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About Sakhi

Board of Directors

Sakhi's Board of Directors helps to drive the organization's strategic programming, growth, and mission fulfillment. Our board actively assists in Sakhi's development through regular meetings, project-based support, brainstorming, and sharing resources. The current board members enhance Sakhi's work by bringing forward a diversity of professional and life experiences. Each of Sakhi’s board members serves 1-year terms which are renewable up to 6 years. Following is a list and description of Sakhi’s current board members.

Tamseela Tayyabkhan, Board Chair, brings a passion for women's rights and individual investment in Sakhi's work to change communities and prevent violence. She has been a volunteer at Sakhi since 1993 when, as a volunteer advocate, she helped to develop the literacy program by providing basic skills of learning English as a Second Language to prepare survivors for employment. The Literacy Program at Sakhi grew into the current Economic Empowerment program through which access to computer training and other skills is provided. She has also been active from the earliest stages of fundraising at Sakhi through initiating and executing individual donor events such as film screenings and annual benefits. In the last five years, her work at Sakhi has focused on strategically growing the individual donor base through the gala event process. In 2002 and 2005, she co-chaired Sakhi's annual benefit galas. She has done her undergraduate work in Comparative Literature at Fordham University.

Rana Quraishi, Board Treasurer, has enabled Sakhi to chart out areas for new programmatic engagement and a financial strategic plan through her passion for women's rights and wide breadth of business knowledge. She has been involved with Sakhi since its founding. In the past, Rana has been involved mostly in fundraising activities through a variety of roles in the Film Festivals, the Fire premiere, and a large number of Sakhi’s early benefits. She has also solicited funding from corporations, including having one of her employers underwrite a large part of one of Sakhi’s film festivals. She brings to Sakhi’s board a strong financial background and a deep commitment to Sakhi’s mission to end violence against women. Currently Rana is at Standard & Poor's. In a previous corporate position, Rana led the business development team for a GE Capital Company, FGIC, and was subsequently Commercial Quality Leader for GE Capital. In 2000, Rana was instrumental in the start-up and financing of Helicon Therapeutics, a genomics and drug discovery company focused on therapeutics for memory. She has over fifteen years of experience in finance and mergers and acquisitions. In the private equity arena, Rana was a Partner at ITF Global Partners and prior to this, a Principal at Conning Capital Partners. She has served on several Boards of privately-funded companies.

Currently, in addition to being on the Board of Sakhi, Rana serves on the Business Advisory Board of the Institute for the Study of Aging, a not-for-profit foundation established by the Lauder Family which focuses primarily on Alzheimer’s Disease. Rana also worked with the New York City Partnership and Investment Fund to prepare the first extensive study on the potential for development of biotechnology in New York City entitled “Market Demand Study for Commercial Biotechnology, Biomedical and Bioinformatics Facilities in New York City.” Rana has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Columbia University. She began her career as a legislative assistant for healthcare and technology at the U.S. Senate and was a Congressional Science Fellow at the office of Senator Gary Hart.

Sunita Subramanian, Board Secretary, with her deep knowledge of nonprofit legal and governance issues, has helped to make Sakhi's work more effective and sustainable by honing internal structures. She received her J.D. from George Washington University Law School. During law school, she took courses in comparative law and feminist theory, as well as international law. Sunita is a Staff Attorney at Lawyers Alliance for New York, where she represents nonprofits on corporate, governance, tax and other transactional matters. She frequently teaches seminars on nonprofit law topics, such as board governance, accountability, and lobbying and political activity by nonprofits. She has assisted with disaster relief and community development post-September 11th and currently works with organizations that serve New York City's immigrant communities. Sunita’s commitment to fighting violence against women began prior to her receiving her J.D.: she worked as a Domestic Violence Advocate at the Norfolk County, MA, District Attorney’s office and as a Student Attorney at a Domestic Violence Clinic in Washington, D.C.

Penny Abeywardena brings a commitment to social justice through furthering policy and media advocacy as well as philanthropic change. Penny is the Director of Strategic Relations at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI), a think tank based in NY committed to promoting progressive public policy. Prior to joining DMI, Penny was the Development Program Officer at the Funding Exchange, where she managed donor-advised funds, and actively participated in developing fundraising and grantmaking strategies. She has worked in both development and program areas for Human Rights Watch, the Fund for Global Human Rights, and UNICEF-Jordan. Penny was the editor of Rights News, an annual publication by the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University from 2004-2006. Most recently, Penny served on the planning committee for the 2005 & 2006 "Making Money Make Change" retreat and the advisory council for the 2006 "Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy" conference – both of these national gatherings are for young people with wealth committed to supporting social justice. Penny serves on the Board of Resource Generation. She is also a mentor for Third Wave Foundation's Why Give program for young women of color and transgender youth. Penny earned a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Business Administration from the University of Southern California. In 2004, she completed her Master in International Affairs at Columbia University, where she studied economic & political development and non-profit management. She concurrently completed Columbia's Fundraising Management program.

Sameera Hafiz, through sharing her deep knowledge, resources, and profound interest in international human rights, brings an in-depth awareness of the experiences of survivors in the courts to Sakhi's domestic violence program, policy work, and media messaging. Sameera is a staff attorney at the Immigration Law Unit of The Legal Aid Society of New York and provides free immigration legal services to indigent and low-income immigrants throughout New York City.  She also conducts community training and education on current immigration policies and immigration law. She is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center. While at Georgetown, Sameera participated in the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic where she researched the legal responses to domestic violence and sexual harassment throughout the world. During law school, Sameera was also active with the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, an organization dedicated to improving access to the legal system as both a volunteer and board member. Prior to law school, Sameera was an AmeriCorps Volunteer.

Shabnam Hayder Mirza brings a passion for women’s rights and a vision to extend the reach of Sakhi supporters further into the Bangladeshi community. She joined Sakhi as a volunteer in 2003. Completing the training as a volunteer advocate helped provide the tools to reach out to different communities and express the need for support in making Sakhi’s programs successful in re-building the lives of women.

Shabnam served as the co-chair of Sakhi’s 2005 Annual Benefit Gala, What Creates Change? She helped the organization bring in a record number of guests to the gala and raised a substantial amount through corporate and individual first-time sponsers. She helped obtain auction items and entertainment for the gala. In particular, Shabnam reached out to the younger generation and expressed the need for their involvement and interest in the work that Sakhi does. Furthermore, Shabnam has made it a priority to reach out to Bangladeshi and Muslim communities to further expand the circle of friends who support Sakhi. Her goal and hope for Sakhi is to reach out to more members in these communities and have them become life-time supporters and advocates for Sakhi and Sakhi's mission to end violence.

Shabnam is currently a Project Manager at Morgan Stanley and her expertise in project management has helped her to be detailed and organized in managing large, dynamic projects to their completion. She is originally from Chicago, IL and has volunteered with Apna Ghar, a Chicago-based organization that assists survivors of domestic violence. She has a degree in Finance from University of Illinois and has worked in Technology most of her career.

Nandini Nathani, who has driven many of Sakhi's recent fundraisers, has enabled Sakhi's growth with her deep understanding of event coordination and community investment. She has been involved with Sakhi since 1993. Her first two years at Sakhi were dedicated to advocacy and fundraising. While volunteering at Sakhi, she started her family and is now a mother of two active children. For the past three years, she has been committed to assisting Sakhi develop a sustainable and diverse fundraising base. As co-chair of Sakhi’s 2002 Annual Benefit Gala, Celebrating Women's Lives, she helped the organization raise a record amount of funds via varied sources such as an art auction and solicitation of several first-time individual donors and corporate sponsors. Nandini is trained as a Graduate Gemologist, has previously owned her own retail operation in North Carolina, and spent the past ten years as a freelancer. Nandini was trained at the GIA in New York and has developed a speciality in the diamond and color stone segment of the trade. Prior to coming to the U.S., she obtained her undergraduate degree from Sydenham College in Mumbai. Her past work experience has included being a lecturer at the Gemological Institute of India and helping run the family jewelry business.

Sylvana Q. Sinha brings to the Sakhi Board a strong commitment to human rights, women's economic empowerment, and domestic violence prevention. As an attorney, she has worked with domestic violence victims who are seeking asylum in the United States. Sylvana is currently an attorney at Lovells, a British law firm, in the international litigation practice. She received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and a Master's in International Development from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She has participated in community development efforts in the U.S., India, and Bangladesh, including experiences at Center for International Development and the Grameen Bank.She also is a member of NYBAP, the Network of Young Bangladeshi-American Professionals.