Board of Directors
Nidhi Goyal, Executive Director
Nidhi Goyal, Founder and Executive Director of Rising Flame, is a globally recognised activist, researcher, trainer, campaigner and artist. Nidhi has spent over 14 years championing disability rights, gender justice and inclusion and has impact in across 35+ countries on four continents.
Her work spans influencing national and global policies, authoring groundbreaking research, leading campaigns, and advising multilateral, government, and civil society bodies including UN Women New York, Dutch Ministry etc.
In 2024, she represented Rising Flame on Asia Pacific Steering committee for Beijing +30 review by UN Women and ESCAP. In 2023, she played a key role in establishing the historic Disability Working Group within Civil20 India, becoming its youngest and only disabled Steering Committee member. That same year, she was also invited to serve as the Ambassador for Purple Fest, India’s leading disability festival. She has served as the youngest and the only disabled board president of Association for Women's rights in Development from 2018 to 2022.
She currently serves on the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting’s committee on accessibility in cinema and is an active member of FICCI’s diversity and inclusion task force. She also sits on the disability core group of NHRC since 2017.
Nidhi is also India’s first female disabled stand-up comedian, using humour to challenge stereotypes around disability and gender, with performances across five countries.
With multiple national and international recognitions, Nidhi is a powerful global voice for inclusion, bridging the worlds of policy, activism, art, and advocacy to reimagine a world that is equitable and accessible for all.
Neha Goyal, Co-Director
Dr. Neha Goyal is a Mumbai-based Dermatologist and Cosmetologist with over 15 years of experience, known for her holistic, patient-centered approach. She leads Dr. Neha Skin Klinik, where she promotes "Beauty Through Health" and offers a range of dermatological and cosmetological treatments. A gold medalist in MD Dermatology, she earned her MBBS from KEM Hospital, Mumbai, and holds a Fellowship in Pediatric Dermatology and Lasers from the National Skin Center, Singapore.
Dr. Neha frequently speaks at national medical forums including the Indian Medical Association and has presented widely on topics such as pediatric dermatology, lasers, psoriasis, and atopic dermatitis. Deeply committed to accessible healthcare, she serves at charitable hospitals and organizes free camps through her clinic and national organizations like DOCTORS FOR YOU, Rotary Club, and Lions Club.
She actively engages with gender and health rights through nonprofits like Balaji Tambe Health Foundation, Point of View etc. A passionate advocate at the intersection of health and disability, she serves as a Director at Rising Flame.
Beyond medicine, she is a businesswoman serving as the Director of Goyal Properties and Estates Pvt. Ltd. and the Founder-Trustee of her family trust Ashok and Jyoti Goyal Foundation, supporting underprivileged communities.
You can follow Neha’s work at @DrNehaSkinKlinik
Advisors
Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee, JD
Shikha is a lawyer and researcher. Her work focuses on advancing decent work and social justice, and gender, caste and race in the global economy. She addresses systemic violence, with a focus on women, labor migrants, and persons with disabilities.
Shikha’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion infuses her practice, scholarly work, and approach to teaching and collaboration. Her portfolio encompasses research and advocacy in collaboration with large global institutions like Human Rights Watch, the International Labour Organization, Global Labor Justice – International Labor Rights Forum, and the Freedom Fund. It also includes collaborations with more than 30 grassroots partner organizations and coalitions concentrated in Asia and Africa.
Shikha holds a PhD from UC Berkeley, a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a BA in English and Ethnicity, Race and Migration from Yale University.
She has published papers in peer reviewed journals and law reviews, a litigation guide on India’s Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, more than a twenty policy reports, and program and process documentation on good practices among social movement actors in challenging structural discrimination. My research has been well covered in the media, including by Al Jazeera, BBC News, CNN, Devex, The Guardian, Huffington Post, The Nation, The New York Times, Reuters, TIME, VICE, and Vogue Business.
Ashish Goyal
Ashish is a portfolio manager in a leading macro hedge fund. His experience as an investor in the international financial markets spans the past decade, his area of expertise lies in global macroeconomics, with a specific focus on Asia.
In 2015, Ashish was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. The first visually impaired student to have graduated from Wharton Business School, Ashish has the distinction of becoming the first visually impaired trader in the world. Ashish has been honoured by the President of India with India’s highest civilian award for a disabled individual, the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities. At Wharton Business School, his peers selected him to receive the annual Joseph P. Wharton award given to individual who best represents the “Wharton Way of Life.”
In the past few years, Ashish has raised thousands of dollars for [charitable causes including] education for underprivileged children in India, blindness research, and international peace. Passionate about theatre, Ashish is also a supporter of The Print Room, a new theatre based in London. Ashish represented the London Metro Club in the domestic UK Blind Cricket Tournament, which his team won.
You can follow Ashish on Twitter @insaneodyssey.
Richa Kaul Padte
Richa Kaul Padte is a writer and editor. Most recently, she is the author of critically-acclaimed nonfiction book Cyber Sexy: rethinking pornography, published by Penguin Random House India in May 2018.
Richa is also the co-founder of the award-winning publication Deep Dives, which specializes in long form storytelling around issues of gender and sexuality, and the co-author of www.sexualityanddisability.org, a pioneering online resource on disability, gender, sexuality and violence. Her writing has appeared in several publications including VICE, GQ, Buzzfeed, Racked, Rolling Stone, Extra Crispy, The Caravan Magazine, and India Today.
Richa has worked extensively within various women's and sexual rights movements across India and the UK. Her work is available at richakaulpadte.com.
You can follow Richa on Twitter @hirishitalkies.
Janet Price
Janet Price is a disabled feminist active in queercrip politics, and is based in Liverpool, United Kingdom, with links to Taranaki, New Zealand. In Liverpool, she is on the board of DaDaFest, a disability and deaf arts organisation with a growing global reach. She has also made long-term academic contributions to the gender groups at Liverpool University and at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
Through friendships, Janet has a connection of over 30 years with social justice activism in India. In particular, she has been involved with CREA, a Delhi-based feminist, human and sexuality rights organisation. Over several years, she has helped enhance CREA’s involvement with disability issues, increase the presence of disabled people in their staff and training and ensure inclusion of disability as an aspect of intersectional understanding. In addition, Janet is a partner in the creation of a coalition of groups working in disability, sexuality and justice across Africa.
Janet hopes that the expansion of disability art will enhance all people’s understanding of the prejudice disabled people face, the battles they must fight daily and the skills, talent and insight they bring to ways of living life fully and with pleasure. Janet writes intermittently, contributing through blogs, discussion papers and occasional journal and book articles, commonly jointly authored.
