Dr. Archana Shukla Mukherjee is CEO and Executive Director of Change Alliance Pvt Ltd (CAPL) with effective 1 August 2025.
In Change Alliance, Dr. Archana Shukla Mukherjee has previously served as Interim CEO & Executive Director from April 2024 to July 2025 and prior to that she has led several strategic business verticals within Change Alliance. She is widely recognized for her expertise in workplace diversity, affirmative action, gender equality, safe migration, prevention of sexual harassment, sustainable supply chains, and linking marginalized communities with social protection and livelihood opportunities.
Her work spans sectors including garments, mining, tea, coffee, sugarcane, cotton, automotive manufacturing, and seafood, always with a focus on empowering women and amplifying the voices of vulnerable and marginalized communities.
She has extensive experience of working on climate change adaptation and resilience, community led resilient processes having social inclusion and gender equality.
Archana has been working with Change Alliance since 2015, in different roles and capacities. She was part of Christian Aid India Programme as Senior Programme Office/Programme Lead 2015 to 2017, Business Development and Marketing Manager, business vertical Lead- Gender Diversity and Inclusion and Interim Director-DAS. Before joining Change Alliance, she worked as Programme and Research head at the Centre for Alternative Dalit Media (CADAM) & National Confederation of Dalit Organisations working on Dalits and Adivasi rights and fair share in private sector. She also worked in Partners in Change (PIC) as Programme and Research specialist engaging with private sector companies on the assessment of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects. She was Chief Operating Officer in Prakruthi – enabling Sustainability and worked on supply chain management and led the South Asia Network for Sustainable and Responsible Business.
She has led the Gender Equality Programme and safe and responsible migration with the support of leading apparel brands of UK and US and worked with more than 35 leading export garment companies. In recognition of women empowerment interventions, Change Alliance represented by Archana was awarded the “Sandvik India Gender Award (SIGA), 2019, under the Social Venture”category by Sandvik Asia Pvt Ltd, Swedish Chamber of Commerce, Swedish Consulate and UN- Global Compact Network.
She has over 15 years of experience working in the textile, mining, tea, coffee, sugarcane and cotton sector (sustainable and responsible business) and affirmative action programmes in the private sector companies. She is a trainer on Gender, Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace, CSR, career progression programmes and Business & Human Rights (BHR). She is a trainer for the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) on project design and implementation for private and public sector companies. She is certified faculty under Faculty Development Programme in Entrepreneurship by the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII). She is trained on sustainable value chains through practice and cohort-based capacity building initiative of programmes like “Regenearth” on sustainable livelihoods and help in building business models (2021-2022).
She has recently (Sep-Dec 2023) completed the Executive Mini-MBA course by The University of The West of England and Advanced People Management Training by the Management Centre Learning =mc, London, UK, supported by Christian Aid.
She has a doctoral degree in Social Anthropology from University of Delhi (“Women in local governance among Padhars – a Primitive Tribal Group of Gujarat”). She is a lead author of the research on Affirmative Action Programmes in the Private Sector (BSE listed companies) in India.