SMArT

Brinda Jacob-Janvrin is an experienced contemporary dancer/choreographer, an expressive & creative arts therapist & a qualified counsellor. The firm belief that body, mind & soul are interconnected led her to explore dance as a medium of authentic expression & as a tool to overcome limitations. Brinda is the founder of the Studio for Movement Arts & Therapies Trust & has conceptualised & designed FECAT (Foundation course in Expressive & Creative Arts Therapies) – the only program of its kind in India. In 2017, she collaborated with the JFK University, SFO, to offer Samaghama, as a two-week residential module for their students. This developed into a one-year training program for practicing therapists, with the first batch commencing training in 2019.

Swathi Shetty is a Geneticist by profession & works at the Centre for Human Genetics. She trained in Kathak & was part of a contemporary dance group for a few years. Her interests extend through science, writing, design & dance.

Smita is a seasoned and successful entrepreneur with over 20+ years of experience in the technology and outsourcing sector across various geographies, having won awards in this space. She co-founded and successfully ran one of the UK’s leading digital agencies for over a decade before it was acquired by a leading UK PLC.

Growing up in India, and annual vacations to meet family in rural India, meant eventually discovering the vast difference between economies in both areas. The exit from her business finally provided the bandwidth to devote her attention to the social enterprise space. Smita currently runs Indivillage as CEO, a social enterprise with a primary focus on providing livelihood opportunities to educated youth and women of rural India as well as initiatives in Education, WASH, and Healthcare in the local communities.

Smita is an Alumnus of Harvard Business School, has a dual-MBA in Marketing and Finance and is currently attending a full-time Advanced Management Program (no end date) on life, happiness and soccer conducted by her two little boys.

Nimi Ravindran is a writer, theatre director and co-founder of Sandbox Collective, a performance and arts collective based in Bangalore, India.

She has worked in the theatre for 20 years in various capacities. She started her career as a performer while at University and very quickly moved onto directing and later producing theatre. She has directed 12 productions in the last 10 years and has produced several more.

In a country where resources for the arts are extremely limited, and traditional and classical forms are prioritized by the established, the artists and administrators at Sandbox Collective have been engaged in working towards finding alternative means of sustaining contemporary theatre arts. To build culturally vibrant cities and create access to the arts is something that the Collective has been engaged with for the last six years even as they produce and tour work that has been internationally acclaimed.

Sandbox Collective’s work involves creating, curating and presenting theatre productions and artistic programs that challenge and question existing notions. The primary focus of their present work is gender equality, inclusivity, and access.