Ria Shroff Desai

About Ria Shroff Desai

I\'m passionate about building and elevating homegrown Indian companies & brands to world-class levels.As Blume Ventures\' first People and Culture head, I work closely with Blume\'s leadership to create an ecosystem of growth, support, innovation and challenge to find & enable the best and brightest to solve India\'s most pressing problems.I have significant international experience living and working in multicultural environments in India, the United States and the Dominican Republic. I have worked extensively with CXO teams and helped them to align strategic goals to actionable objectives, while focusing on building strong, sustainable and smart teams. My strengths lie in deep stakeholder engagement, setting the foundational blocks for a high-ownership culture and working as a strategic partner to the business to leverage human capital resources.I strongly believe that today\'s leaders need to be quick decision makers, strategic thinkers and also do good while doing good business. Every business has the potential to make social impact and help societies and economies develop and grow.Outside of the office, I\'m passionate about supporting non-profit and social sector organizations through probono consulting. I\'ve run three half-marathons and am planning for my fourth. I speak Spanish fluently, and also understand German and Portuguese.You can reach me at r•••@blume.vc

Experience

1. People and Culture Lead

   Blume Ventures

   Apr 2021 — Present · Mumbai, IN

   I lead the Human Capital function at Blume Ventures. As Blume builds the ecosystem to support the best Indian startups of tomorrow, I support the founders to build a great team internally that will power this engine, as well as a progressive workplace driven by ownership, innovation, commitment and purpose.

Education

• SIT Graduate Institute

  M.A., Non-Profit Leadership and Management

  2010 — 2012

• Middlebury College

  B.A., Spanish, Political Science

  2005 — 2009

• UWC Mahindra College

  International Baccalaureate, International Baccalaureate

  2003 — 2005

Skills

• Employee Benefits Design
• Public Relations
• Business Strategy
• Organizational Development
• Intercultural Communication
• Research
• Volunteer Management
• Event Planning
• Project Management Office (Pmo)
• International Relations
• Social Media Consulting
• Fundraising
• Community Engagement
• Higher Education
• IT Infrastructure Management
• Community Outreach
• Leadership
• Staff Development
• Employee Learning & Development
• Non-Profit Administration
• Strategic Planning
• International Development
• Project Management
• Event Planning and Management
• Training and Development
• Program Development
• Board Governance
• Strategy Implementation
• Social Impact Assessment
• Spanish
• Executive Management
• Operations Management