Suchetha Bhat is the CEO of Dream a Dream, a non profit organisation working to transform the experience of education for the 130+ million young people living in adversity in India. Under her leadership, the organisation has impacted over 2 million children across 7 states in India through a qualified, transferable life skills approach, standardised Life Skills Assessment Scale and collaborative research. 

 

Volunteering with Dream a Dream during her successful 9-year corporate career in the 2000s inspired Suchetha to pursue a Postgraduate degree in Psychology. To create positive social impact, she joined Dream a Dream full-time in 2010 as the Head-Strategy and became the Chief Operating Officer (COO) in 2013. Her pivotal role in culture building, people practices, driving  scale and strategic direction of Dream a Dream led to her promotion as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 2018. 

 

Suchetha firmly believes that facilitative leadership can play a pivotal role in breaking the cycle of intergenerational disadvantage for young people growing up with adversity. She actively invests in developing the capacity of the team on facilitative leadership, honing the team’s skills to create compassionate, caring spaces, take creative risks, meet the needs of the team and the stakeholders in the ecosystem, while investing in the inner work required to manage vulnerability and develop self-awareness to bring about change.

 

Her pioneering work in developing innovative design frameworks has firmly positioned Dream a Dream as a thought-leader, with national recognition for its culture, vision and strategy, based on the values of Dignity, Equity and Inclusion. Suchetha was recognised as one among 75 Women Entrepreneurs Transforming India in 2021. She is also a Salzburg Global Fellow and is on the Advisory Council of Amani Institute, Kizazi and EdHeroes Foundation.