Dr. Rukmini Banerji

Rukmini Banerji is Chief Executive Officer of Pratham Education Foundation in India. She has been with Pratham since 1996 and became CEO in 2015. Rukmini has extensive experience in program design and implementation for improving children’s schooling and learning. She has led many of Pratham’s partnerships with state governments across the country.

 

Rukmini also led Pratham’s research activities, including the well-known Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) effort from 2005 to 2014. Rukmini was trained as an economist in India (St. Stephen’s College, Delhi School of Economics). She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University (1981–1983). In 1991, she completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.

 

In 2008, Rukmini was awarded the Maulana Abul Kalam Shiksha Puraskar by the Government of Bihar, India. She was the first recipient of this award. In 2021, she was awarded the Yidan Prize for education development.

Originally from the state of Bihar in India, she is now based between New Delhi and Pune. Rukmini writes frequently on education in both Hindi and English and enjoys creating and telling stories to children.