Nidhi Ashok Goyal
Founder and 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.
Srinidhi Raghavan
Programmes Lead
Srinidhi (she/her) is a disabled feminist, educator, writer and researcher. She works at the intersections of sexuality, gender, disability and technology. She is Programmes Lead, Rising Flame. Her work for the past 14 years has focused on deepening conversations around sexuality, on understanding how technology and disability intersect, on building social, emotional and disability support, on imagining a feminist internet, on rights of persons with disabilities, on expanding our vocabulary around mental health, chronic illness and disability, and building more spaces where disabled people can thrive.
She also works with adolescents, facilitators and parents at The Learning Centre, Moira on building more robust, resilient relationships with ourselves and the world around us. She provides social, emotional and disability support for the learners at the Centre.
She has written for national and international news platforms and organisations on gender, sexuality, disability and technology. She wrote a column in India for FirstPost called Bodies and Minds that looked at the often ignored intersection of gender and disability. You can find a longer list of her writing here. She is interested in learning and practising community care, disability justice, and intersectional feminism. She lives with chronic illnesses and invisible disabilities that impact how she engages with the world. This personal experience informs her commitment to the Rising Flame vision and mission, and her work towards making this vision a reality.
Prathama Raghavan
Lead Mental Health Programme Consultant
Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee
Lead Policy and Research Consultant
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.
Fizza Juddy
Coordinator - Social Media & Communications
Fizza Juddy is an intersectional feminist writer and communications professional, currently the Coordinator - Social Media and Communications at Rising Flame. With a BA in Media and Journalism from Middlesex University, Dubai, Fizza brings together storytelling, strategy, and advocacy for marginalised communities, especially women, the youth, and persons with disabilities.
Raised in the Gulf and deeply shaped by growing up online, Fizza’s worldview is informed by a cross-cultural lens and digital fluency. Her journey with Rising Flame began during the first COVID-19 lockdown, when she joined as an intern and later contributed as a freelance transcriber. These experiences proved transformative, grounding her commitment to disability rights and inclusive communication.
Fizza lives with invisible disabilities, and as such explores themes of gender, mental health, and access from that lens in her work. Her personal experiences drive her compassion and push her to create work that affirms dignity, challenges stigma, and builds understanding.
