She/Her/Hers
Activist, youth leader, public speaker, women with disabilities champion
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.
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.
She has reached over 30,000 women and youth with disabilities through her direct work and reached over 5,00,000 diverse stakeholders offline and online to create an enabling environment. She has authored the ground breaking and only research around sexual violence and access to justice for women with disabilities which was cited by Justice Chandrachudh in his progressive disability judgement in 2021. Her research publication on the impact of COVID on women with disabilities remains the only research in India and the first globally. It was used as an advocacy and change tool in India as well as globally-right from being used as an evidence in a PIL, to being the foundation for the NHRC Covid advisory for Persons with disabilities, to being quoted by UN Special Rapporteur. 12 years ago, she authored India’s first online resource on sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls with disabilities. She also conceptualised and led India’s first ever National Leadership program for women with disabilities.
She has led multistakeholder and cross movement work, influenced policies and systems, authored ground breaking research, all with a vision to foster inclusion of women and youth with disabilities within India and globally. She has steered a leading global women’s rights organisation – AWID- as the youngest and first ever disabled president, and made huge strides in inclusion as the former global advisor to UN Women’s Executive Director. Her leadership and work have been appreciated and awarded by the government of India (national Award for Empowerment of Persons with disabilities 2019), National Association for the Blind, ABP News(Super Woman of the year 2018), and Sur Optimist Mumbai amongst others.
Her work has been extensively covered in National and Global media from Times of India, Economic Times to Aljazeera. She has also delivered talks and conducted trainings in 5 continents and in over 20 countries. She is also India’s first female disabled comedian who is committed to bring change on perceptions of disability and gender through comedy.
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Email: nidhi@risingflame.org