Journalism Mentor | India's first mentorship-based journalism course | In Mumbai

	Anurag Chaturvedi is a senior journalist who during his long career has worked with some of the most respected newspapers and magazines in India. He started work with Dharmayug in 1978. He joined Ravivar as Special Correspondent in 1984 to cover South India. He joined Sunday Observer as Editor in 1989 and later moved as Editor to Mahanagar. He has also worked in radio and television. Presently, he contributes to Prabhat Khabar and Jansatta. He is a trustee of Prayog International Foundation, Apne Aap Women World Wide and Gidhaur Foundation, which work in the realm of social, educational, cultural and health related activities. Born in Udaipur, Chaturvedi has an MA in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
	Sameer Deshpande is an expert in social marketing, a subject that is closely related to marketing, social change and communication. A communication scholar by training, he has moved to social marketing from his interest in health communications. A Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he has authored numerous papers and book chapters on social marketing. He is presently engaged in conducting research on social marketing projects in India. An expert on panels for such organizations as Centre for Disease Control, he has recently written a book chapter in a book edited by Philip Kotler. He was a speaker at the first World Social Marketing Conference. A media planner in his pre-academic days, Deshpande's understands media and journalism as both business and as a academic with an abiding concern for social responsibility. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Lethbridge.
	Vivek Deshpande is an award-winning journalist with over two decades of experience in journalism, specifically Rural Reporting. He has reported on agriculture, Left-wing extremism, and forests and wildlife from Vidarbha. A Senior Assistant Editor at the Indian Express, he is based in Nagpur. Deshpande is a recipient of the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting, Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award, Sanctuary Asia-RBS award for wildlife reporting. He was short-listed for the Kurt Schork Award for International Journalism in 2007 for his series of reports on Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh.
	Murali Gopalan has been a journalist for over 24 years. Part of the founding team of Hindu Business Line, he has worked at various positions at Hindu, Business Line, Financial Express, Auto Monitor, Autocar and DNA. Winner of The Hindu Award for academic excellence, he is presently the Business Editor of The Hindu Business Line. He is also a proficient speaker of French.
	Meena Gopal is a Senior Lecturer at the Research Centre for Women’s Studies, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai, where she has been since 2000. Her earlier training has been at the Madras University, and subsequently at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (1991-1997), where her research interfaced social sciences and health. Her academic interests are in women’s studies, labour studies, public health, and issues around gender & sexuality in India. She is also an activist with the FAOW (Forum Against Oppression of Women) one of the oldest autonomous women’s rights groups in the country and is active with other human rights organisations. In 2006, she was a Visiting Scholar in Residence at Trinity College in Connecticut as part of the programme of the Fulbright Foundation. This year, she has been awarded the fellowship of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (Teenmurti) for post-doctoral research on women’s labour in the unorganised sector.
	Shishir Joshi was till recently the Group Editorial Director of the Mid-Day group of publications, which includes Mid-Day (Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune), Sunday Mid-Day, Gujarati Mid-Day and Inquilab. Prior to Mid-Day, Joshi was with the TV Today group, where he was executive editor. He has also been editorial consultant for the Sahara group, helping set up TV channels across India as well as recruiting and training professionals for them. Prior to that he was with NDTV as its sole business news correspondent based out of Mumbai. He has worked with CNN.com, written for Reuters and AFP and has contributed to UK based ITN-Channel 4 News and has been the South Asia Representative of Peter Arnett's Broadcast News Network (BNN TV). A law graduate, he is a Chevening Scholar. He is the co-founder of Journalism Mentor.
	Patricia Mukhim is the Editor of The Shillong Times, Meghalaya’s oldest English language daily and a columnist for The Telegraph and The Statesman. She is a member of the National Security Advisory Board and National Foundation for Communal Harmony, under the Ministry of Home Affairs. She is a member of the State Commission for Consumer Affairs, and is member of the Environmental Advisory Board of the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCo). She is also a member of the Meghalaya State Coordination Committee to Combat Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Women. Patricia is a trustee of the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (CNES), New Delhi and the Vice President of the Delhi-based Indo Global Social Service Society. For her consistent campaign against corruption and militancy through her forthright columns, she was awarded the Padma Shri in 2000. In 1996, she received the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Media Person from the Media Foundation, New Delhi. In 2008 she was given the UN Brahma, Soldier of Humanity Award and in 2009 she was conferred the Shiva Prasad Barooah National Award for Journalism.
	Sevanti Ninan is a media critic, author, and founder-editor of the media watchdog TheHoot.org. She worked for the Hindustan Times and Indian Express as a reporter for many years before turning author and columnist. Her books on media include Through the Magic Window, Television and Change in India, (Penguin India, 1995) and Headlines from the Heartland — Reinventing the Hindi Public Sphere (Sage, 2007). She is a contributor to Broadcasting Reform in India, ed. Monroe Price and Stefan Verhulst, (OUP, 1998). She has written a column on the media for The Hindu since 1991, and writes a media column for the Hindi newspaper, Hindustan. In 2001 she launched for the Media Foundation in Delhi a media watch website, Thehoot.org, which strives to raise issues of media ethics, professionalism, and press freedom for India’s community of journalists. She will be Research Mentor for the programme.
	Krishna Prasad is the editor of Outlook. In a 22-year career, he has worked in four cities and six publications, taught journalism in three continents, edited three books, and publishes two widely read blogs. Hailed on the pages of The New York Times as "one of India's brightest young journalists", Krishna was editor of the now-defunct broadsheet daily Vijay Times of The Times of India group. Best known as one of two journalists who broke the match-fixing scandal that turned the cricketing world upside down, legspinner Krishna has best figures of 3-3-0-5 at the age of 13, and 6-0-69-0 at the age of 30. He stirs everything anti-clockwise. Visit him at www.churumuri.com
	V Rajagopal is a historian of modern India, and specializes in writing about the social and cultural changes in south Indian society in the 19th and the 20th centuries. He teaches at the Department of History, University of Hyderabad and offers Master's level courses on Indian nationalism. After studying Economics from the University of Madras, Rajagopal did his Master's and M Phil in History from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. After doing a one-year stint as a journalist on the desk at the Indian Express, he moved back to academics and completed his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published articles in leading Indian history journals such as the Indian Economic and Social History Review and Studies in History. He has been selected to attend this summer a month-long international seminar on Decolonization being conducted by the National History Center, Washington DC. His other interests are cricket, contemporary politics and the media.
	Aloke Thakore is a journalist, researcher and teacher. He has worked in print and television. At various times he has reported, written columns, authored academic articles, anchored programmes, taught at university and colleges, and coached in news rooms. He has also helped launched newspapers and magazines both as editorial and management consultant. He counts many journalists and media professionals among his students and trainees. A Media Leadership Fellow of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, he has a Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an AM in International Relations from the University of Chicago, an MS in Journalism from the University of Kansas. His first degree is from Calcutta University.
	Mahesh Vijapurkar has been a reporter since 1973. The first three years were spent at Indian Express and the last 30 years with The Hindu, with nearly a third of that reporting from rural datelines. He retired as Deputy Editor. Subsequently, he has retrained and inducted journalists into newsrooms with a focus on upgrading their skills, sensitising them to issues of ethics, on managing sources, and how to look at news. During the past ten years, he has taught in journalism courses, and now writes a periodic column for www.rediff.com. Outside of journalism, Vijapurkar has helped put together the Maharashtra Human Development Report, 2000 as a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, and assisted in putting together a report on the status of social justice in Maharashtra for the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration, which is currently under review of the Maharashtra Government. He also helped shape the Mumbai Human Development Report.
	Ajay Umat is the Editor of the Divya Bhaskar, the largest circulated Gujarati daily in its native state. He is also the President of the Governing Council of the Gujarati Media Club. In a career spanning over two decades, he has served as the former Resident Editor of the Gujarati edition of the Times of India, besides being associated with the India Today group and Gujarat Samachar. He was invited to participate in the ‘International Visitors Leadership’ programme on Investigative Journalism sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. In 2010 he was awarded the prestigious Harindra Dave Smurti Paritoshak for his contribution to journalism. Umat is based in Ahmedabad.
	Krishna Warrier began his career as a trainee journalist with MiD DAY. He left the paper 22 years later years as Executive Editor, after helping launch its editions in Bangalore, Delhi and Pune. He is currently Editor of India’s premier economic think tank, Centre For Monitoring The Indian Economy. He is passionate about languages, table tennis, history and classical music in that order.
	Harini Calamur is a film-maker and producer who has produced the much awarded Marathi film Jhing Chik Jhing.
	Swati Deshpande is Senior Assistant Editor (Law) at the Times of India, Mumbai. She started her career as a trainee reporter with Mid-Day, a city tabloid, in 1995 before moving on to The Free Press Journal (1996), The Pioneer and subsequently, Indian Express (1997 to 1999). She joined the Times of India in 1999, first as a senior reporter then as principal and special correspondent. She has largely specialized in court cases and legal issues. In the span of ten years, she has covered a wide range of subjects including health, education, housing, infrastructure, politics and entertainment.
	Seema Kamdar is a senior news journalist with experience in reporting and feature writing. She has covered Mumbai and the state of Maharashtra extensively and written on current affairs, health, politics, governance and power.
	Prasad Kathe is the Chief Political Correspondent with NDTV. He has over 13 years experience in journalism. He started with print and moved to broadcast within a couple of years. He is based in Mumbai.
	Rajas Kelkar is Senior Editor with Network18 and is part of the founding team of www.firstpost.com, a new current affairs online publication. He has over 17 years experience in business journalism and has worked with mergermarket.com, a Financial Times Group company and Indian publications like Business Standard and The Economic Times at various levels. He is currently responsible for the business content on firstpost.com. He has completed his graduation from the University of Mumbai and was awarded the British Chevening Scholarship for print journalists in India in 2004-05. While in London, he did his internship with the newspaper, The Economist. In 2002, Rajas was invited by the US State Department to be part of the ‘International Visitors Leadership Program’.
The biographical details contain the present institutional/organizational affiliation of the mentors for informational purposes only. It does not constitute an endorsement or approval of Journalism Mentor by these media organizations or vice versa. Mentors serve only in a personal capacity.