forward on lifting the statute of limitations for criminal sexual assault as well. She has served on the NH House’s Transportation and Judiciary Committees and is now on the Child and Family Law Committee. She has a bill pending currently to ban corporal punishment on children in the care of the state. Debra lives in Stratham, NH with her husband and pup. Her three children are grown and (almost) flown.
