GRÓ • International Centre for Capacity Development

Ankita Bhat, GRÓ GEST Almuna, works as a Senior Manager in the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion team at MicroSave Consulting, in New Delhi, India. Her work focuses on women‘s economic empowerment and financial inclusion, including entrepreneurship, the gender digital divide, the care economy, gender-lens investing,and gender-responsive budgeting to drive impactful change. She has over 11 years of experience in gender equality and social inclusion at multiple levels with multiple stakeholders including governments, development banks, international funding agencies, MFIs, and community-based institutions focusing on women's economic empowerment and mainstreaming gender across diverse sectors including health, finance, and technology.

Taalai Mambetov, GRÓ LRT 2024 alumnus, works as a lecturer at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) and Kyrgyz National University (KNU), where he teaches courses on environmental sustainability, climate science, botany and plant physiology. Alongside teaching, he conducts research on ecological restoration, sustainable land use and soil carbon assessment. One of his main challenges in his work is promoting sustainable management of natural ecosystems, particularly pasturelands and degraded soils, which are crucial for Kyrgyzstan's agricultural sector. Currently, Taalai is pursuing a PhD at the Institute of Biology, National Academy of Science of Kyrgyz Republic, focusing on grass species for land restoration.