PANELIST
RUCHIRA GUPTA
Founder-President
Apne Aap Women Worldwide
Ruchira Gupta is an Emmy winning journalist and founder of the anti sex trafficking NGO Apne Aap, that empowers women and girls to exit systems of prostitution. She has been awarded the French Ordre National du Mérite, the Clinton Global Citizen Award, and the UN NGO CSW Woman of Distinction, among other honors, for her contribution to the establishment of the UN Trafficking Fund for Survivors, the passage of the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act and her grassroots activism with Apne Aap. She also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Smith College. She has co-written a book with Gloria Steinem, As if Women Matter, edited two anthologies, River of Flesh and Renu’s Letters to Birju Babu, and recently authored I Kick and I Fly, a young adult novel about a young girl in India who escapes the sex trade.
Ruchira has worked for the United Nations in Nepal, Thailand, Kosovo, Iran, and the USA. She occasionally teaches at the New York University’s Center for Global Affairs as a visiting faculty.