Monalisa Padhee was born and bred in Sambalpur, Odisha. The pursuit of a ‘well settled life’, emphasised by her father, led her to graduate in biotechnology, after which she moved to Australia for higher studies. During her PhD, Monalisa worked on a project looking for any link between what mothers eat around the time of conception and adult diseases in babies.
Gradually, her interests widened into greater practicality. “It’s not that I did not enjoy research, but I wanted to see the relevance of my lab work and research in people’s lives,” says Monalisa. It was then that she decided to take a ‘leap of faith’—return to India and work on a rural development fellowship. “During my time on the field, I realised that health issues in these communities could not be isolated from interconnected problems of education, discrimination against women, financial dependence and poor understanding of rights.”
Monalisa now heads the ‘women wellness and enriche’ programme at Barefoot...
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