Neela Saldanha is Executive Director of The Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE) at Yale University, which advances research on the effects of policy interventions delivered at scale. Previously, Neela was the Founding Director of the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC) at Ashoka University, which serves marginalized populations in India and is supported by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her research has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Nature Human Behaviour and The Lancet Regional Health, among others, and in 2020 Forbes magazine identified Neela as one of “Ten Behavioral Scientists You Should Know.”

Neela holds a Ph.D. in Marketing (Consumer Behavior) from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from IIM Calcutta, India. She combines her skills in social research with over fifteen years of experience in the private sector, where she led teams in marketing, strategy and sales at Nestle, Unilever, Accenture and PepsiCo.

In addition to being a proud board member of The Life You Can Save, Neela is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences Program at the University of Pennsylvania, a board member at the Grameen Foundation, and a board member Her Move Next (thanks to her chess-playing teenage daughter).