Nidhi Goyal
Founder and Executive Director
A disabled feminist activist from India, Nidhi Goyal has been working on disability rights and gender justice since a decade. Her work spans research, writing, training, campaigns, advocacy, and art.
She has been invited on the core group of persons with disabilities by the National Human Rights Commission, India, is on the diversity and inclusion task force of FICCI, and sits on the advisory board of Voice, a grant making project by the Dutch ministry. She has just completed her term as President of Association for Women’s Rights in Development and as a global advisor to UN Women’s Executive Director. She works to raise the profile of issues at the intersection of disability and gender through op-eds, journal articles, and lectures in national and international forums. She influences organisations, systems and structures, policies and human rights discourses to be more inclusive in national and global spaces.
Nidhi has been committed to changing lives of persons with disabilities and has worked with a range of National and global women’s rights, disability rights, and human rights organizations, including Point of View, Human Rights Watch, Sight Savers, and CREA. Her work on disability, gender, diversity and inclusion have made way into many corporate offices and policy spaces.
Nidhi is also India’s first female disabled stand-up comedian and uses humor to challenge prevailing notions about disability and gender.
At 15, when Nidhi started losing sight and learning to live a full life with her disability, she promised herself that she would work to extend opportunities for growth to other people with disabilities who did not have access to the family support, resources, and privileges she drew upon for support. Rising Flame takes this commitment forward.
You can follow Nidhi’s work on Twitter @saysnidhigoyal.
Srinidhi Raghavan
Co-Lead Programmes
Srinidhi Raghavan is a disabled feminist, writer, researcher and trainer. She works at the intersections of sexuality, gender, disability and technology. She is Co-Lead, Programmes at Rising Flame. For the last decade, she has been working with feminist and disability rights organisations, children and young people, women of all ages, parents, special educators, and teachers. Her work focusses on deepening conversations around sexuality, on rights of persons with disabilities and building more spaces where disabled people can thrive. She has undertaken research on sexuality and violence faced by women with disabilities as well as on vulnerability of adolescent girls with a focus on sexual and reproductive health.
Her work has been published extensively in national and international websites on gender, sexuality, disability and technology. She wrote a column in India for FirstPost called Bodies and Minds that looks at the often ignored intersection of gender and disability. She is interested in community care, disability justice, intersectional feminism and cats.
She lives with chronic illnesses and invisible disabilities that impacts 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. You can follow Srinidhi’s work on Twitter @Thecatlyf.
Chayanika Iyer
Programmes Associate
Chayanika has been working at the intersections of trauma, culture, disability, gender, art, and resistance with various organisations and collectives since 2018. Through their work, they want to figure out what it means to occupy, negotiate with, and build access to spaces for everyone. They are invested in working on drawing attention to the way gender, queerness, disability and other identities impact people's everyday lives. Over the years they have worked on research, programmes and conducted trainings on queerness, gender, sexuality and violence against women with disabilities.
They have also been working with the Transform South Asia team as a reviewer and researcher - to help build a pedagogical tool exploring the intersectional nature of violence against Trans and Intersex people.
They live with varying chronic illnesses that affect how they interact with the world. You can always find them thinking about puppies and cheesecake, and trying to write even though they find it really scary. They like to spend their time off being scratched by their cat.
Archismita Choudhury
Social Media Strategist and Content Creator
Archismita is a communications professional who has worked at the intersection of gender, sexuality, disability and technology through the years. She creates and executes communication strategy for organisations to highlight their values and ongoing work in accessible, innovative and creative manners.
She has built and nurtured feminist digital communities since 2012, and she dreams about a #FeministInternet. She is an alumnus of Tata Institute of Social Sciences with a B.A. in Social Sciences and an M.A. in Women's Studies.
Archismita believes that conversations around disability and ableism need to become more mainstream in feminist/activist spaces, and aims to work towards making it a reality in her work with Rising Flame. She is on Twitter @Archismita.
