The Setco Foundation team is dedicated, conscientious and ever ready to learn. The field teams comprises of community health workers, pre-school teachers, child development aides, specialists, and social workers who have ensured that the programs create a dramatic shift in the health and nutrition status of expectant and nursing mothers, infants and pre-schoolers as well as better educational levels, and financial and social empowerment of the women and the adolescent girls and boys in the communities.
Under Urja’s leadership the Setco Foundation was recognized as one of the key innovators in the field of early childhood development. The project was featured in a book released by the Ministry of Industries “Small but Beautiful†on meaningful social change. Additionally she was also the recipient of the “CSR Thought Leaders†award by the Cause–â€Because organization, New Delhi. Urja Shah holds both the managerial and strategic leadership for the Setco Foundation.
Urja holds an M.A. in Environmental Economics and Policy from Duke University, Nicholas School of Environment, along with a Certificate in International Development Policy from Duke University, The Sanford Institute of Public Policy (Year 2000). She was a recipient of a teaching scholarship at Duke University for the same. She also holds B.S. in Environmental Science, Toxicology and Chemistry, summa cum laude, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Year 1998).
She has also had the privilege of being amongst 12 CSR delegates for the UN Women’s Conference in Delhi, October 2012 with then UN Under Secretary General and Executive Director of UN Women, and then President elect of Chile, Ms. Michelle Bachelet. Urja currently lives in Mumbai with her husband Harshal Shah, member of MIT-Sloan School of Managment’s executive board, and son Hrehan.