Advisory Board

The Advisory Board of Child Literacy is entrusted with the critical responsibility of providing guidance on issues related to strategy, operations, execution and implementation. The Advisory board is a non-executive body and is not involved in the routine operations of the society. Nonetheless, as a critical component of the strategy setting body of Child Literacy, the Advisory Board has and continues to contribute invaluable guidance and direction to the operations and strategy of the society.

Omar H. Ali, Ph.D. - Advisor – Strategy and Practice

Omar Ali is a historian who has worked with a variety of innovative educational programs in the United States that support social development through the use of performance. An assistant professor of history at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, he is a Program Director for the Clemente Course in the Humanities, a supplementary education program for poor and working-class adults sponsored by Bard College, and a long-time contributor to the All Stars Project, which runs a series of inner-city youth cultural and educational programs in the U.S. An honors graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, he received his doctorate from Columbia University in political history. Originally from Peru, Dr. Ali is of South American and East Indian descent. He has been an invited speaker at a number of universities, including Stanford, Princeton, UCLA, and Yale. He is the author of the forthcoming book Black Populism in the New South and a contributing author to History in Dispute: American Social and Political Movements, 1945-2000.

Pritika Chatterjee - Executive Advisor – Welfare and Development

Pritika Chatterjee is the first woman in her family to have stepped outside her community, to leave India and to establish a career - as a mental health professional and and as an International Civil Servant at the United Nations Population Fund. She spent seven years working in the not for profit sector in New Delhi, India and also worked as a child psychologist /counsellor. She has worked in USA for 4 years partly as a psychiatric research associate and then with UNFPA in New York managing HIV prvention and peer education projects in the Middle East and North Africa. "I am resolved to create effective interventions for the uneducated and illiterate," says Priitika. Currently Priitika is pursuing a Ph. D. at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.